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THE WORKS 



CHARLES LAMB 



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THE 




WORKS 




OF 




CHARLES LAMB. 




A NEW EDITION. 


«° 






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LONDON : 




EDWARD MOXON, DOVER STREET. 




1852. 



./U 



LONDON I 
BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS. 



TO 



THE REV. DERWENT COLERIDGE, M.A., 

PRINCIPAL 0"F ST. MARK'S COLLEGE, CHELSEA, 



THIS EDITION 01-' 



THE WORKS OF HIS FATHER'S FRIEND 



IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED 



THE. PUBLISHER. 



August, 1852. 



CONTENTS. 



LETTERS. 



Chapter I.— [1775 to 1796.] 



rase 



LAMB'S PARENTAGE, SCHOOL DAYS, AND YOUTH, TO THE COMMENCEMENT 

OF HIS CORRESPONDENCE WITH COLERIDGE 5 

Chapter II.— [1796.] 

LETTERS TO COLERIDGE . 11 

Chapter III— [1797.] 

LETTERS TO COLERIDGE 20 

Chapter IV.— [1798.] 

LAMB'S LITERARY EFFORTS AND CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY . . . 28 

Chapter V.— [1799, 1800.] 

LETTERS TO SOUTHEY, COLERIDGE, MANNING, AND WORDSWORTH ... 37 

Chapter VI.— [1800.] 
LETTERS TO MANNING AFTER LAMB'S REMOVAL TO THE TEMPLE . . . 50 



Chapter VII.— [1801 to 1804.] 

LETTERS TO MANNING, WORDSWORTH, AND COLERIDGE ; JOHN WOODVIL 

REJECTED, PUBLISHED, AND REVIEWED 58 



Chapter VIIL— [1804 to 1806.] 

LETTERS TO MANNING, WORDSWORTH, RICKMAN, AND HAZLITT.— " MR. H." 

WRITTEN,— ACCEPTED— DAMNED 72 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter IX.— [1807 to 1814.] 

Page 
LETTERS TO MANNING, MONTAGUE, WORDSWORTH, AND COLERIDGE . . 83 



Chapter X.— [1815 to 1817.] 

LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH, SOUTHEY, AND MANNING 93 

Chapter XL— [1818 to 1820.] 

LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH, SOUTHEY, MANNING, AND COLERIDGE . . .103 

Chapter XIL— [1820 to 1823.] 

LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH, COLERIDGE, FIELD, WILSON, AND BARTON . . 110 

Chapter XIII— [1823.] 

LAMB'S CONTROVERSY WITH SOUTHEY ^ . . 120 

Chapter XIV.— [1823 to 1825.] 

LETTERS TO AINSWORTH, BARTON, AND COLERIDGE 131 

Chapter XV.— [1825.] 
LAMB'S EMANCIPATION FROM THE INDIA HOUSE 139 

Chapter XVL— [1826 to 1828.] 

LETTERS TO ROBINSON, CARY, COLERIDGE, PATMORE, PROCTER, AND BARTON 144 



Chapter XVII.— [1829, 1830.] 



LETTERS TO ROBINSON, PROCTER, BARTON, WILSON, GILMAN, WORDS- 
WORTH, AND DYER 154 

Chapter XVIII.— [1830 to 1834.] 

LAMB'S LAST LETTERS AND DEATH 169 



CONTENTS. 



FINAL MEMOKIALS. 



Chapter I. 

Page 
LETTERS OF LAMB TO COLERIDGE, IN THE SPRING AND SUMMER OF 1796 . . 189 



Chapter II. 

LETTERS OF LAMB TO COLERIDGE, CHIEFLY RELATING TO THE DEATH OF 

MRS. LAMB, AND MISS LAMB'S SUBSEQUENT CONDITION . . . .201 

. Chapter III. 

LETTERS TO COLERIDGE AND MANNING IN LAMB'S FIRST YEARS OF LIFE 

WITH HIS SISTER— 1797 to 1800 . . 211 

Chapter IV. 

MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS TO MANNING, COLERIDGE, AND WORDSWORTH 

—1800 to 1805 219 

Chapter V. 
LETTERS TO HAZLITT, ETC.— 1805 to 1810 229 

Chapter VI. 

LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH, ETC., CHIEFLY RESPECTING WORDSWORTH'S 

POEMS— 1815 to 1818 . 237 

Chapter VII. 

THE LONDON MAGAZINE— CHARACTER AND FATE OF MR. JOHN SCOTT, ITS 
EDITOR— GLIMPSE OF MR. THOMAS GRIFFITHS WAINWRIGHT, ONE 
OF ITS CONTRIBUTORS — MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS OF LAMB TO 
WORDSWORTH, COLERIDGE, AND OTHERS— 1818 to 1825 248 

Chapter VIII. 

LETTERS OF LAMB'S LAST YEARS— 1825 to 1834 256 

Chapter the Last. 

LAMB'S WEDNESDAY NIGHTS COMPARED WITH THE EVENINGS OF HOL- 
LAND HOUSE— HIS DEAD COMPANIONS, DYER, GODWIN, THELWALL, 
HAZLITT, BARNES, HAYDON, COLERIDGE, AND OTHERS— LAST GLIMPSES 
OF CHARLES AND MARY LAMB 279 



CONTENTS. 



\ 



ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE X 315 

OXFORD IN THE VACATION 319 

CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO 322 

THE TWO RACES OF MEN 328 

NEW-YEAR'S EVE 331 

V MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST . . 334 

1/ A CHAPTER ON EARS .338 

ALL FOOLS' DAY 340 

A QUAKERS' MEETING 342 

THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER 344 

IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 349 

WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS 353 

VALENTINE'S DAY 356 

MY RELATIONS 358 

MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE 361 

MY FIRST PLAY 363 

— MODERN GALLANTRY 366 

THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE 363 

GRACE BEFORE MEAT 373 

DREAM-CHILDREN; A REVERIE 377 

DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS 379 

THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS 3S2 

A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS IN THE METROPOLIS . . .385 

A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 389 

A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF THE BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE . . 392 

ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 396 

ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY 402 

ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN 406 



CONTENTS. 



THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 

— ♦ — 

Papc 
BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE 413 

POOR RELATIONS . 415 

" DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING 419 

STAGE ILLUSION 4 ' 2 

TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON 424 

ELLISTONIANA 425 

THE OLD MARGATE HOY ... 428 

THE CONVALESCENT . . . - • . . 432 

SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS 434 

CAPTAIN JACKSON 435 

THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 438 

THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING 441 

BARBARA S 444 

THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY 446 

AMICUS REDIVIVUS 448 

SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY 450 

NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO 453 

BARRENNESS OF THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY IN THE PRODUCTIONS OF 

MODERN ART 457 

THE WEDDING 463 

REJOICINGS UPON THE NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE 466 

OLD CHINA 468 

THE CHILD ANGEL ; A DREAM . . . 471 

CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD .473 

POPULAR FALLACIES :— 

I. THAT A BULLY IS ALWAYS A COWARD 477 

II. THAT ILL-GOTTEN GAIN NEVER PROSPERS . 477 

III. THAT A MAN MUST NOT LAUGH AT HIS OWN JEST . . . .477 

IV. THAT SUCH A ONE SHOWS HIS BREEDING. — THAT IT IS EASY TO PER- 

CEIVE HE IS NO GENTLEMAN .478 

V. THAT THE POOR COPY THE VICES OP THE RICH 478 

VI. THAT ENOUGH IS AS GOOD AS A FEAST 479 

-VII. OF TWO DISPUTANTS THE WARMEST IS GENERALLY IN THE WRONG . 479 



CONTENTS. 



POPULAR FALLACIES— continued. 

Page 
VIII. THAT VERBAL ALLUSIONS ABE NOT WIT, BECAUSE THEY WILL NOT BEAR 

A TRANSLATION 480 

IX. THAT THE WORST PUNS ARE, -THE BEST 480 

X. THAT HANDSOME IS THAT HANDSOME DOES 481 

XI. THAT WE MUST NOT LOOK A GIFT-HORSE IN THE MOUTH . . .482 

XII. THAT HOME IS HOME THOUGH IT IS NEVER SO HOMELY . . . . 483 

Xm. THAT YOU MUST LOVE ME, AND LOVE MY DOG 485 

XIV. THAT WE SHOULD RISE WITH THE LARK 487 

XV. THAT WE SHOULD LIE DOWN WITH THE LAMB 488 

XVI. THAT A SULKY TEMPER IS A MISFORTUNE 489 



KOSAMUND GKAY, ESSAYS, Etc. 

EOSAMUND GRAY .493 

ESSAYS :— 

RECOLLECTIONS OF CHRIST'S HOSPITAL .... ... 511 

ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKSPEARE, CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO 

THEIR FITNESS FOR STAGE-REPRESENTATION 517 

CHARACTERS OF DRAMATIC WRITERS, CONTEMPORARY WITH SHAKSPEARE . 526 
SPECIMENS FROM THE WRITINGS OF FULLER, THE CHURCH HISTORIAN . . 535 
ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH; WITH SOME REMARKS ON 

A PASSAGE IN THE WRITINGS OF THE LATE MR. BARRY . . .540 

ON THE POETICAL WORKS OF GEORGE WITHER 550 

LETTERS, UNDER ASSUMED SIGNATURES, PUBLISHED IN "THE REFLECTOR":— 

THE LONDONER 553 

ON BURIAL SOCIETIES; AND THE CHARACTER OF AN UNDERTAKER . . . 554 

ON THE DANGER OF CONFOUNDING MORAL WITH PERSONAL DEFORMITY; 
WITH A HINT TO THOSE WHO HAVE THE FRAMING OF ADVERTISEMENTS 
FOR APPREHENDING OFFENDERS 557 

ON THE INCONVENIENCES RESULTING FROM BEING HANGED . . . . 560 

ON THE MELANCHOLY OF TAILORS 565 

HOSPITA ON THE IMMODERATE INDULGENCE OF THE PLEASURES OF THE PALATE 567 

EDAX ON APPETITE ' . . . .569 

CURIOUS FRAGMENTS, EXTRACTED FROM A COMMON-PLACE BOOK WHICH 
BELONGED TO ROBERT BURTON, THE FAMOUS AUTHOR OF THE 
ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY 573 

MR. H ., A FARCE, IN TWO ACTS . 577 



CONTENTS. 



POEMS. 



[Those marked with an asterisk are by the Author's Sister.] 

Page 

HESTER 593 

TO CHARLES LLOYD, AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR 593 

THE THREE FRIENDS 594 

TO A RIVER IN WHICH A CHILD WAS DROWNED 596 

THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES . ' 596 

*HELEN , . . 596 

A VISION OF REPENTANCE 596 

♦DIALOGUE BETWEEN A MOTHER AND CHILD 597 

QUEEN ORIANA'S DREAM 597 

A BALLAD NOTING THE DIFFERENCE OF RICH AND POOR, IN THE WAYS OF 

A RICH NOBLE'S PALACE AND A POOR WORKHOUSE 598 

HYPOCHONDRIACUS ' 598 

A FAREWELL TO TOBACCO 599 

TO T. L. H., A CHILD # 600 

BALLAD, FROM THE GERMAN 601 

*DAVID IN THE CAVE OF ADULLAM 601 

*SALOME 601 

*LINES SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE OF TWO FEMALES, BY LIONARDO DA VINCI 602 
*LINES ON THE SAME PICTURE BEING REMOVED TO MAKE PLACE FOR A 

PORTRAIT OF A LADY BY TITIAN 602 

*LINES ON THE CELEBRATED PICTURE BY LIONARDO DA VINCI, CALLED 

THE VIRGIN OF THE ROCKS . . 602 

*ON THE SAME 602 

SONNETS :— 

I. TO MISS KELLY 603 

II. ON THE SIGHT OF SWANS IN KENSINGTON GARDEN 603 

III 603 

IV 603 

V. s 603 

VI. THE FAMILY NAME 603 



CONTENTS. 



SONNETS— con tin ued. 

Page 

VII 604 

VIII 604 

IX. TO JOHN LAMB, ESQ., OF THE SOUTH-SEA-HOUSE 604 

X 604 

XI. 604 

BLANK VERSE :— , 

CHILDHOOD 605 

THE GRANDAME 605 

THE SABBATH BELLS . 605 

FANCY EMPLOYED ON DIVINE SUBJECTS 605 

COMPOSED AT MIDNIGHT 606 

JOHN WOODVIL, A TRAGEDY 607 

THE WITCH, A DRAMATIC SKETCH OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY . . 623 



ALBUM VEKSES, WITH A FEW OTHEES. 

IN THE AUTOGRAPH BOOK OF MRS. SERGEANT W 624 

TO DORA W ■, ON BEING ASKED BY HER FATHER TO WRITE IN HER ALBUM 624 

IN THE ALBUM OF A CLERGYMAN'S LADY 625 

IN THE ALBUM OF EDITH S 625 

IN THE ALBUM OF ROTHA Q 625 

IN THE ALBUM OF CATHERINE ORKNEY 625 

IN THE ALBUM OF LUCY BARTON 625 

IN THE ALBUM OF MRS. JANE TOWERS 626 

IN THE ALBUM OF MISS . . . . 626 

IN MY OWN ALBUM 626 

MISCELLANEOUS :— 

ANGEL HELP • 627 

ON AN INFANT DYING AS SOON AS BORN . . . . . . .627 

THE CHRISTENING . 628 

THE YOUNG CATECHIST 628 

TO A YOUNG FRIEND ON HER TWENTY-FIRST BIRTHDAY . . . . 628 

SHE IS GOING 629 



CONTENTS. 



SONNETS :— 

Page 

HARMONY IN UNLIKENESS 629 

WRITTEN AT CAMBRIDGE 629 

TO A CELEBRATED FEMALE PERFORMER IN Til K "BLIND ROY" . . . 629 

WORK 629 

LEISURE 630 

TO SAMUEL ROGERS, ESQ, .630 

■ THE GIPSY'S MALISON 630 

COMMENDATORY VERSES, &c— 

TO J. S. KNOWLES, ESQ., ON HIS TRAGEDY OF VIRGINIUS .... 630 

TO THE AUTHOR OF POEMS, PUBLISHED UNDER THE NAME OF BARRY 

CORNWALL 631 

TO THE EDITOR OF THE « EVERY-DAY BOOK " 631 

TO T. STOTHARD, ESQ., ON .HIS ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE POEMS OF 

MR. ROGERS 631 

TO A FRIEND ON HIS MARRIAGE 631 

" O LIFT WITH REVERENT HAND " 632 

THE SELF-ENCHANTED 632 

TO LOUISA M , WHOM I USED TO CALL "MONKEY" 632 

TRANSLATIONS FROM THE LATIN OE VINCENT BOURNE :— 

THE BALLAD-SINGERS 633 

TO DAVID COOK, OF THE PARISH OF ST. MARGARET'S, WESTMINSTER, 

WATCHMAN 633 

ON A SEPULCHRAL STATUE OF AN INFANT SLEEPING 634 

EPITAPH ON A DOG 634 

THE RIVAL BELLS 634 

NEWTON'S PRINCIPIA 634 

THE HOUSEKEEPER 635 

ON A DEAF AND DUMB ARTIST 635 

THE FEMALE ORATORS 635 

PINDARIC ODE TO THE TREAD-MILL . . 635 

GOING OR GONE . 636 

FREE THOUGHTS ON SEVERAL EMINENT COMPOSERS 637 

THE WIFE'S TRIAL; or, THE INTRUDING WIDOW. A Dramatic Poem . 638 



THE LETTERS 



CHARLES LAMB, 



A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE 



SIR THOMAS NOON TALFOUED, D.C.L. 

ONE OF HIS EXECUTORS. 



TO 

MARY ANNE LAMB, 

THESE LETTERS, 

THE MEMORIALS OF MANY YEARS WHICH SHE SPENT WITH THE WRITER 
IN UNDIVIDED AFFECTION; 

OF THE SORROWS AND THE JOYS SHE SHARED, OF THE GENIUS WHICH SHE CHERISHED, 
AND OF THE EXCELLENCES WHICH SHE BEST KNEW; 

ARE 

RESPECTFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED, 

BY THE EDITOR. 



PREFACE. 



The share of the Editor in these volumes can scarcely be regarded too slightly. 
The successive publications of Lamb's works form almost the only events of his life 
which can be recorded ; and upon these criticism has been nearly exhausted. Little, 
therefore, was necessary to accompany the Letters, except such thread of narrative 
as might connect them together ; and - such explanations as might render their 
allusions generally understood. The reader's gratitude for the pleasure which he 
will derive from these memorials of one of the most delightful of English writers 
is wholly due to his correspondents, who have kindly entrusted the precious relics 
to the care of the Editor, and have permitted them to be given to the world ; and 
to Mr. Moxon, by whose interest and zeal they have been chiefly collected. He may 
be allowed to express his personal sense of the honour which he has received in such 
a trust from men, some of whom are among the greatest of England's living authors, 
— to Wordsworth, Southey, Manning, Barton, Procter, Gilman, Patmore, Walter 
Wilson, Field, Eobinson, Dyer, Cary, Ainsworth, to Mr. Green, the executor of 
Coleridge, and to the surviving relatives of Hazlitt. He is also most grateful to 
Lamb's esteemed schoolfellow, Mr. Le Grice, for supplying an interesting part of his 
history. Of the few additional facts of Lamb's history, the chief have been supplied 
by Mr. Moxon, in whose welfare he took a most affectionate interest to the close of his 
life ; and who has devoted some beautiful sonnets to his memory. 

The recentness of the period of some of the letters has rendered it necessary 
to omit many portions of them, in which the humour and beauty are interwoven 
with personal references, which, although wholly free from anything which, rightly 
understood, could give pain to any human being, touch on subjects too sacred for 
public exposure. Some of the personal allusions which have been retained, may 
seem, perhaps, too free to a stranger ; but they have been retained only in cases 



e 2 



PREFACE. 



in which the Editor is well assured the parties would be rather gratified than 
displeased at seeing their names connected in life-like association with one so dear 
to their memories. 

The italics and the capitals are invariably those indicated by the MSS. Tt is to 
be regretted that in the printed letters the reader must lose the curious varieties of 
writing with which the originals abound, and which are scrupulously adapted to the 
subjects. 

Many letters yet remain unpublished, which will further illustrate the character 
of Mr. Lamb, but which must be reserved for a future time, when the Editor hopes to 
do more justice to his own sense of the genius and the excellence of his friend, than it 
has been possible for him to accomplish in these volumes. 

T. N. T. 

Russell Squake, 26th June, 1837. 



LETTERS, &c. OF CHARLES LAMB. 



CHAPTER I. 

[1775 to 1796.] 

lamb's parentage, school-days, and youth, to the 
commencement of his correspondence with cole- 



Charles Lamb was born on 10th February, 
1775, in Crown Office Eow, in the Inner 
Temple, where he spent the first seven 
years of his life. His parents were in a 
humble station, but they were endued with 
sentiments and with manners which might 
well become the gentlest blood ; and fortune, 
which had denied them wealth, enabled them 
to bestow on their children some of the 
happiest intellectual advantages which wealth 
ever confers. His father, Mr. John Lamb, 
who came up a little boy from Lincoln, 
fortunately both for himself and his master, 
entered into the service of Mr. Salt, one of 
the benchers of the Inner Temple, a widower, 
who, growing old within its precincts, was 
enabled to appreciate and to reward his 
devotedness and intelligence ; and to whom 
he became, in the language of his son, " his 
clerk, his good servant, his dresser, his friend, 
his flapper, his guide, stop-watch, auditor, 
treasurer."* Although contented with his 

* Lamb has given characters of his father (under the 
name of Lovel), and of Mr. Salt, in one of the most 
exquisite of all the Essays of Elia — >« The Old Benchers 
of the Inner Temple." Of Lovel, he says, "He was 
a man of an incorrigible and losing honesty. A good 
fellow withal, and ' would strike.' In the cause of the 
oppressed he never considered inequalities, or calculated 
the number of his opponents. He once wrested a sword 
out of the hand of a man of quality that had drawn 
upon him ; and pummelled him severely with the hilt of 
it. The swordsman had offered insult to a female — an 
occasion upon which no odds against him could have 
prevented the interference of Lovel. He would stand 
next day bare-headed to the same person, modestly to 



lot, and discharging its duties with the most 
patient assiduity, he was not without literary 
ambition ; and having written some occasional 
verses to grace the festivities of a benefit 
society of which he was a member, was 
encouraged by his brother members to pub- 
lish, in a thin quarto, "Poetical Pieces on 
several occasions." This volume contains a 
lively picture of the life of a lady's footman 
of the last century ; the " History of Joseph," 
told in well-measured heroic couplets ; and a 
pleasant piece, after the manner of "Gay's 
Fables," entitled the " Sparrow's Wedding," 
which was the author's favourite, and which, 
when he fell into the dotage of age, he 
delighted to hear Charles read.f His wife 

excuse his interference — for L. never forgot rank, where 
something better was not concerned. L. was the liveliest 
little fellow breathing ; had a face as gay as Garrick's, 
whom he was said greatly to resemble ; (I have a por- 
trait of him which confirms it ;) possessed a fine turn 
for humorous poetry— next to Swift and Prior ; moulded 
heads in clay or plaster of Paris to admiration, by the 
dint of natural genius merely ; turned cribbage-boards 
and such small cabinet toys to perfection ; took a hand 
at quadrille or bowls with equal facility ; made punch 
better than any man of his degree in England ; had the 
merriest quips and conceits ; and was altogether as 
brimful of rogueries and inventions as you could desire. 
He was a brother of the angle, moreover ; and just such 
a free, hearty, honest companion as Mr. Izaak Walton 
would have chosen to go a fishing with." 

f The following little poem, entitled ' A Letter from 
a Child to its Grandmother," written by Mr. John Lamb 
for his eldest son, though possessing no merit beyond 
simplicity of expression, may show the manner in which 
he endeavoured to discharge his parental duties : — 

" Dear Grandam, 

Pray to God to bless 
Your grandson dear, with happiness ; 
That, as I do advance each year, 
I may be taught my God to fear ; 
My little frame from passion free, 
To man's estate from infancy ; 



PARENTAGE, SCHOOL-DAYS, AND YOUTH. 



was a woman of appearance so matronly and 
commanding, that, according to the recollec- 
tion of one of Lamb's dearest schoolmates, 
" she might be taken for a sister of Mrs. Sid- 
dons." This excellent couple were blessed 
with three children, John, Mary, and Charles ; 
John being twelve and Mary ten years older 
than Charles. John, who is vividly described 
in the essay of Elia entitled " My Eelations," 
under the name of James Elia, rose to fill a 
lucrative office in the South Sea House, and 
died a few years ago, having to the last 
fulfilled the affectionate injunction of Charles, 
to "keep the elder brother up in state." 
Mary (the Bridget of the same essay) still 
survives, to mourn the severance of a life- 
long association, as free from every alloy of 
selfishness, as remarkable for moral beauty, 
as this world ever witnessed in brother and 
sister. 

On the 9th of October, 1782, when Charles 
Lamb had attained the age of seven, he was 
presented to the school of Christ's Hospital, 
by Timothy Yeates, Esq., Governor, as "the 
son of John Lamb, scrivener, and Elizabeth 
his wife," and remained a scholar of that 
noble establishment till he had entered into 
his fifteenth year. Small of stature, delicate 
of frame, and constitutionally nervous and 
timid, he would seem unfitted to encounter 
the discipline of a school formed to restrain 
some hundreds of lads in the heart of the 
metropolis, or to fight his way among them. 
But the sweetness of his disposition won him 
favour from all ; and although the antique 
peculiarities of the school tinged his opening 
imagination, they did not sadden his child- 
hood. One of his schoolfellows, of whose 
genial qualities he has made affectionate 
mention in his " Eecollections of Christ's 
Hospital," Charles V. Le Grice, now of 
Treriefe, near Penzance, has supplied me 
with some particulars of his school-days, for 
which friends of a later date will be grateful. 
" Lamb," says Mr. Le Grice, "was an amiable 
gentle boy, very sensible and keenly observing, 
indulged by his schoolfellows and by his 

From vice, that turns a youth aside, 
And to have wisdom for my guide ; 
That I may neither lie nor swear, 
Lut in the path of virtue steer ; 
My actions generous, firm, and just, 
Be always faithful to my trust ; 
And thee the Lord will ever bless. 
Your grandson dear, 

John L , the Less." 



master on account of his infirmity of speech. 
His countenance was mild ; his complexion 
clear brown, with an expression which might 
lead you to think that he was of Jewish 
descent. His eyes were not each of the same 
colour, one was hazel, the other had specks 
of grey in the iris, mingled as we see red 
spots in the blood-stone. His step was 
plantigrade, which made his walk slow and 
peculiar, adding to the staid appearance of 
his figure. I never heard his name men- 
tioned without the addition of Charles, 
although, as there was no other boy of the 
name of Lamb, the addition was unnecessary ; 
but there was an implied kindness in it, and 
it was a proof that his gentle mamiers excited 
that kindness." 

"His delicate frame and his difficulty of 
utterance, which was increased by agitation, 
unfitted him for joining in any boisterous 
sport. The description which he gives, in 
his ' Eecollections of Christ's Hospital,' of 
the habits and feelings of the schoolboy, is a 
true one in general, but is more particularly 
a delineation of himself — the feelings were 
all in his own heart — the portrait was his 
own : ' While others were all fire and play, 
he stole along with all the self-concentration 
of a young monk.' These habits and feelings 
were awakened and cherished in him by 
peculiar circumstances : he had been born 
and bred in the Inner Temple ; and his 
parents continued to reside there while he 
was at school, so that he passed from cloister 
to cloister, and this was all the change his 
young mind ever knew. On every half- 
holiday (and there were two in the week) in 
ten minutes he was in the gardens, on the 
terrace, or at the fountain of the Temple : 
here was his home, here his recreation ; and 
the influence they had on his infant mind is 
vividly shown in his description of the Old 
Benchers. He says, ' I was born and passed 
the first seven years of my life in the Temple : ' 
he might have added, that here he passed a 
great portion of the second seven years of his 
life, a portion which mixed itself with all his 
habits and enjoyments, and gave a bias to 
the whole. Here he found a happy home, 
affectionate parents, and a sister who watched 
over him to the latest hour of his existence 
(God be with her !) with the tenderest solici- 
tude ; and here he had access to the library 
of Mr. Salt, one of the Benchers, to whose 



PARENTAGE, SCHOOL-DAYS, AND YOUTH. 



memory his pen has given, in return for this 
and greater favours — I do not think it extra- 
vagant to say — immortality. To use his 
own language, here he ' was tumbled into a 
spacious closet of good old English reading, 
where he browsed at will upon that fair and 
wholesome pasturage.' He applied these 
words to his sister ; but there is no doubt 
they ' browsed ' together ; they had walked 
hand in hand from a time ' extending beyond 
the period of their memory.' " 

When Lamb quitted school, he was in the 
lower division of the second class — which in 
the language of the school is termed " being 
in Greek Form, but not Deputy Grecian." 
He had read Virgil, Sallust, Terence, selec- 
tions from Lucian's Dialogues, and Xenophon; 
and had evinced considerable skill in the 
niceties of Latin composition, both in prose 
and verse. His docility and aptitude for the 
attainment of classical knowledge would have 
insured him an exhibition ; but to this the 
impediment in his speech proved an insu- 
perable obstacle. The exhibitions were given 
under the implied, if not expressed, condition 
of entering into the Church ; the whole course 
of education was preparatory to that end ; 
and therefore Lamb, who was unfitted by 
nature for the clerical profession, was not 
adopted into the class which led to it, and 
quitted school to pursue the uncongenial 
labour of the "desk's dull wood." To this 
apparently hard lot he submitted with 
cheerfulness, and saw his schoolfellows of his 
own standing depart, one after another, for 
the University without a murmur. This 
acquiescence in his different fortune must 
have been a hard trial for the sweetness of 
his disposition ; as he always, in after life, 
regarded the ancient seats of learning with 
the fondness of one who had been hardly 
divorced from them. He delighted, when 
other duties did not hinder, to pass his 
vacations in their neighbourhood, and indulge 
in that fancied association with them which 
he has so beautifully mirrored in his " Sonnet 
written at Cambridge."* What worldly 



I was not train'd in academic bowers, 

And to those learned streams I nothing owe 

Which copious from those twin fair founts do flow : 

Mine have been anything but studious hours. 

Yet can I fancy, wandering 'mid thy towers, 

Myself a nursling, Granta, of thy lap ; 

My brow seems tightening with the doctor's cap, 

And I walk gowned ; feel unusual powers. 



success can, indeed, ever compensate for the 
want of timely nurture beneath the shade of 
one of these venerable institutions — for the 
sense of antiquity shading, not checking, the 
joyous impulses of opening manhood — for 
the refinement and the grace there interfused 
into the long labour of ambitious study — for 
young friendships consecrated by the asso- 
ciations of long past time ; and for liberal 
emulation, crowned by successes restrained 
from ungenerous and selfish pride by palpable 
symbols of the genius and the learning of 
ages? 

On 23rd November, 1789, Lamb finally 
quitted Christ's Hospital for the abode of his 
parents, who still resided in the Temple. At 
first he was employed in the South Sea 
House, under his brother. John ; but on the 
5th April, 1792, he obtained an appointment 
in the accountant's office of the East India 
Company. His salary, though then small, 
was a welcome addition to the scanty means 
of his parents ; who now were unable, by 
their own exertions, to increase it, his mother 
being in ill health, which confined her to her 
bed, and his father sinking into dotage. On 
their comfort, however, this, and what was 
more precious to him, his little leisure, were 
freely bestowed ; and his recreations were 
confined to a delightful visit to the two- 
shilling gallery of the theatre, in company 
with his sister, and an occasional supper with 
some of his schoolmates, when in town, from 
Cambridge. On one of these latter occasions 
he obtained the appellation of Guy, by which 
he was always called among them ; but of 
which few of his late friends heard till after 
his death. " In the first year of his clerk- 
ship," says Mr. Le Grice, in the communica- 
tion with which he favoured me, "Lamb 
spent the evening of the 5th November 
with some of his former schoolfellows, who, 
being amused with the particularly large and 
flapping brim of his round hat, pinned it up 
on the sides in the form of a cocked-hat. 
Lamb made no alteration in it, but walked 
home in his usual sauntering gait towards 
the Temple. As he was going down Ludgate- 

Strange forms of logic clothe my admiring speech ; 

Old Ramus' ghost is busy at my brain ; 

And my skull teems with notions infinite. 

Be still, ye reeds of Camus, while I teach 

Truths which transcend the searching schoolmen's 

vein, 
And half had stagger'd that stout Stagyrite ! 



s 



PARENTAGE, SCHOOL-DAYS, AND YOUTH. 



hill, some gay young men, who seemed not to 
have passed the London Tavern without 
resting, exclaimed, ' The veritable Guy ! — 
no man of straw ! ' and with this exclamation 
they took him up, making a chair with their 
arms, carried him, seated him on a post in 
St. Paul's-churchyard, and there left him. 
This story Lamb told so seriously, that the 
truth of it was never doubted. He wore 
his three-cornered hat many evenings, and 
retained the name of Guy ever after. Like 
Nym, he quietly sympathised in the fun, and 
seemed to say, ' that was the humour of it.' 
A clergyman of the City lately wrote to me, 
' I have no recollection of Lamb. There was 
a gentleman called Guy, to whom you once 
introduced me, and with whom I have occa- 
sionally interchanged nods for more than 
thirty years ; but how is it that I never met 
Mr. Lamb 1 If I was ever introduced to 
him, I wonder that we never came in contact 
during my residence for ten years in Edmon- 
ton.' Imagine this gentleman's surprise 
when I informed him that his nods to Mr. 
■Guy had been constantly reciprocated by 
Mr. Lamb ! " 

During these years Lamb's most frequent 
companion was James White, or rather, 
Jem White, as he always called him. Lamb 
always insisted that for hearty joyous humour, 
tinged with Shaksperian fancy, Jem never 
had an equal. " Jem White ! " said he, to 
Mr. Le Grice, when they met for the last 
time, after many years' absence, at the Bell 
at Edmonton, in June, 1833, "there never 
was his like ! We never shall see such days 
as those in which Jem flourished ! " All 
that now remains of Jem is the celebration 
of the suppers which he gave the young 
chimney-sweepers in the Elia of his friend, 
and a thin duodecimo volume, which he 
published in 1796, under the title of the 
" Letters of Sir John Falstaff, with a dedi- 
cation (printed in black letter) to Master 
Samuel Irelaunde," which those who knew 
Lamb at the time believed to be his. "White's 
Letters," said Lamb, in a letter to a friend 
about this time, " are near publication. His 
frontispiece is a good conceit ; Sir John 
learning to dance, to please Madame Page, 
in dress of doublet, &c, from the upper half, 
and modern pantaloons, with shoes of the 
eighteenth century, from the lower half, and 
the whole work is full of goodly quips and 



rare fancies, ' all deftly masked like hoar 
antiquity' — much superior to Dr. Kenrick's 
'Falstaff's Wedding.'" The work was 
neglected, although Lamb exerted all the 
influence he subsequently acquired with 
more popular writers to obtain for it favour- 
able notices, as will be seen from various 
passages in his letters. He stuck, however, 
gallantly by his favourite protege ; and even 
when he could little afford to disburse 
sixpence, he made a point of buying a copy 
of the book whenever he discovered one 
amidst the refuse of a bookseller's stall, and 
would present it to a friend in the hope of 
making a convert. He gave me one of these 
copies soon after I became acquainted with 
him., stating that he had purchased it in the 
morning for sixpence, and assuring me I 
should enjoy a rare treat in the perusal ; 
but if I must confess the truth, the mask of 
quaintness was so closely worn, that it 
nearly concealed the humour. To Lamb it 
was, doubtless, vivified by the eye and voice 
of his old boon companion, forming to him 
an undying commentary ; without which it 
was comparatively spiritless. Alas ! how 
many even of his own most delicate fancies, 
rich as they are in feeling and in wisdom, 
will be lost to those who have not present 
to them the sweet broken accents, and the 
half playful, half melancholy smile of the 
writer ! 

But if Jem White was the companion of 
his lighter moods, the friend of his serious 
thoughts was a person of far nobler powers 
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It was his good 
fortune to be the schoolfellow of that extra- 
ordinary man ; and if no particular intimacy 
had been formed between them at Christ's 
Hospital, a foundation was there laid for a 
friendship to which the world is probably 
indebted for all that Lamb has added to its 
sources of pleasure. Junior to Coleridge by 
two years, and far inferior to him in all 
scholastic acquirements, Lamb had listened 
to the rich discourse of " the inspired charity- 
boy" with a wondering delight, pure from all 
envy, and, it may be, enhanced by his sense 
of his own feebleness and difficulty of 
expression. While Coleridge remained at 
the University, they met occasionally on his 
visits to London ; and when he quitted it, 
and came to town, full of mantling hopes 
and glorious schemes, Lamb became his 



PARENTAGE, SCHOOL-DAYS, AND YOUTH. 



admiring disciple. The scene of these happy i 
meetings was a little public-house, called the j 
Salutation and Cat, in the neighbourhood of 
Smithfield, where they used to sup, and : 
remain long after they had "heard the chimes ! 
at midnight." There they discoursed of, 
Bowles, who was the god of Coleridge's 
poetical idolatry, and of Burns and Cowper, 
who, of recent poets, in that season of com- 
parative' barrenness, had made the deepest 
impression on Lamb. There Coleridge talked 
of " Fate, free-will, fore-knowledge absolute," 
to one who desired "to find no end" of the 
golden maze ; and there he recited his early 
poems with that deep sweetness of intonation 
which sunk into the heart of his hearer. To 
these meetings Lamb was accustomed at all 
periods of his life to revert, as the" season 
when his finer intellects were quickened into 
action. Shortly after they had terminated, 
with Coleridge's departure from London, he 
thus recalled them in a letter:* "When I 
read in your little volume your nineteenth 
effusion, or what you call ' the Sigh,' I think 
I hear you again. I imagine to myself the 
little smoky room at the Salutation and Cat,' 
where we have sat together through the 
winter nights beguiling the cares of life with 
Poesy." This was early in 1796 ! and in 
1818, when dedicating his works, then first 
collected, to his earliest friend, he thus spoke 
of the same meetings : " Some of the sonnets, 
which shall be carelessly turned over by the 
general reader, may happily awaken in you 
remembrances which I should be sorry should 
be ever totally extinct, — the memory 'of 
summer days and of delightful years,' even 
so far back as those old suppers at our old 
Inn, — when life was fresh, and topics 
exhaustless, — and you first kindled in me, 
if not the power, yet the love of poetry, 
and beauty, and kindliness." And so he 
talked of these unforgotten hours in that 
short interval during which death divided 
them ! 

The warmth of Coleridge's friendship 
supplied the quickening impulse to Lamb's 
genius ; but the germ enfolding all its nice 
peculiarities lay ready for the influence, and 

* This, and other passages I have interwoven -with 
my own slender thread of narration, are from letters 
which I have thought either too personal for entire 
publication at present, or not of sufficient interest, in 
comparison with others, to occupy a portion of the 
space, to which the letters are limited. 



expanded into forms and hues of its own. 
Lamb's earliest poetry was not a faint 
reflection of Coleridge's, such as the young 
lustre of original genius may cast on a 
polished and sensitive mind, to glow and 
tremble for a season, but was streaked with 
delicate yet distinct traits, which proved it 
an emanation from within. ( There was, \ 
indeed, little resemblance between the two, I 
except in the affection which they bore • 
towards each other. J Coleridge's mind, not 
laden as yet with the spoils of all systems 
and of all times, glowed with the ardour of 
uncontrollable purpose, and thirsted for 
glorious achievement and universal know- 
ledge. The imagination, which afterwards 
struggled gloriously but perhaps vainly to 
overmaster the stupendous clouds of German 
philosophies, breaking them into huge masses, 
and tinting them with heavenly hues, then 
shone through the simple articles of Unitarian 
faith, the graceful architecture of Hartley's 
theory, and the well-compacted chain by 
which Priestley and Edwards seemed to 
bind all things in necessary connexion, as 
through transparencies of thought ; and, 
finding no opposition worthy of its activity 
in this poor foreground of the mind, opened 
for itself a bright succession of fairy visions, 
which it sought to realise on earth. In its 
light, oppression and force seemed to vanish 
like the phantoms of a feverish dream ; 
mankind were disposed in the picturesque 
groups of universal brotherhood ; and, in 
far distance, the ladder which Jacob saw in 
solemn vision connected earth with heaven, 
" and the angels of God were ascending and 
descending upon it." Lamb had no sympathy 
with these radiant hopes, except as they were 
part of his friend. He clung to the realities 
of life ; to things nearest to him, which the 
force of habit had made dear ; and caught 
tremblingly hold of the past. He delighted, 
indeed, to hear Coleridge talk of the distant 
and future ; to see the palm-trees wave, and 
the pyramids tower in the long perspective 
of his style ; and to catch the prophetic notes 
of a universal harmony trembling in his 
voice ; but the pleasure was only that of 
admiration unalloyed by envy, and of the 
generous pride of friendship. The tendency 
of his mind to detect the beautiful and good 
in surrounding things, to nestle rather than 
to roam, was cherished by all the circum- 



10 



PARENTAGE, SCHOOL-DAYS, AND YOUTH. 



stances of his boyish days. He had become 
familiar with the vestiges of antiquity, both 
in his school and in his home of the Temple ; 
and these became dear to him in his serious 
and affectionate childhood. But, perhaps, 
more even than those external associations, 
the situation of his parents, as it was elevated 
and graced by their character, moulded his 
young thoughts to the holy habit of a liberal 
obedience, and unaspiring self-respect, which 
led rather to the embellishment of what was 
near than to the creation of visionary forms. 
He saw at home the daily beauty of a cheerful 
submission to a state bordering on the servile ; 
he looked upward to his father's master, and 
the old Benchers who walked with him on 
the stately terrace, with a modest erectness 
of mind ; and^e saw in his own humble 
home how well the decencies of life could be 
maintained on slender means, by the exercise 
of generous principle. S Another circumstance, 
akin to these, tended also to impart a tinge of 
venerableness to his early musings. His 
maternal grandmother was for many years 
housekeeper in the old and wealthy family of 
the Plumers of Hertfordshire, by whom she 
was held in true esteem; and his visits to their 
ancient mansion, where he had the free range 
of every apartment, gallery and terraced-walk, 
gave him "a peep at the contrasting accidents 
of a great fortune," and an alliance with that 
gentility of soul, which to appreciate, is to 
share. He has beautifully recorded his own 
recollections of this place in the essay entitled 

" Blakesmoor in H shire," in which he 

modestly vindicates his claim to partake in 
the associations of ancestry not his own, and 
shows the true value of high lineage by 
detecting the spirit of nobleness which 
breathes around it, for the enkindling of 
generous affections, not only in those who 
may boast of its possession, but in all who 
can feel its influences. 

While the bias of the minds of Coleridge 
and Lamb thus essentially differed, it is 
singular that their opinions on religion, and 
on those philosophical questions which border 
on religious belief, and receive their colour 
from it, agreed, although probably derived 
from various sources. Both were Unitarians, 
ardent admirers of the writings and character 
of Dr. Priestley, and both believers in neces- 
sity, according to Priestley's exposition, and 
in the inference which he drew from that 



doctrine respecting moral responsibility, and 
the ultimate destiny of the human race. The 
adoption of this creed arose in Lamb from 
the accident of education ; he was brought 
up to receive and love it ; and attended, 
when circumstances permitted, at the chapel 
at Hackney, of which Mr. Belsham, after- 
wards of Essex Street, was then the minister. 
It is remarkable that another of Lamb's most 
intimate friends, in whose conversation, next 
to that of Coleridge, he most delighted, Mr. 
Hazlitt, with whom he became acquainted 
at a subsequent time, and who came from a 
distant part of the country, was educated 
in the same faith. With Coleridge, whose 
early impressions were derived from the 
rites and services of the Church of England, 
Unitarianism was the result of a strong 
conviction ; so strong, that with all the 
ardour of a convert, he sought to win prose- 
lytes to his chosen creed, and purposed to 
spend his days in preaching it. Neither of 
these young men, however, long continued to 
profess it. Lamb, in his maturer life, rarely 
alluded to matters of religious doctrine ; and 
when he did so, evinced no sympathy with 
the professors of his once-loved creed. 
Hazlitt wrote to his father, who was a 
Unitarian minister at Wem, with honouring 
affection ; and of his dissenting associates 
with respect, but he had obviously ceased to 
think or feel with them ; and Coleridge's 
Eemains indicate, what was well known to 
all who enjoyed the privilege of his conver- 
sation, that he not only reverted to a belief 
in the Trinitarian mysteries, but that he was 
accustomed to express as much distaste for 
Unitarianism, and for the spirit of its more 
active advocates, as the benignity of his 
nature would allow him to feel for any 
human opinion honestly cherished. Perhaps 
this solitary approach to intolerance in the 
universality of Coleridge's mind arose from 
the disapproval with which he might justly 
regard his own pride of understanding, as 
excited in defence of the doctrines he had 
adopted. To him there was much of devo- 
tional thought to be violated, many rever- 
ential associations, intertwined with the 
moral being, to be rent away in the struggle 
of the intellect to grasp the doctrines which 
were alien to its nurture. But to Lamb 
these formed the simple creed of his child- 
hood ; and slender and barren as they seem, 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



11 



to those who are united in religious sympathy 
with the great body of their fellow-country- 
men, they sufficed for affections which had 
so strong a tendency to find out resting-places 
for themselves as his. Those who only knew 
him in his latter days, and who feel that if 
ever the spirit of Christianity breathed 
through a human life, it breathed in his, will, 
nevertheless, trace with surprise the extra- 
ordinary' vividness of impressions directly 
religious, and the self-jealousy with which 
he watched the cares and distractions of the 
world, which might efface them, in his first 
letters. If in a life of ungenial toil, diversified 
f with frequent sorrow, the train of these 
solemn meditations was broken ; if he was 
led, in the distractions and labours of his 
course, to cleave more closely to surrounding 
objects than those early aspirations promised ; 
if, in his cravings after immediate sympathy, 
he rather sought to perpetuate the social 
circle which he charmed, than to expatiate 
in scenes of untried being ; his pious feelings 
were only diverted, not destroyed. ( The 
stream glided still, the under current of 
thought sometimes breaking out in sallies 
which strangers did not understand, but 
always feeding and nourishing the most 
exquisite sweetness of disposition, and the 
most unobtrusive proofs of self-denying- 
love. ) 

While Lamb was enjoying habits of the 
closest intimacy with Coleridge in London, 
he was introduced by him to a young poet 
whose name has often been associated with 
his — Charles Lloyd — the son of a wealthy 
banker at Birmingham, who had recently 
cast off the trammels of the Society of Friends, 
and, smitten with the love of poetry, had 
become a student at the University of Cam- 
bridge. There he had been attracted to 
Coleridge by the fascination of his discourse ; 
and having been admitted to his regard, was 
introduced by him to Lamb. Lloyd was 
endeared both to Lamb and Coleridge by a 
very amiable disposition and a pensive cast 
of thought ; but his intellect bore little 
resemblance to that of either. He wrote, 
indeed, pleasing verses and with great facility, 
— a facility fatal to excellence ; but his mind 
was chiefly remarkable for the fine power of 
analysis which distinguishes his " London," 
and other of his later compositions. In this 
power of discriminating and distinguishing 



— carried to a pitch almost of painfulness — 
Lloyd has scarcely been equalled ; and his 
poems, though rugged in point of versification, 
will be found by those who will read them 
with the calm attention they require, replete 
with critical and moral sujwestions of the 
highest value. He and Coleridge were 
devoted wholly to literary pursuits ; while 
Lamb's days were given to accounts, and 
only at snatches of time was he able to 
cultivate the faculty of which the society 
of Coleridge had made him imperfectly 
conscious. 

Lamb's first compositions were in verse — 
produced slowly, at long intervals, and with 
self-distrust which the encouragements of 
Coleridge could not subdue. With the 
exception of a sonnet to Mrs. Siddons, whose 
acting, especially in the character of Lady 
Randolph, had made a deep impression upon 
him, they were exclusively personal. The 
longest and most elaborate is that beautiful 
piece of blank verse entitled " The Gran- 
dame," in which he so affectionately celebrates 
the virtues of the " antique world " of the 
aged housekeeper of Mr. Plumer. A youthful 
passion, which lasted only a few months, and 
which he afterwards attempted to regard 
lightly as a folly past, inspired a few sonnets 
of very delicate feeling and exquisite music. 
On the death of his parents, he felt himself 
called upon by duty to repay to his sister 
the solicitude with which she had watched 
over his infancy ; — and well indeed he per- 
formed it ! ( To her, from the age of twenty- 
one, he devoted his existence ; — seeking 
thenceforth no connexion which could inter- 
fere with her supremacy in his affections, or 
impair his ability to sustain and to comfort 
her. ^ 



CHAPTER II. 

[1796.] 

LETTERS TO COLEIIIDGE. 

la the year 1796, Coleridge, having married, 
and relinquished his splendid dream of emi- 
gration, was resident at Bristol ; and Lamb, 
who had quitted the Temple, and lived with 
his father, then sinking into dotage, felt his 
absence from London bitterly, and sought a 
correspondence with him as, almost, his only 



12 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



comfort. "In your absence," he writes, in 
one of the earliest of his letters,* " I feel a 
stupor that makes me indifferent to the hopes 
and fears of this life. I sometimes wish to 
introduce a religious turn of mind ; but 
habits are strong things, and my religious 
fervours are confined, alas ! to some fleeting 
moments of occasional solitary devotion. A 
correspondence opening with you has roused 
me a little from my lethargy, and made me 
conscious of existence. Indulge me in it ! I 
will not be very troublesome." And again, 
a few days after : " You are the only corre- 
spondent, and, I might add, the only friend, 
I have in the world. I go no-where, and 
have no acquaintance. Slow of speech, and 
reserved of manners, no one . seeks or cares 
for my society, and I am left alone. Cole- 
ridge, I devoutly wish that Fortune, which 
has made sport with you so long, may play 
one freak more, throw you into London, or 
some spot near it, and there snugify you for 
life. 'Tis a selfish, but natural wish for me, 
cast as I am ' on life's wide plain friendless.' " 
These appeals, it may well be believed, were 
not made in vain to one who delighted in the 
lavish communication of the riches of his 
own mind even to strangers : but none of 
the letters of Coleridge to Lamb have been 
preserved. He had just published his 
" Eeligious Musings," and the glittering 
enthusiasm of its language excited Lamb's 
pious feelings, almost to a degree of pain. 
" I dare not," says he of this poem, " criticise 
it. I like not to select any part where all 
is excellent. I can only admire and thank 
you for it, in the name of a lover of true 
poetry — 

' Believe thou, O my soul, 
Life is a vision shadowy of truth ; 
And vice, and anguish, and the wormy grave, 
Shapes of a dream.' 

I thank you for these lines in the name of a 
necessarian." To Priestley, Lamb repeatedly 
alludes as to the object of their common 
admiration. " In reading your ' Religious 
Musings,' " says he, " I felt a transient supe- 
riority over you : I have seen Priestley. I 
love to see his name repeated in your 
writings : — I love and honour him almost 



* These and other passages are extracted from letters 
which are either too personal or not sufficiently interesting 
for entire publication. 



profanely."* The same fervour glows in 
the sectarian piety of the following letter 
addressed to Coleridge, when fascinated with 
the idea of a cottage life. 



TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

"Oct. 24th, 1796. 

" Coleridge, I feel myself much your debtor 
for that spirit of confidence and friendship 
which dictated your last letter. May your 
soul find peace at last in your cottage life ! 
I only wish you were but settled. Do con- 
tinue to write to me. I read your letters 
with my sister, and they give us both abund- 
ance of delight. Especially they please us 
two, when you talk in a religious strain, — 
not but we are offended occasionally with a 
certain freedom of expression, a certain air 
of mysticism, more consonant to the conceits 
of pagan philosophy, than consistent with 
the humility of genuine piety. To instance 
now in your last letter — you say, ' it is by 
the press, that God hath given finite spirits 
both evil and good (I suppose you mean 
simply bad men and good men), a portion as 
it were of His Omnipresence ! ' Now, high 
as the human intellect comparatively will 
soar, and wide as its influence, malign or 
salutary, can extend, is there not, Coleridge, 
a distance between the Divine Mind and it, 
which makes such language blasphemy ? 
Again, in your first fine consolatory epistle 
you say, 'you are a temporary sharer in 
human misery, that you may be an eternal 
partaker of the Divine Nature.' What more 
than this do those men say, who are for 
exalting the man Christ Jesus into the 
second person of an unknown Trinity, — men, 
whom you or I scruple not to call idolaters ? 
Man, full of imperfections, at best, and sub- 
ject to wants which momentarily remind 
him of dependence ; man, a weak and igno- 
rant being, ' servile ' from his birth ' to all 
the skiey influences,' with eyes sometimes 
open to discern the right path, but a head 
generally too dizzy to pursue it ; man, in the 
pride of speculation, forgetting his nature, 

* lie probably refers to the following lines in the 
Religious Musings : — 

So Priestley, their patriot, and saint, and sage, 
Him, full of years, from his loved native land, 
Statesmen blood-stained, and priests idolatrous, 
Drove with vain hate. Calm, pitying, he return'd, 
And mused expectant on those promised years ! 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



13 



and hailing in himself the future God, must 
make the angels laugh. Be not angry^with 
me, Coleridge ; I wish not to cavil ; I know 
I cannot instruct you ; I only wish to remind 
you of that humility which best becometh 
the Christian character. God, in the New 
Testament (our best guide,) is represented to 
us in the kind, condescending, amiable, 
familiar light of a parent ; and in my poor 
mind 'tis best for us so to consider of him, 
as our heavenly father, and our best friend, 
without indulging too bold conceptions of 
his nature. Let us learn to think humbly 
of ourselves, and rejoice in the appellation 
of ' dear children,' ' brethren,' and ' co-heirs 
with Christ of the promises,' seeking to know 
no further. 

" I am not insensible, indeed I am not, of 
the value of that first letter of yours, and I 
shall find reason to thank you for it again 
and again long after that blemish in it is 
forgotten. It will be a fine lesson of comfort 
to us, whenever we read it ; and read it we 
often shall, Mary and I. 

" Accept our loves and best kind wishes 
for the welfare of yourself and wife and little 
one. Nor let me forget to wish you joy on 
your birth -day, so lately past ; I thought you 
had been older. My kind thanks and remem- 
brances to Lloyd. 

" God love us all, and may He continue to 
be the father and the friend of the whole 
human race ! 

" Sunday Evening." 



" C. Lamb.' 



The next letter, commencing in a similar 
strain, diverges to literary topics, and espe- 
cially alludes to " Walton's Angler," — a book 
which Lamb always loved as it were a living 
friend. 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

" Oct. 28th, 1796. 

" My dear friend, I am not ignorant that 
to be a partaker of the Divine Nature is a 
phrase to be met with in Scripture : I am 
only apprehensive, lest we in these latter 
days, tinctured (some of us perhaps pretty 
deeply) with mystical notions and the pride 
of metaphysics, might be apt to affix to such 
phrases a meaning, which the primitive users 
of them, the simple fisher of Galilee for 
instance, never intended to convey. With 
that other part of your apology I am not 



quite so well satisfied. You seem to me to 
have been straining your comparing faculties 
to bring together things infinitely distant and 
unlike ; the feeble narrow-sphered operations 
of the human intellect ; and the everywhere 
diffused mind of Deity, the peerless wisdom 
of Jehovah. Even the expression appears to 
me inaccurate — portion of omnipresence — 
omnipresence is an attribute whose very 
essence is unlimitedness. How can omni- 
presence be affirmed of anything in part ? 
But enough of this spirit of disputatiousness. 
Let us attend to the proper business of human 
life, and talk a little together respecting our 
domestic concerns. Do you continue to make 
me acquainted with what you are doing, and 
how soon you are likely to be settled once 
for all. 

"Have you seen Bowles's new poem on 
' Hope ? ' What character does it bear ? Has 
he exhausted his stores of tender plaintive- 
ness ? or is he the same in this last as in all 
his former pieces ? The duties of the day call 
me oif from this pleasant intercourse with my 
friend — so for the present adieu. Now for 
the truant borrowing of a few minutes from 
business. Have you met with a new poem 
called the ' Pursuits of Literature ? ' from 
the extracts in the ' British Be view' I judge 
it to be a very humorous thing, in particular 
I remember what I thought a very happy 
character of Dr. Darwin's poetry. Among all 
your quaint readings did you ever light upon 
' Walton's Complete Angler l ' I asked you 
the question once before ; it breathes the 
very spirit of innocence, purity, and simplicity 
of heart; there are many choice old verses inter- 
spersed in it ; it would sweeten a man's temper 
at any time to read it ; it would Christianise 
every discordant angry passion ; pray make 
yourself acquainted with it. Have you made it 
up with Southey yet 1 Surely one of you two 
must have been a very silly fellow, and the 
other not much better, to fall out like boarding 
school misses ; kiss, shake hands, and make 
it up. 

"When will he be delivered of his new 
epic 1 Madoc, I think, is to be the name of 
it, though that is a name not familiar to my 
ears. What progress do you make in your 
hymns ? What ' Beview ' are you connected 
with % if with any, why do you delay to notice 
White's book ? You are justly offended at 
its profaneness, but surely you have under- 



14 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



valued its wit, or you would have been more 
loud in its praises. Do not you think that 
in Slender's death and madness there is most 
exquisite humour, mingled with tenderness, 
that is irresistible, truly Shakspearian 1 Be 
more full in your mention of it. Poor fellow, 
he has (very undeservedly) lost by it, nor do 
I see that it is likely ever to reimburse him 
the charge of printing, &c. Give it a lift, if 
you can. I am just now wondering whether 
you will ever come to town again, Coleridge ; 
'tis among the things I dare not hope, but 
can't help wishing. For myself, I can live 
in the midst of town luxury and superfluity, 
and not long for them, and I can't see why 
your children might not hereafter do the 
same. Kemember, you are not in Arcadia, 
when you are in the west of England, and 
they may catch infection from the world 
without visiting the metropolis. But you 
seem to have set your heart upon this same 
cottage plan, and God prosper you in the 
experiment ! I am at a loss for more to 
write about, so 'tis as well that I am arrived 
at the bottom of my paper. 

" God love you, Coleridge ! — our best loves 
and tenderest wishes await on you, your 
Sara, and your little one. «« T „ 

Having been encouraged by Coleridge to 
entertain the thought of publishing his 
verses, he submitted the poem called " The 
Grandame " to his friend, with the following 
letter : — 



TO MR. COLERIDGE. 



Monday niarht. 



" Unfurnished at present with any sheet- 
filling subject, I shall continue my letter 
gradually and journal- wise. My second 
thoughts entirely coincide with your com- 
ments on 'Joan of Arc,' and I can only 
wonder at my childish judgment which over- 
looked the 1st book and could prefer the 9th : 
not that I was insensible to the soberer 
beauties of the former, but the latter caught 
me with its glare of magic, — the former, how- 
ever, left a more pleasing general recollection 
in my mind. Let me add, the 1st book was 
the favourite of my sister — and / now, with 
Joan, often ' think on Domremi and the fields 
of Arc' I must not pass over without acknow- 
ledging my obligations to your full and satis- 
factory account of personifications. I have 



read it again and again, and it will be a guide 
to my future taste. Perhaps I had estimated 
Southey's merits too much by number, weight, 
and measure. I now agree completely and 
entirely in your opinion of the genius of 
Southey. Your own image of melancholy is 
illustrative of what you teach, and in itself 
masterly. I conjecture it is 'disbranched' 
from one of your embryo ' hymns.' When 
they are mature of birth (were I you) I 
should print 'em in one separate volume, 
with ' Religious Musings,' and your part of 
the ' Joan of Arc' Birds of the same soaring 
wing should hold on their flight in company. 
Once for all (and by renewing the subject 
you will only renew in me the condemnation 
of Tantalus), I hope to be able to pay you a 
visit (if you are then at Bristol) some time in 
the latter end of August or beginning of 
September, for a week or fortnight — before 
that time, office business puts an absolute 
veto on my coming. 

' And if a sigh that speaks regret of happier times 

appear, 
A glimpse of joy that we have met shall shine and dry 
the tear.' 

Of the blank verses I spoke of, the following 
lines are the only tolerably complete ones I 
have writ out of not more than one hundred 
and fifty. That I get on so slowly you may 
fairly impute to want of practice in compo- 
sition, when I declare to you that (the few 
verses which you have seen excepted) I have 
not writ fifty lines since I left school. It 
may not be amiss to remark that my grand- 
mother (on whom the verses are written) 
lived housekeeper in a family the fifty or 
sixty last years of her life — that she was a 
woman of exemplary piety and goodness — 
and for many years before her death was 
terribly afflicted with a cancer in her breast 
which she bore with true Christian patience. 
You may think that I have not kept enough 
apart the ideas of her heavenly and her 
earthly master, but recollect I have design- 
edly given in to her own way of feeling — and 
if she had a failing, 'twas that she respected 
her master's family too much, not reverenced 
her Maker too little. The lines begin imper- 
fectly, as I may probably connect 'em if I 
finish at all, — and if I do, Biggs shall print 
'em, in a more economical way than you 
yours, for (sonnets and all) they won't 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



15 



make a thousand lines as I propose com- 
pleting 'em, and the substance must be 
wire-drawn." 

The following letter, written at intervals, 
will give an insight into Lamb's spirit at this 
time, in its lighter and gayer moods. It 
would seem that his acquaintance with 
the old English dramatists had just com- 
menced with Beaumont and Fletcher, and 
Massinger : — 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

" Tuesday evening. 
" To your list of illustrative personifica- 
tions, into which a fine imagination enters, I 
will take leave to add the following from 
Beaumont and Fletcher's ' Wife for a Month ;' 
'tis the conclusion of a description of a sea- 
fight ; — ' The game of death was never played 
so nobly ; the meagre thief grew wanton in 
his mischiefs, and his shrunk hollow eyes 
smiled on his ruins.' There is fancy in these 
of a lower order, from l Bonduca ; ' — ' Then 
did I see these valiant men of Britain, like 
boding owls creep into tods of ivy, and hoot 
their fears to one another nightly.' Not that 
it is a personification ; only it just caught 
my eye in a little extract book I keep, which 
is full of quotations from B. and F. in parti- 
cular, in which authors I can't help thinking 
there is a greater richness of poetical fancy 
than in any one, Shakspeare excepted. Are 
you acquainted with Massinger ? At a 
hazard I will trouble you with a passage 
from a play of his called ' A Very Woman.' 
The lines are spoken by a lover (disguised) to 
his faithless mistress. You will remark the 
fine effect of the double endings. You will 
by your ear distinguish the lines, for I write 
'em as prose. ' Not far from where my father 
lives, a lady, a neighbour by, blest with as 
great a beauty as nature durst bestow with- 
out undoing, dwelt, and most happily, as I 
thought then, and blest the house a thousand 
times she dwelt in. This beauty, in the 
blossom of my youth, when my first fire 
knew no adulterate incense, nor I no way to 
flatter but my fondness ; in all the bravery 
my friends could show me, in all the faith my 
innocence could give me, in the best language 
my true tongue could tell me, and all the 
broken sighs my sick heart lend me, I sued 
and served ; long did I serve this lady, long 



was my travail, long my trade to win her ; 
with all the duty of my soul I served her.' 
' Then she must love.' ' She did, but never 
me : she could not love me ; she would not 
love, she hated, — more, she scorned me ; and 
in so poor and base a way abused me for all 
my services, for all my bounties, so bold 
neglects flung on me.' — ' What out of love, 
and worthy love I gave her, (shame to her 
most unworthy mind,) to fools, to girls, to 
fiddlers and her boys she flung, all in disdain 
of me.' One more passage strikes my eye 
from B. and F.'s 'Palamon and Arcite.' 
One of 'em complains in prison : ' This is all 
our world ; we shall know nothing here but 
one another ; hear nothing but the clock 
that tells us our woes ; the vine shall grow, 
but we shall never see it,' &c. — Is not the 
last circumstance exquisite 1 I mean not to 
lay myself open by saying they exceed 
Milton, and perhaps Collins, in sublimity. 
But don't you conceive all poets after Shaks- 
peare yield to 'em in variety of genius % 
Massinger treads close on their heels ; but 
you are most probably as well acquainted 
with his writings as your humble servant. 
My quotations, in that case, will only serve 
to expose my barrenness of matter. Southey 
in simplicity and tenderness, is excelled 
decidedly only, I think, by Beaumont and F. 
in his ' Maid's Tragedy,' and some parts of 
' Philaster ' in particular ; and elsewhere 
occasionally ; and perhaps by Cowper in his 
' Crazy Kate,' and in parts of his translation ; 
such as the speeches of Hecuba and Andro- 
mache. I long to know your opinion of that 
translation. The Odyssey especially is surely 
very Homeric. What nobler than the appear- 
ance of Phoebus at the beginning of the Iliad 
— the lines ending with ' Dread sounding, 
bounding on the silver bow ! ' 

" I beg you will give me your opinion of 
the translation ; it afforded me high pleasure. 
As curious a specimen of translation as ever 
fell into my hands, is a young man's in our 
office, of a French novel. What in the 
original was literally ' amiable delusions of 
the fancy,' he proposed to render ' the fair 
frauds of the imagination.' I had much 
trouble in licking the book into any meaning 
at all. Yet did the knave clear fifty or sixty 
pounds by subscription and selling the copy- 
right. The book itself not a week's work ! 
To-day's portion of my journalising epistle 



16 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



has been very dull and poverty-stricken, 
will here end." 



Tuesday night. 

)t and smokin 
Oronooko, (associated circumstances, which 
ever forcibly recall to my mind our evenings 
and nights at the Salutation,) my eyes and 
brain are heavy and asleep, but my heart is 
awake ; and if words came as ready as ideas, 
and ideas as feelings, I could say ten hundred 
kind things. Coleridge, you know not my 
supreme happiness at having one on earth 
(though counties separate us) whom I can 
call a friend. Eemember you those tender 
lines of Logan ? — 

' Our broken friendships we deplore, 
And loves of youth that are no more ; 
No after friendships e'er can raise 
Th' endearments of our early days, 
And ne'er the heart such fondness prove, 
As when we first began to love.' 

" I am writing at random, and half-tipsy, 
what you may not equally understand, as you 
will be sober when you read it ; but my 
sober and my half-tipsy hours you are alike 
a sharer in. Good night. 

1 Then up rose our bard, like a prophet in drink, 
Craigdoroch, thou'lt soar when creation shall sink.' 

Burns." 



" Thursday. 

" I am now in high hopes to be able to 
visit you, if perfectly convenient on your 
part, by the end of next month — perhaps the 
last week or fortnight in July. A change of 
scene and a change of faces would do me 
good, even if that scene were not to be 
Bristol, and those faces Coleridge's and his 
friends' ! In the words of Terence, a little 
altered, ' Tsedet me hujus quotidiani mundV 
I am heartily sick of the every-day scenes of 
life. I shall half wish you unmarried (don't 
show this to Mrs. C.) for one evening only, 
to have the pleasure of smoking with you, 
and drinking egg-hot in some little smoky 
room in a pot-house, for I know not yet how 
I shall like you in a decent room, and looking 
quite happy. My best love and respects to 
Sara notwithstanding. 

" Yours sincerely, 

"Charles Lamb." 



A proposal by Coleridge to print Lamb's 
poems with a new edition of his own (an 
association in which Lloyd was ultimately 
included) occasioned reciprocal communica- 
tions of each other's verses, and many ques- 
tions of small alteiations suggested and 
argued on both sides. I have thought it 
better to omit much of this verbal criticism, 
which, not very interesting in itself, is un- 
intelligible without a contemporary reference 
to the poems which are its subject. The next 
letter was written on hearing of Coleridge 
being afflicted with a painful disease. 



TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

"Nov. 8th, 1796. 

"My brother, my friend, — I am distrest 
for you, believe me I am ; not so much for 
your painful, troublesome complaint, which, 
I trust, is only for a time, as for those 
anxieties which brought it on, and perhaps 
even now may be nursing its malignity. Tell 
me, dearest of my friends, is your mind at 
peace, or has anything, yet unknown to me, 
happened to give you fresh disquiet, and 
steal from you all the pleasant dreams of 
future rest 1 Are you still (I fear you are) 
far from being comfortably settled ? Would 
to God it were in my power to contribute 
towards the bringing of you into the haven 
where you would be ! But you are too well 
skilled in the philosophy of consolation to 
need my humble tribute of advice ; in pain, 
and in sickness, and in all manner of dis- 
appointments, I trust you have that within 
you which shall speak peace to your mind. 
Make it, I entreat you, one of your puny 
comforts, that I feel for you, and share all 
your griefs with you. I feel as if I were 
troubling you about little things ; now I am 
going to resume the subject of our last two 
letters, but it may divert us both from 
unpleasanter feelings to make such matters, 
in a manner, of importance. Without further 
apology, then, it was not that I did not relish, 
that I did not in my heart thank you for 
those little pictures of your feelings which 
you lately sent me, if I neglected to mention 
them. You may remember you had said 
much the same things before to me on the 
same subject in a former letter, and I con- 
sidered those last verses as only the identical 
thoughts better clothed ; either way (in prose 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



17 



or verse) such poetry must be welcome to 
me. I love them as I love the Confessions of 
Rousseau, and for the same reason ; the same 
frankness, the same openness of heart, the 
same disclosure of all the most hidden and 
delicate affections of the mind : they make 
me proud to be thus esteemed worthy of the 
place of friend-confessor, brother-confessor, to 
a man like Coleridge. This last is, I acknow- 
ledge, language too high for friendship ; but 
it is also, I declare, too sincere for flattery. 
Now, to put on stilts, and talk magnificently 
about trifles. 1 condescend, then, to your 
counsel, Coleridge, and allow my first sonnet 
(sick to death am I to make mention of 
my sonnets, and I blush to be so taken up 
with them, indeed I do) ; I allow it to 
run thus, ' Fairy Land] &c. &c, as I last 
wrote it. 

" The fragments I now send you, I want 
printed to get rid of 'em ; for, while they 
stick burr-like to my memory, they tempt 
me to go on with the idle trade of versifying, 
which I long, most sincerely I speak it, I long 
to leave off, for it is unprofitable to my soul ; 
I feel it is ; and these questions about words, 
and debates about alterations, take me off, I 
am conscious, from the properer business of 
my life. Take my sonnets, once for all, and 
do not propose any re-amendments, or men- 
tion them again in any shape to me, I charge 
you. I blush that my mind can consider 
them as things of any worth. And, pray, 
admit or reject these fragments as you like 
or dislike them, without ceremony. Call 'em 
sketches, fragments, or what you will, and 
do not entitle any of my things love sonnets, 
as I told you to call 'em ; 'twill only make 
me look little in my own eyes ; for it is a 
passion of which I retain nothing ; 'twas a 
weakness, concerning which I may say, in 
the words of Petrarch (whose life is now 
open before me), ' if it drew me out. of some 
vices, it also prevented the growth of many 
virtues, filling me with the love of the 
creature rather than the Creator, which is 
the death of the soul.' Thank God, the folly 
has left me for ever ; not even a review of 
my love verses renews one wayward wish in 
me ; and if I am at all solicitous to trim 'em 
out in their best apparel, it is because they 
are to make their appearance in good com- 
pany. Now to my fragments. Lest you 
have lost my Grandame, she shall be one, 



'Tis among the few verses I ever wrote, that 
to Mary is another, which profit me in the 
recollection. God love her, and may we two 
never love each other less ! 

" These, Coleridge, are the few sketches I 
have thought worth preserving ; how will 
they relish thus detached 1 Will you reject 
all or any of them ? They are thine, do 
whatsoever thou listest with them. My eyes 
ache with writing long and late, and I wax 
wondrous sleepy ; God bless you and yours, 
me and mine ! Good night. 

" C. Lamb. 

" I will keep my eyes open reluctantly a 
minute longer to tell you, that I love you for 
those simple, tender, heart-flowing lines with 
which you conclude your last, and in my eyes 
best, sonnet (so you call 'em), 



1 So, for the mother's sake, the child was dear, 
And dearer was the mother for the child.' 



Cultivate simplicity, Coleridge ; or rather, I 
should say, banish elaborateness ; for simpli 
city springs spontaneous from the heart, and 
carries into day-light with it its own modest 
buds, and genuine, sweet, and clear flowers 
of expression. I allow no hot-beds in the 
gardens of Parnassus. I am unwilling to go 
to bed, and leave my sheet unfilled (a good 
piece of night-work for an idle body like me), 
so will finish with begging you to send me 
the earliest account of your complaint, its 
progress, or (as I hope to God you will be 
able to send me) the tale of your recovery, or 
at least amendment. My tenderest remem- 
brances to your Sara. 

" Once more good night." 



A wish to dedicate his portion of the 
volume to his sister gave occasion to the 
following touching letter : 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

"Nov. 1-lth, 1796. 

"Coleridge, I love you for dedicating your 
poetry to Bowles : Genius of the sacred 
fountain of tears, it was he who led you 
gently by the hand through all this valley of 
weeping, showed you the dark green yew 
trees, and the willow shades, where, by the 
fall of waters, you might indulge an uncom- 



18 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



plaining melancholy, a delicious regret for 
the past, or weave fine visions of that awful 
future, 

• When all the vanities of life's brief day 
Oblivion's hurrying hand hath swept away, 
And all its sorrows, at the awful blast 
Of the archangel's trump, are but as shadows past.' 

" I have another sort of dedication in my 
head for my few things, which I want to 
know if you approve of, and can insert. I 
mean to inscribe them to my sister. It will 
be unexpected, and it will give her pleasure ; 
or do you think it will look whimsical at all 1 
as I have not spoke to her about it, I can 
easily reject the idea. But there is a mono- 
tony in the affections, which people living 
together, or, as we do now, very frequently 
seeing each other, are apt to give in to ; a 
sort of indifference in the expression of kind- 
ness for each other, which demands that we 
should sometimes call to our aid the trickery 
of surprise. Do you publish with Lloyd, or 
without him ? in either case my little portion 
may come last, and after the fashion of orders 
to a country correspondent, I will give direc- 
tions how I should like to have 'em done. 
The title-page to stand thus : — 

POEMS, 



CHARLES LAMB, OF THE INDIA HOUSE. 

"Under this title the following motto, 
which, for want of room, I put over leaf, and 
desire you to insert, whether you like it or 
no. May not a gentleman choose what arms, 
mottoes, or armorial bearings the herald will 
give him leave, without consulting his repub- 
lican friend, who might advise none ? May 
not a publican put up the sign of the 
Saracen's Head, even though his undiscern- 
ing neighbour should prefer, as more genteel, 
the Cat and Gridiron 1 

[Motto.] 

4 This beauty, in tbe blossom of my youth, 
When my first fire knew no adulterate incense, 
Nor I no way to flatter but my fondness, 
In the best language my true tongue could tell me, 
And all the broken sighs my sick heart lend me, 
I sued and served. Long did I love this lady.' 

Massixgee. 



THE DEDICATION. 

THE FEW FOLLOWING POEMS, 

CREATURES OF THE FANCY AND THE FEELING 

IN LIFE'S MORE VACANT HOURS, 

PRODUCED, FOR THE MOST PART, BY 

LOVE AND IDLENESS, 

ARE, 

WITH ALL A BROTHER'S FONDNESS, 

INSCRIBED TO 

MAEY ANNE LAMB, 

THE AUTHOR'S BEST FRIEND AND SISTER. 



"This is the pomp and paraphernalia of 
parting, with which I take my leave of a 
passion which has reigned so royally (so long) 
within me ; thus, with its trappings of 
laureatship, I fling it off, pleased and satisfied 
with myself that the weakness troubles me 
no longer. I am wedded, Coleridge, to the 
fortunes of my sister and my poor old father. 
Oh ! my friend, I think sometimes, could I 
recall the days that are past, which among 
them should I choose 1 not those ' merrier 
days,' not the 'pleasant days of hope,' not 
' those wanderings with a fair hair'd maid,' 
which I have so often and so feelingly 
regretted, but the days, Coleridge, of a 
mother's fondness for her school-boy. What 
would I give to call her back to earth for one 
day, on my knees to ask her pardon for all 
those little asperities of temper which, from 
time to time, have given her gentle spirit pain ; 
and the day, my friend, I trust, will come ; 
there will be ' time enough ' for kind offices 
of love, if ' Heaven's eternal year ' be ours. 
Hereafter, her meek spirit shall not reproach 
me. Oh, my friend, cultivate the filial 
feelings ! and let no man think himself 
released from the kind ' charities ' of relation- 
ship : these shall give him peace at the last ; 
these are the best foundation for every species 
of benevolence. I rejoice to hear, by certain 
channels, that you, my friend, are reconciled 
with all your relations. 'Tis the most kindly 
and natural species of love, and we have all 
the associated train of early feelings to secure 
its strength and perpetuity. Send me an 
account of your health ; indeed I am solicitous 
about you. God love you and yours. 

" C. Lamb." 

The following, written about this time, 
alludes to some desponding expression in a 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



19 



letter which is lost, and which Coleridge had 
combated. 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

"Dec. 10th, 1796. 
" I had put my letter into the post rather 
hastily, not expecting to have to acknowledge 
another from you so soon. This morning's 
present has made me alive again : my last 
night's epistle was childishly querulous ; but 
you have put a little life into me, and I will 
thank you for your remembrance of me, while 
my sense of it is yet warm ; for if I linger a 
day or two I may use the same phrase of 
acknowledgment, or similar, but the feeling 
that dictates it now will be gone. I shall 
send you a caput mortuum, not a cor vivens. 
Thy Watchman's, thy bellman's verses, I do 
retort upon thee, thou libellous varlet, — why 
you cried the hours yourself, and who made 
you so proud ! But I submit, to show my 
humility most implicitly to your dogmas. I 
reject entirely the copy of verses you reject. 
With regard to my leaving off versifying you 
have said so many pretty things, so many 
fine compliments, ingeniously decked out in 
the garb of sincerity, and undoubtedly 
springing from a present feeling somewhat 
like sincerity, that you might melt the most 
un-muse-ical soul, — did you not (now for a 
Eowland compliment for your profusion of 
Olivers), did you not in your very epistle, by 
the many pretty fancies and profusion of 
heart displayed in it, dissuade and discourage 
me from attempting anything after you. At 
present I have not leisure to make verses, 
nor anything approaching to a fondness for 
the exercise. In the ignorant present time, 
who can answer for the future man 1 ' At 
lovers' perjuries Jove laughs' — and poets 
have sometimes a disingenuous way of for- 
swearing their occupation. This though is 
not my case. Publish your Burns when and 
how you like, it will be new to me, — my 
memory of it is very confused, and tainted 
with unpleasant associations. Burns was the 
god of my idolatry, as Bowles of yours. I 
am jealous of your fraternising with Bowles, 
when I think you relish him more than 
Burns, or my old favourite, Cowper. But 
you conciliate matters when you talk of the 
' divine chit-chat ' of the latter : by the 
expression, I see you thoroughly relish him. 
I love Mrs. Coleridge for her excuses an 



hundredfold more dearly, than if she heaped 
' line upon line,' out Hannah-ing Hannah 
More ; and had rather hear you sing ' Did 
a very little baby ' by your family fire-side, 
than listen to you, when you were repeating 
one of Bowles's sweetest sonnets, in your 
sweet manner, while we two were indulging 
sympathy, a solitary luxury, by the fire-side 
at the Salutation. Yet have I no higher 
ideas of heaven. Your company was one 
' cordial in this melancholy vale ' — the 
remembrance of it is a blessing partly, and 
partly a curse. When I can abstract myself 
from things present, I can enjoy it with a 
freshness of relish ; but it more constantly 
operates to an unfavourable comparison with 
the uninteresting converse I always and only 
can partake in. Not a soul loves Bowles 
here ; scarce one has heard of Burns ; few 
but laugh at me for reading my Testament, 
— they talk a language I understand not, I 
conceal sentiments that would be a puzzle to 
them. I can only converse with you by 
letter, and with the dead in their books. 
My sister, indeed, is all I can wish in a 
companion ; but our spirits are alike poorly, 
our reading and knowledge from the self- 
same sources ; our communication with the 
scenes of the world alike narrow ; never 
having kept separate company, or any ' com- 
pany ' together — never having read separate 
books, and few books together — what know- 
ledge have we to convey to each other ? In 
our little range of duties and connexions, 
how few sentiments can take place, without 
friends, with few books, with a taste for 
religion, rather than a strong religious habit ! 
We need some support, some leading-strings 
to cheer and direct us ; you talk very wisely, 
and be not sparing of your advice. Continue 
to remember us, and to show us you do 
remember us : we will take as lively an 
interest in what concerns you and yours. 
All I can add to your happiness, will be 
sympathy : you can add to mine more; you 
can teach me wisdom. I am indeed an 
unreasonable correspondent ; but I was un- 
willing to let my last night's letter go off 
without this qualifier : you will perceive by 
this my mind is easier, and you will rejoice. 
I do not expect or wish you to write, till you 
are moved ; and, of course, shall not, till you 
announce to me that event, think of writing 
myself. Love to Mrs. Coleridge and David 



c 2 



20 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



Hartley, and my kind remembrance to Lloyd 
if he is with you. " C. Lamb. 

" I will get ' Nature and Art,' — have not 
seen it yet — nor any of Jeremy Taylor's 
works." 



CHAPTER III. 



[1797.] 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



The volume which was to combine the 
early poetry of the three friends was not 
completed in the year 1796, and proceeded 
slowly through the press in the following 
year ; Lamb occasionally submitting an 
additional sonnet, or correction of one already 
sent, to the judgment of Coleridge, and filling 
long letters with minute suggestions on 
Coleridge's share of the work, and high, but 
honest expressions of praise of particular 
images and thoughts. The eulogy is only 
interesting as indicative of the reverential 
feeling with which Lamb regarded the genius 
of Coleridge — but one or two specimens of 
the gentle rebuke which he ventured on, 
when the gorgeousness of Coleridge's lan- 
guage seemed to oppress his sense, are 
worthy of preservation. The following 
relates to a line in the noble Ode on the 
Departing Year, in which Coleridge had 
written of 

" Th' ethereal multitude, 
Whose purple locks with snow-white glories shone." 

"' Purple locks, and snow-white glories ;' 
— these are things the muse talks about 
when, to borrow H. Walpole's witty phrase, 
she is not finely-frenzied, only a little light- 
headed, that's all—' Purple locks ! ' They 
may manage things differently in fairyland ; 
but your ' golden tresses ' are to my fancy." 

On this remonstrance Coleridge changed 
the " purple " into " golden," defending his 
original epithet ; and Lamb thus gave up 
the point : — 

" ' Golden locks and snow-white glories ' 
are as incongruous as your former ; and if 
the great Italian painters, of whom my friend 
knows about as much as the man in the 
moon — if these great gentlemen be on your 
side, I see no harm in your retaining the 
purple. The glories that / have observed 
to encircle the heads of saints and madonnas 



in those old paintings, have been mostly of 
a dirty drab- coloured yellow — a dull gam- 
bogium. Keep your old line ; it will excite 
a confused kind of pleasurable idea in the 
reader's mind, not clear enough to be called 
a conception, nor just enough, I think, to 
reduce to painting. It is a rich line, you 
say ; and riches hide a many faults." And 
the word " wreathed " was ultimately 
adopted, instead of purple or golden : but 
the snow-white glories remain. 

Not satisfied with the dedication of his 
portion of the volume to his sister, and the 
sonnet which had been sent to the press, 
Lamb urged on Coleridge the insertion of 
another, which seems to have been ultimately 
withheld as too poor in poetical merit for 
publication. The rejected sonnet, and the 
references made to it by the writer, have 
an interest now beyond what mere fancy can 
give. After various critical remarks on an 
ode of Coleridge, he thus introduced the 
subject : — 

" If the fraternal sentiment conveyed in 
the following lines will atone for the total 
want of anything like merit or genius in it, 
I desire you will print it next after my other 
sonnet to my sister. 

' Friend of my earliest years and childish days, 
My joys, my sorrows, thou with me hast shared, 
Companion dear ; and we alike have fared, 
Poor pilgrims we, through life's unequal ways. 
It were unwisely done, should we refuse 
To cheer our path, as featly as we may, — 
Our lonely path to cheer, as travellers use,. 
With merry song, quaint tale, or roundelay. 
And we will sometimes talk past troubles o'er, 
Of mercies shown, and all our sickness heal'd 
And in his judgments God remembering love : 
And we will learn to praise God evermore, 
For those " glad tidings of great joy," reveal'd 
By that sooth messenger, sent from above.' — 1797. 

"This has been a sad long letter of 
business, with no room in it for what honest 
Bunyan terms heart-work. I have just room 
left to congratulate you on your removal to 
Stowey ; to wish success to all your projects ; 
to ' bid fair peace ' be to that house ; to send 
my love and best wishes, breathed warmly, 
after your dear Sara, and her little David 
Hartley. If Lloyd be with you, bid him 
write to me : I feel to whom I am obliged 
primarily, for two very friendly letters I 
have received already from him. A dainty 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



21 



sweet book that ' Nature and Art ' is. — I am 
at present re-re-reading Priestley's Examin- 
ation of the Scotch Doctors : how the rogue 
strings 'em up ! three together ! You have 
no doubt read that clear, strong, humourous, 
most entertaining piece of reasoning 1 If 
not, procure it, and be exquisitely amused. 
I wish I could get more of Priestley's works. 
Can you recommend me to any more books, 
easy of access, such as circulating shops 
afford ! God bless you and yours. 

" Monday morning, at office." 

" Poor Mary is very unwell with a sore 
throat and a slight species of scarlet fever. 
God bless her too." 

He recurs to the subject in his next letter, 
which is also interesting, as urging Coleridge 
to attempt some great poem worthy of his 
genius. 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

"Jan. 10th, 1797. 

" I need not repeat my wishes to have my 
little sonnets printed verbatim my last way,, 
In particular, I fear lest you should prefer 
printing my first sonnet, as you have done 
more than once, 'did the wand of Merlin 
wave,' it looks so like Mr. Merlin, the inge- 
nious successor of the immortal Merlin, now 
living in good health and spirits, and flourish- 
ing in magical reputation, in Oxford-street ; 
and, on my life, one half who read it would 
understand it so. Do put 'em forth finally, 
as I have, in various letters, settled it ; for 
first a man's self is to be pleased, and then 
his friends, — and, of course, the greater 
number of his friends, if they differ inter se. 
Thus taste may safely be put to the vote. I 
do long to see our names together ; not for 
vanity's sake, and naughty pride of heart 
altogether, for not a living soul I know, or 
am intimate with, will scarce read the book, 
— so I shall gain nothing, quoad famam ; and 
yet there is a little vanity mixes in it, I 
cannot help denying. — I am aware of the 
unpoetical cast of the six last lines of my last 
sonnet, and think myself unwarranted in 
smuggling so tame a thing into the book ; 
only the sentiments of those six lines are 
thoroughly congenial to me in my state of 
mind, and I wish to accumulate perpetuating 
tokens of my affection to poor Mary, — that 
it has no originality in its cast, nor anything 



in the feelings, but what is common and 
natural to thousands, nor ought properly to 
be called poetry, I see ; still it will tend to 
keep present to my mind a view of things 
which I ought to indulge. These six lines, 
too, have not, to a reader, a connectedness 
with the foregoing. Omit it, if you like. — 
What a treasure it is to my poor, indolent, 
and unemployed mind, thus to lay hold on a 
subject to talk about, though 'tis but a 
sonnet, and that of the lowest order ! How 
mournfully inactive I am ! — 'Tis night : good 
night. 

" My sister, I thank God, is nigh recovered : 
she was seriously ill. Do, in your next letter, 
and that right soon, give me some satisfac- 
tion respecting your present situation at 
Stowey. Is it a farm you have got 1 and 
what does your worship know about farming '\ 
" Coleridge, I want you to write an epic 
poem. Nothing short of it can satisfy the 
vast capacity of true poetic genius. Having 
one great end to direct all your poetical 
faculties to, and on which to lay out your 
hopes, your ambition will show you to what 
you are equal. By the sacred energies of 
Milton ! by the dainty, sweet, and soothing 
phantasies of honey-tongued Spenser ! I 
adjure you to attempt the epic. Or do some- 
thing more ample than the writing an occa- 
sional brief ode or sonnet ; something ' to 
make yourself for ever known, — to make the 
age to come your own.' But I prate ; doubt- 
less you meditate something. When you are 
exalted among the lords of epic fame, I shall 
recall with pleasure, and exultingly, the days 
of your humility, when you disdained not to 
put forth, in the same volume with mine, 
your 'Religious Musings,' and that other 
poem from the ' Joan of Arc,' those promising 
first-fruits of high renown to come. You 
have learning, you have fancy, you have 
enthusiasm, you have strength, and ampli- 
tude of wing enow for flights like those I 
recommend. In the vast and unexplored 
regions of fairy-land, there is ground enough 
unfound and uncultivated ; search there, and 
realise vour favourite Susquehannah scheme. 
In all our comparisons of taste, I do not know 
whether I have ever heard your opinion of 
a poet, very dear to me, — the now-out-of- 
fashion Cowley. Favour me with your 
judgment of him, and tell me if his prose 
essays, in particular, as well as no incon- 



22 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



siderable part of his verse, be not delicious. 

I prefer the graceful rambling of his essays, 

even to the courtly elegance and ease of 

Addison ; abstracting from this the latter's 

exquisite humour. 

***** 

" When the little volume is printed, send 
me three or four, at all events not more than 
six copies, and tell me if I put you to any 
additional expense, by printing with you. I 
have no thought of the kind, and in that 
case must reimburse you." 

In the commencement of this year, Cole- 
ridge removed from Bristol to a cottage at 
Nether Stowey, to embody his favourite 
dream of a cottage life. This change of place 
probably delayed the printing of the volume ; 
and Coleridge, busy with a thousand specu- 
lations, became irregular in replying to the 
letters with writing which Lamb solaced his 
dreary hours. The following are the most 
interesting portions of the only letters which 
remain of this year. 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

"Jan. 10th, 1797. 
" Priestley, whom I sin in almost adoring, 
speaks of ' such a choice of company, as tends 
to keep up that right bent, and firmness, of 
mind, which a necessary intercourse with the 
world would otherwise warp and relax.' 
' Such fellowship is the true balsam of life ; 
its cement is infinitely more durable than 
that of the friendships of the world, and it 
looks for its proper fruit, and complete grati- 
fication, to the life beyond the grave.' Is 
there a possible chance for such an one as I 
to realise in this world such friendships ? 
Where am I to look for 'em 1 What testi- 
monials shall I bring of my being worthy of 
such friendship ? Alas ! the great and good 
go together in separate herds, and leave such 
as I to lag far, far behind in all intellectual, 
and, far more grievous to say, in all moral 
accomplishments. Coleridge, I have not one 
truly elevated character among my acquaint- 
ance : not one Christian : not one, but under- 
values Christianity — singly what am I to do ? 
Wesley (have you read his life ?) was he not 
an elevated character 1 Wesley has said, 
' Religion is not a solitary thing.' Alas ! it 
necessarily is so with me, or next to solitary. 
'Tis true you write to me. But correspond- 



ence by letter, and personal intimacy, are 
very widely different. Do, do write to me, 
and do some good to my mind, already how 
much ' warped and relaxed ' by the world ! 
'Tis the conclusion of another evening. Good 
night. God have us all in his keeping. 

" If you are sufficiently at leisure, oblige 
me with an account of your plan of life at 
Stowey — your literary occupations and pros- 
pects — in short, make me acquainted with 
every circumstance which, as relating to you, 
can be interesting to me. Are you yet a 
Berkleyan 1 Make me one. I rejoice in 
being, speculatively, a necessarian. Would 
to God, I were habitually a practical one ! 
Confirm me in the faith of that great and 
glorious doctrine, and keep me steady in the 
contemplation of it. You some time since 
expressed an intention you had of finishing 
some extensive work on the Evidences of 
Natural and Eevealed Religion. Have you 
let that intention go 1 Or are you doing any- 
thing towards it 1 Make to yourself other 
ten talents. My letter is full of nothingness. 
I talk of nothing. But I must talk. I love 
to write to you. I take a pride in it. It 
makes me think less meanly of myself. It 
makes me think myself not totally discon- 
nected from the better part of mankind. I 
know I am too dissatisfied with the beings 
around me ; but I cannot help occasionally 
exclaiming, ' Woe is me, that I am constrained 
to dwell with Meshech, and to have my 
habitation among the tents of Kedar.' I 
know I am noways better in practice than 
my neighbours, but I have a taste for religion, 
an occasional earnest aspiration after perfec- 
tion, which they have not. I gain nothing 
by being with such as myself — we encourage 
one another in mediocrity. I am always 
longing to be with men more excellent than 
myself. All this must sound odd to you, but 
these are my predominant feelings, when I 
sit down to write to you, and I should put 
force upon my mind were 1 to reject them. 
Yet I rejoice, and feel my privilege with 
gratitude, when I have been reading some 
wise book, such as I have just been reading, 
' Priestley on Philosophical Necessity,' in the 
thought that I enjoy a kind of communion, a 
kind of friendship even, with the great and 
good. Books are to me instead of friends. 
I wish they did not resemble the latter in 
their scarceness. 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



23 



" And how does little David Hartley ? 
* Ecquid in antiquum virtutem ? ' Does his 
mighty name work wonders yet upon his 
little frame and opening mind 1 I did not 
distinctly understand you — you don't mean 
to make an actual ploughman of him 1 Is 
Lloyd with you yet ? Are you intimate with 
Southey? What poems is he about to publish? 
— he hath a most prolific brain, and is indeed 
a most sweet poet. But how can you answer 
all the various mass of interrogation I have 
put to you in the course of the sheet 1 Write 
back just what you like, only write some- 
thing, however brief. I have now nigh 
finished my page, and got to the end of 
another evening (Monday evening), and my 
eyes are heavy and sleepy, and my brain 
unsuggestive. I have just heart enough 
awake to say good night once more, and God 
love you, my dear friend ; God love us all. 
Mary bears an affectionate remembrance 
of you. 

" Charles Lamb." 

A poem of Coleridge, emulous of Southey's 
" Joan of Arc," which he proposed to call the 
"Maid of Orleans," on which Lamb had 
made some critical remarks, produced the 
humourous recantation with which the follow- 
ing letter opens. 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

"Feb. 13th, 1797. 

"Your poem is altogether admirable — 
parts of it are even exquisite — in particular 
your personal account of the Maid far sur- 
passes any thing of the sort in Southey. I 
perceived all its excellences, on a first read- 
ing, as readily as now you have been 
removing a supposed film from my eyes. I 
was only struck with certain faulty dispro- 
portion, in the matter and the style, which I 
still think I perceive, between these lines 
and the former ones. I had an end in view, I 
wished to make you reject the poem, only as 
being discordant with the other, and, in sub- 
servience to that end, it was politically done 
in me to over-pass, and make no mention of 
merit, which, could you think me capable of 
overlooking, might reasonably damn for ever 
in your judgment all pretensions, in me, to 
be critical. There — I will be judged by 
Lloyd, whether I have not made a very 
handsome recantation. I was in the case of 



a man, whose friend has asked him his 
opinion of a certain young lady — the deluded 
wight gives judgment against her in toto — 
don't like her face, her walk, her manners ; 
finds fault with her eyebrows ; can see no 
wit in her ; his friend looks blank, he begins 
to smell a rat — wind veers about — he 
acknowledges her good sense, her judgment 
in dress, a certain simplicity of manners and 
honesty of heart, something too in her 
manners which gains upon you after a short 
acquaintance, — and then her accurate pro- 
nunciation of the French language, and a 
pretty uncultivated taste in drawing. The 
reconciled gentleman smiles applause, 
squeezes him by the hand, and hopes he 
will do him the honour of taking a bit of 

dinner with Mrs. and him, — a plain 

family dinner, — some day next week ; ' for, 
I suppose, you never heard we were married. 
I 'm glad to see you like my wife, however ; 
you '11 come and see her, ha 1 ' Now am I 
too proud to retract entirely ? Yet I do 
perceive I am in some sort straitened ; you 
are manifestly wedded to this poem, and 
what fancy has joined let no man separate. 
I turn me to the Joan of Arc, second book. 

" The solemn openings of it are with sounds, 
which LI. would say ' are silence to the mind.' 
The deep preluding strains are fitted to 
initiate the mind, with a pleasing awe, into 
the sublimest mysteries of theory concerning 
man's nature, and his noblest destination — 
the philosophy of a first cause — of subordi- 
nate agents in creation, superior to man — 
the subserviency of Pagan worship and Pagan 
faith to the introduction of a purer and more 
perfect religion, which you so elegantly 
describe as winning, with gradual steps, her 
difficult way northward from Bethabra. After 
all this cometh Joan, a publican's daughter, 
sitting on an ale-house bench, and marking 
the swingings of the signboard, finding a poor 
man, his wife and six children, starved to 
death with cold, and thence roused into a 
state of mind proper to receive visions, 
emblematical of equality ; which, what the 
devil Joan had to do with, I don't know, or, 
indeed, with the French and American revo- 
lutions, though that needs no pardon, it is 
executed so nobly. After all, if you perceive 
no disproportion, all argument is vain ; I do 
not so much object to parts. Again, when 
you talk of building your fame on these lines 



'24 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



in preference to the ' Religious Musings,' I 
cannot help conceiving of you, and of the 
author of that, as two different persons, and 
I think you a very vain man. 

" I have been re-reading your letter ; much 
of it I could dispute, but with the latter part 
of it, in which you compare the two Joans 
with respect to their predispositions for 
fanaticism, I, toto corde, coincide ; only I 
think that Southey's strength rather lies in 
the description of the emotions of the Maid 
under the weight of inspiration, — these (I see 
no mighty difference between her describing 
them or you describing them), these if you 
only equal, the previous admirers of his 
poem, as is natural, will prefer his, — if you 
surpass, prejudice will scarcely allow it, and 
I scarce think you will surpass, though your 
specimen at the conclusion, I am in earnest, 
I think very nigh equals them. And in an 
account of a fanatic or of a prophet, the 
description of her emotions is expected to be 
most highly finished. By the way, I spoke 
far too disparagingly of your lines, and, I am 
ashamed to say, purposely. I should like you 
to specify or particularise ; the story of the 
'Tottering Eld,' of 'his eventful years all 
come and gone,' is too general ; why not 
make him a soldier, or some character, 
however, in which he has been witness to 
frequency of ' cruel wrong and strange 
distress ! ' I think I should. When I 
laughed at the ' miserable man crawling 
from beneath the coverture,' I wonder I 
did not perceive that it was a laugh of 
horror — such as I have laughed at Dante's 
picture of the famished Ugolino. Without 
falsehood, I perceive an hundred beauties in 
your narrative. Yet I wonder you do not 
perceive something out-of-the-way, something 
un simple and artificial, in the expression 
'voiced a sad tale.' I hate made-dishes at 
the muses' banquet. I believe I was wrong 
in most of my other objections. But surely 
' hailed him immortal,' adds nothing to the 
terror of the man's death, which it was your 
business to heighten, not diminish by a 
phrase, which takes away all terror from it. 
I like that line, ' They closed their eyes in 
sleep, nor knew 'twas death.' Indeed there 
is scarce a line I do not like. ' Turbid 
ecstacy' is surely not so good as what you 
had written, 'troublous.' Turbid rather 
suits the muddy kind of inspiration which 



London porter confers. The versification is, 
throughout, to my ears unexceptionable, 
with no disparagement to the measure of the 
' Religious Musings,' which is exactly fitted 
to the thoughts. 

" You were building your house on a rock, 
when you rested your fame on that poem. I 
can scarce bring myself to believe, that I am 
admitted to a familiar correspondence, and 
all the licence of friendship, with a man who 
writes blank verse like Milton. Now, this 
is delicate flattery, indirect flattery. Go on 

| with your ' Maid of Orleans,' and be content 
to be second to yourself. I shall become a 

j convert to it, when 'tis finished, 

" This afternoon I attend the funeral of my 
poor old aunt, who died on Thursday. I own 

, I am thankful that the good creature has 

I ended all her days of suffering and infirmity. 

I She was to me the ' cherisher of infancy,' and 
one must fall on those occasions into reflec- 
tions, which it would be common-place to 
enumerate, concerning death, ' of chance and 
change, and fate in human life.' Good God, 
who could have foreseen all this but four 
months back ! I had reckoned, in particular, 
on my aunt's living many years ; she was a 
very heart} 7 old woman. But she was a mere 
skeleton before she died, looked more like a 
corpse that had lain weeks in the grave, 
than one fresh dead. 'Truly the light is 
sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes 
to behold the sun ; but let a man live many 
days and rejoice in them all, yet let him 
remember the days of darkness, for they 
shall be many.' Coleridge, why are we to 
live on after all the strength and beauty of 
existence are gone, when all the life of life is 
fled, as poor Burns expresses it ? Tell Lloyd 
I have had thoughts of turning Quaker, and 
have been reading, or am rather just begin- 
ning to read, a most capital book, good 
thoughts in good language, William Penn's 
' No Cross, no Crown,' I like it immensely. 
Unluckily I went to one of his meetings, 
tell him, in St. John-street, yesterday, and 
saw a man under all the agitations and 
workings of a fanatic, who believed himself 
under the influence of some ' inevitable 
presence.' This cured me of Quakerism ; 
I love it in the books of Penn and Woolman, 
but I detest the vanity of a man thinking he 
speaks by the Spirit, when what he says an 
ordinary man might say without all that 






LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



25 



quaking and trembling. In the midst of his 
inspiration, and the effects of it were most 
noisy, was handed into the midst of the 
meeting a most terrible blackguard Wapping 
sailor ; the poor man, I believe, had rather 
have been in the hottest part of an engage- 
ment, for the congregation of broad-brims, 
together with the ravings of the prophet, were 
too much for his gravity, though I saw even 
he had delicacy enough, not to laugh out. And 
the inspired gentleman, though his manner 
was so supernatural, yet neither talked nor 
professed to talk anything more than good 
sober sense, common morality, with now and 
then a declaration of not speaking from 
himself. Among other things, looking back 
to his childhood and early youth, he told the 
meeting what a graceless young dog he had 
been, that in his youth he had a good share of 
wit : reader, if thou hadst seen the gentle- 
man, thou wouldst have sworn that it must 
indeed have been many years ago, for his 
rueful physiognomy would have scared away 
the playful goddess from the meeting, where 
he presided, for ever. A wit ! a wit ! what 
could he mean 1 Lloyd, it minded me of 
Falkland in the Rivals, ' Am I full of wit 
and humour ? No, indeed you are not. Am 
I the life and soul of every company I come 
into 1 No, it cannot be said you are.' That 
hard-faced gentleman, a wit ! "Why, nature 
wrote on his fanatic forehead fifty years ago, 
'Wit never comes, that comes to all.' I 
should be as scandalised at a bon mot issuing 
from his oracle-looking mouth, as to see Cato 
go down a country-dance. God love you all. 
You are very good to submit to be pleased 
with reading my nothings. Tis the privilege 
of friendship to talk nonsense, and to have 
her nonsense respected. — Yours ever, 

" C. Lamb." 



TO MR. COLERIDGE. . 

"April 7th, 1797. 
" Your last letter was dated the 10th 
February ; in it you promised to write again 
the next day. At least, I did not expect so 
long, so unfriend-like a silence. There was 
a time, Col., when a remissness of this sort in 
a dear friend would have lain very heavy on 
my mind, but latterly I have been too familiar 
with neglect to feel much from the semblance 
of it. Yet, to suspect one's self overlooked, 



and in the way to oblivion, is a feeling rather 
humbling ; perhaps, as tending to self-mor- 
tification, not unfavourable to the spiritual 
state. Still, as you meant to confer no benefit 
on the soul of your friend, you do not stand 
quite clear from the imputation of unkindli- 
ness (a word, by which I mean the diminutive 
of unkindness). And then David Hartley 
was unwell ; and how is the small philosopher, 
the minute philosopher 1 and David's mother ? 
Coleridge, I am not trifling, nor are these 
matter-of-fact questions only. You are all 
very dear and precious to me ; do what you 
will, Col., you may hurt me and vex me by 
your silence, but you cannot estrange my 
heart from you all. I cannot scatter friend- 
ships like chuck-farthings, nor let them drop 
from mine hand like hour-glass sand. I have 
but two or three people in the world to whom 
I am more than indifferent, and I can't afford 
to whistle them off to the winds. 

"My sister has recovered from her illness. 
May that merciful God make tender my 
heart, and make me as thankful, as in my 
distress I was earnest, in my prayers. Con- 
gratulate me on an ever-present and never- 
alienable friend like her. And do, do insert, 
if you have not lost, my dedication. It will 
have lost half its value by coming so late. If 
you really are going on with that volume, I 
shall be enabled in a day or two to send you 
a short poem to insert. Now, do answer 
this. Friendship, and acts of friendship, 
should be reciprocal, and free as the air ; a 
friend should never be reduced to beg an 
alms of his fellow. Yet I will beg an alms j 
I entreat you to write, and tell me all about 
poor Lloyd, and all of you. God love and 
preserve you all. " C. Lamb." 



TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

"June 13th, 1797. 

"I stared with wild wonderment to see 
thy well-known hand again. It revived 
many a pleasing recollection of an epistolary 
intercourse, of late strangely suspended, once 
the pride of my life. Before I even opened 
thy letter, I figured to myself a sort of 
complacency which my little hoard at home 
would feel at receiving the new-comer into 
the little drawer where I keep my treasures of 
this kind. You have done w^ell in writing to 
me. The little room (was it not a little one ?) 



26 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



at the Salutation was already in the way of 
becoming a fading idea ! it had begun to be 
classed in my memory with those ' wanderings 
with a fair hair'd maid/ in the recollection 
of which I feel I have no property. You 
press me, very kindly do you press me, to 
come to Stowey ; obstacles, strong as death, 
prevent me at present ; maybe I may be able 
to come before the year is out ; believe me, 
I will come as soon as I can, but I dread 
naming a probable time. It depends on fifty 
things, besides the expense, which is not 
nothing. As to Richardson, caprice may 
grant what caprice only refused, and it is no 
more hardship, rightly considered, to be 
dependent on him for pleasure, than to lie 
at the mercy of the rain and sunshine for 
the enjoyment of a holiday : in either case 
we are not to look for a suspension of the 
laws of nature. ' Grill will be grill.' Vide 
Spenser. 

" I could not but smile at the compromise 
you make with me for printing Lloyd's 
poems first ; but there is in nature, I fear, 
too many tendencies to envy and jealousy 
not to justify you in your apology. Yet, 
if any one is welcome to pre-eminence 
from me, it is Lloyd, for he would be the 
last to desire it. So pray, let his name 
uniformly precede mine, for it would be 
treating me like a child to suppose it could 
give me pain. Yet, alas ! I am not insus- 
ceptible of the bad passions. Thank God, 
I have the ingenuousness to be ashamed of 
them. I am dearly fond of Charles Lloyd ; 
he is all goodness, and I have too much of 
the world in my composition to feel myself 
thoroughly deserving of his friendship. 

"Lloyd tells me that Sheridan put you 
upon writing your tragedy. I hope you are 
only Coleridgeizing when you talk of finishing 
it in a few days. Shakspeare was a more 
modest man, but you best know your own 
power. 

" Of my last poem you speak slightingly ; 
surely the longer stanzas were pretty toler- 
able ; at least there was one good line in it, 

' Thick- shaded trees, -with dark green leaf rich clad.' 

" To adopt your own expression, I call 
this a *' rich ' line, a fine full line. And some 
others I thought even beautiful. Believe me, 
my little gentleman will feel some repugnance 



at riding behind in the basket, though, I 
confess, in pretty good company. Your 
picture of idiocy, with the sugar-loaf head, 
is exquisite ; but are you not too severe upon 
our more favoured brethren in fatuity 1 I 
send you a trifling letter ; but you have 
only to think that I have been skimming the 
superficies of my mind, and found it only 
froth. Now, do write again ; you cannot 
believe how I long and love always to hear 
about you. Yours, most affectionately, 

"Charles Lamb." 



TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

"June 24th, 1797. 
" Did you seize the grand opportunity of 
seeing Kosciusko while he was at Bristol ? 
I never saw a hero ; I wonder how they 
look. I have been reading a most curious 
romance-like work, called the Life of John 
Buncle, Esq. 'Tis very interesting, and an 
extraordinary compound of all manner of 
subjects, from the depth of the ludicrous to 
the heights of sublime religious truth. There 
is much abstruse science in it above my cut, 
and an infinite fund of pleasantry. John 
Buncle is a famous fine man, formed in 
nature's most eccentric hour. I am ashamed 
of what I write. But I have no topic to 
talk of. I see nobody ; and sit, and read, or 
walk alone, and hear nothing. I am quite 
lost to conversation from disuse ; and out of 
the sphere of my little family, who, I am 
thankful, are dearer and dearer to me every 
day, I see no face that brightens up at my 
approach. My friends are at a distance 
(meaning Birmingham and Stowey) ; worldly 
hopes are at a low ebb with me, and un- 
worldly thoughts are not yet familiarised to 
me, though I occasionally indulge in them. 
Still I feel a calm not unlike content. I 
fear it is sometimes more akin to physical 
stupidity than to a heaven-flowing serenity 
and peace. What right have I to obtrude 
all this upon you 1 and what is such a letter 
to you 1 and if I come to Stowey, what 
conversation can I furnish to compensate my 
friend for those stores of knowledge and of 
fancy ; those delightful treasures of wisdom, 
which, I know, he will open to me 1 But it 
is better to give than to receive ; and I was 
a very patient hearer, and docile scholar, in 
our winter evening meetings at Mr. May's ; 



LETTERS TO COLERTDGE. 



27 



was I not, Col.? What I have owed to 
thee, my heart can ne'er forget. 

" God love you and yours. " C. L." 

At length the small volume containing the 
poems of Coleridge, Lloyd, and Lamb, was 
published by Mr. Cottle at Bristol. It excited 
little attention ; but Lamb had the pleasure 
of seeing his dedication to his sister printed 
in good set form, after his own fashion, and 
of witnessing the delight and pride with 
which she received it. This little book, 
now very scarce, had the following motto 
expressive of Coleridge's feeling towards his 
associates : — Duplex nobis vinculum, et ami- 
citice et similium junctarumque Camcenarum ; 
quod utinam neque mors solvat, neque temporis 
longinquitas. Lamb's share of the work 
consists of eight sonnets ; four short frag- 
ments of blank verse, of which the Grandame 
is the principal ; a poem, called the Tomb of 
Douglas ; some verses to Charles Lloyd ; and 
a vision of Eepentance ; which are all pub- 
lished in the last edition of his poetical 
works, except one of the sonnets, which was, 
addressed to Mrs. Siddons. and the Tomb 
of Douglas, which was justly omitted as 
common-place and vapid. They only occupy 
twenty-eight duodecimo pages, within which 
space was comprised all that Lamb at this 
time had written which he deemed worth 
preserving. 

The following letter from Lamb to Cole- 
ridge seems to have been written on receiving 
the first copy of the work. 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

"Dec. 10th, 1797. 

"I am sorry I cannot now relish your 
poetical present so thoroughly as I feel it 
deserves ; but I do not the less thank Lloyd 
and you for it. 

" Before I offer, what alone I have to offer, 
a few obvious remarks, on the poems you 
sent me, I can but notice the odd coincidence 
of two young men, in one age, carolling their 
grandmothers. Love, what L. calls the 
'feverish and romantic tie,' hath too long 
domineered over all the charities of home : 
the dear domestic ties of father, brother, 
husband. The amiable and benevolent 
Cowper has a beautiful passage in his ' Task,' 
— some natural and painful reflections on his 



deceased parents : and Hayley's sweet lines 
to his mother are notoriously the best things 
he ever wrote. Cowper's lines, some of them 
are- 



How gladly would the man recall to life 
The boy's neglected sire ; a mother, too ! 
That softer name, perhaps more gladly still, 
Might he demand them at the gates of death. 



" I cannot but smile to see my granny so 
gaily decked forth : though, I think, whoever 
altered ' thy ' praises to ' her ' praises — ' thy ' 
honoured memory to ' her ' honoured memory, 
did wrong — they best exprest my feelings. 
There is a pensive state of recollection, in 
which the mind is disposed to apostrophise 
the departed objects of its attachment ; and, 
breaking loose from grammatical precision, 
changes from the first to the third, and from 
the third to the first person, just as the random 
fancy or the feeling directs. Among Lloyd's 
sonnets, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 11th, are 
eminently beautiful. I think him too lavish 
of his expletives ; the cfo's and did's, when 
they occur too often, bring a quaintness with 
them along with their simplicity, or rather 
air of antiquity, which the patrons of them 
seem desirous of conveying. 

" Another time, I may notice more particu- 
larly Lloyd's, Southey's, Dermody's Sonnets. 
I shrink from them now : my teasing lot 
makes me too confused for a clear judgment 
of things, too selfish for sympathy ; and these 
ill-digested, meaningless remarks, I have 
imposed on myself as a task, to lull reflection, 
as well as to show you I did not neglect 
reading your valuable present. Return my 
ackowledgments to Lloyd ; you two seem to 
be about realising an Elysium upon earth, 
and, no doubt, I shall be happier. Take my 
best wishes. Remember me most affection- 
ately to Mrs. C , and give little David 

Hartley — God bless its little heart ! — a kiss 
for me. Bring him up to know the meaning 
of his Christian name, and what that name 
(imposed upon him) will demand of him. 

" God love you ! " C. Lamb. 

" I write, for one thing to say, that I "jhall 
write no more till you send me word, where 
you are, for you are so soon to move. 

" My sister is pretty well, thank God. We 
think of you very often. God bless you : 
continue to be my correspondent, and I will 



28 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH SOUTHEY. 



strive to fancy that this world is not l all 
barrenness.' " 

After several disappointments, occasioned 
by the state of business in the India House, 
Lamb achieved his long-checked wish of 
visiting Coleridge at Stowey, in company 
with his sister, without whom he felt it 
almost a sin to enjoy anything. Coleridge, 
shortly after, abandoned his scheme of a 
cottage-life ; and, in the following year, left 
England for Germany. Lamb, however, was 
not now so lonely as when he wrote to Cole- 
ridge imploring his correspondence as the 
only comfort of his sorrows and labours ; for, 
through the instrumentality of Coleridge, he 
was now rich in friends. Among them he 
marked George Dyer, the guileless and simple- 
hearted, whose love of learning was a passion, 
and who found, even in the forms of verse, 
objects of worship ; Southey, in the young 
vigour of his genius ; and Wordsworth, the 
great regenerator of English poetry, preparing 
for his long contest with the glittering forms 
of inane phraseology which had usurped the 
dominion of the public mind, and with the 
cold mockeries of scorn with which their 
supremacy was defended. By those the 
beauty of his character was felt ; the original 
cast of his powers was appreciated ; and his 
j)eculiar humour was detected and kindled 
into fitful life. 



CHAPTER IV. 



[1798.] 
lamb's literary efforts and correspondence with 

SOUTHEY. 

In the year 1798, the blank verse of Lloyd 
and Lamb, which had been contained in the 
volume published in conjunction with Cole- 
ridge, was, with some additions by Lloyd, 
published in a thin duodecimo, price 2s. Qd., 
under the title of " Blank Verse, by Charles 
Lloyd and Charles Lamb." This unpre- 
tending book was honoured by a brief and 
scornful notice in the catalogue of " The 
Monthly Review/' in the small print of 
which the works of the poets who are now 
recognised as the greatest ornaments of their 
age, and who have impressed it most deeply 



by their genius, were usually named to be 
dismissed with a sneer. After a contemp- 
tuous notice of "The Mournful Muse" of 
Lloyd, Lamb receives his quietus in a line : — 
"Mr. Lamb, the joint author of this little 
volume, seems to be very properly associated 
with his plaintive companion." * 

In this year Lamb composed his prose, 
tale, " Rosamund Gray," and published it in 
a volume of the same size and price with the 
last, under the title of " A Tale of Rosamund 
Gray and Old Blind Margaret," which, 
having a semblance of story, sold much 
better than his poems, and added a few 
pounds to his slender income. This miniature 
romance is unique in English literature. It 
bears the impress of a recent perusal of " The 
Man of Feeling," and " Julia de Roubigne ; " 
and while on the one hand it wants the 
graphic force and delicate touches of Mac- 
kenzie, it is informed with deeper feeling and 
breathes a diviner morality than the most 
charming of his tales. Lamb never possessed 
the faculty of constructing a plot either for 
drama or novel ; and while he luxuriated in 
the humour of Smollett, the wit of Fielding, 
or the solemn pathos of Richardson, he was 
not amused, but perplexed, by the attempt 
to thread the windings of story which con- 
duct to their most exquisite passages through 
the maze of adventure. In this tale, nothing 
is made out with distinctness, except the 
rustic piety and grace of the lovely girl 
and her venerable grandmother, which are 
pictured with such earnestness and simplicity 
as might beseem a fragment of the book of 
Ruth. The villain who lays waste their 
humble joys is a murky phantom without 
individuality ; the events are obscured by 
the haze of sentiment which hovers over them; 
and the narrative gives way to the reflections 
of the author, who is mingled with the 
persons of the tale in visionary confusion, 
and gives to it the character of a sweet but 
disturbed dream. It has an interest now 
beyond that of fiction ; for in it we may trace, 
" as in a glass darkly," the characteristics of 
the mind and heart of the author, at a time 
when a change was coming upon them. 
There are the dainty sense of beauty just 
weaned from its palpable object, and quiver- 
ing over its lost images ; feeling grown 

* Monthly Review, Sept. 1798. 



INTRODUCTION TO SOUTHEY. 



29 



retrospective before its time, and tinging all 
things with a strange solemnity ; hints of 
that craving after immediate appliances 
which might give impulse to a harassed 
frame, and confidence to struggling fancy, 
and of that escape from the pressure of 
agony into fantastic mirth, which in after 
life made Lamb a problem to a stranger, 
while they endeared him a thousand-fold to 
those who really knew him. While the 
fulness of the religious sentiments, and the 
scriptural cast of the language, still partake 
of his early manhood, the visit of the narrator 
of the tale to the churchyard where his I 
parents lie buried, after his nerves had been 
strung for the endeavour by wine at the 
village inn, and the half-frantic jollity of his 
old heart-broken friend (the lover of the 
tale), whom he met there, with the exquisite 
benignity of thought breathing through the 
whole, prophesy the delightful peculiarities 
and genial frailties of an after day. The 
reflections he makes on the eulogistic cha- 
racter of all the inscriptions, are drawn from 
his own childhood ; for when a very little 
boy, walking with his sister in a churchyard, 
he suddenly asked her, " Mary, where do the 
naughty people lie ? " 

" Rosamund Gray " remained unreviewed 
till August, 1800, when it received the 
following notice in "The Monthly Review's " 
catalogue, the manufacturer of which was 
probably more tolerant of heterodox com- 
position in prose than verse : — "In the 
perusal of this pathetic and interesting story, 
the reader who has a mind capable of enjoy- 
ing rational and moral sentiment will feel 
much gratification. Mr. Lamb has here 
proved himself skilful in touching the nicest 
feelings of the heart, and in affording great 
pleasure to the imagination, by exhibiting 
events and situations which, in the hands of 
a writer less conversant with the springs and 
energies of the moral sense, would make a 
very ' sorry figure? " While we acknowledge 
this scanty praise as a redeeming trait in the 
long series of critical absurdities, we cannot 
help observing how curiously misplaced all 
the laudatory epithets are ; the sentiment 
being profound and true, but not " rational" 
and the " springs and energies of the moral 
sense " being substituted for a weakness 
which had a power of its own ! 

Lamb was introduced by Coleridge to 



Southey as early as the year 1795 ; but no 
intimacy ensued until he accompanied Lloyd 
in the summer of 1797 to the little village of 
Burton, near Christchurch, in Hampshire, 
where Southey was then residing, and where 
they spent a fortnight as the poet's guests. 
After Coleridge's departure for Germany, in 
1798, a correspondence began between Lamb 
and Southey, which continued through that 
and part of the following year ; — Southey 
communicates to Lamb his Eclogues, which 
he was then preparing for the press, and 
Lamb repaying the confidence by submitting 
the products of his own leisure hours to his 
genial critic. If Southey did not, in all 
respects, compensate Lamb for the absence 
of his earlier friend, he excited in him a 
more entire and active intellectual sympathy ; 
as the character of Southey's mind bore 
more resemblance to his own than that of 
Coleridge. In purity of thought ; in the 
love of the minutest vestige of antiquity ; in 
a certain primness of style bounding in the 
rich humour which threatened to overflow 
it ; they were nearly akin : both alike 
reverenced childhood, and both had pre- 
served its best attributes unspotted from the 
world. If Lamb bowed to the genius of 
Coleridge with a fonder reverence, he felt 
more at home with Southey ; and although 
he did not pour out the inmost secrets of his 
soul in his letters to him as to Coleridge, he 
gave more scope to the " first sprightly 
runnings" of his humorous fancy. Here is 
the first of his freaks : — 



TO MR. SOUTHEY. 

" My tailor has brought me home a new 
coat lapelled, with a velvet collar. He 
assures me everybody wears velvet collars 
now. Some are born fashionable, some 
achieve fashion, and others, like your humble 
servant, have fashion thrust upon them. 
The rogue has been making inroads hitherto 
by modest degrees, foisting upon me an 
additional button, recommending gaiters, but 
to come upon me thus in a full tide of luxury, 
neither becomes him as a tailor or the ninth 
of a man. My meek gentleman was robbed 
the other day, coming with his wife and 
family in a one-horse shay from Hampstead ; 
the villains rifled him of four guineas, some 
shillings and half-pence, and a bundle of 



30 



LETTERS TO SOUTHEY. 



customers' measures, which they swore were j 
bank-notes. They did not shoot him, and 
when they rode off he addrest them, with , 
profound gratitude, making a congee : 
1 Gentlemen, I wish you good night, and we 
are very much obliged to you that you have 
not used us ill ! ' And this is the cuckoo 
that has had the audacity to foist upon me 
ten buttons on a side, and a black velvet 
collar. — A cursed ninth of a scoundrel ! 

" When you write to Lloyd, he wishes his 
Jacobin correspondents to address him as 
Mr. C. L." 

The following letter — yet richer in fun — 
bears date Saturday, July 28th, 1798. In j 
order to make its allusions intelligible, it is j 
only necessary to mention that Southey was 
then contemplating a calendar illustrative of 
the remarkable days of the year. 

TO MR. SOUTHEY. 

"July 28th, 1798. 

" I am ashamed that I have not thanked 
you before this for the ' Joan of Arc,' but I 
did not know your address, and it did not 
occur to me to write through Cottle. The 
poem delighted me, and the notes amused 
me, but methinks she of Neufchatel, in the 
print, holds her sword too ' like a dancer.' I 
sent your notice to Phillips, particularly 
requesting an immediate insertion, but I 
suppose it came too late. I am sometimes 
curious to know what progress you make in 
that same ' Calendar-:' whether you insert the 
nine worthies and "Whittington ? what you 
do or how you can manage when two Saints 
meet and quarrel for precedency ? Martlemas, 
and Candlemas, and Christmas, are glorious 
themes for a writer like you, antiquity-bitten, 
smit with the love of boars' heads and 
rosemary ; but how you can ennoble the 
1st of April I know not. By the way I had 
a thing to say, but a certain false modesty 
has hitherto prevented me : perhaps I can 
best communicate my wish by a hint, — my 
birth-day is on the 10th of February, New 
Style, but if it interferes with any remarkable 
event, why rather than my country should 
lose her fame, I care not if I put my nativity 
back eleven days. Fine family patronage for 
your ' Calendar,' if that old lady of prolific 
memory were living, who lies (or lyes) in 
some church in London (saints forgive me, 



but I have forgot ivkat church), attesting 
that enormous legend of as many children as 
days in the year. I marvel her impudence 
did not grasp at a leap-year. Three -hundred 
and sixty-five dedications, and all in a family 
— you might spit in spirit, on the oneness oi 
Macsenas' patronage ! 

" Samuel Taylor Coleridge, to the eternal 
regret of his native Devonshire, emigrates to 
Westphalia — ' Poor Lamb (these were his 
last words) if. he wants any knowledge, he 

may apply to me,' in ordinary cases I 

thanked him, I have an 'Encyclopedia' at 
hand, but on such an occasion as going over 
to a German university, I could not refrain 
from sending him the following propositions, 
to be by him defended or oppugned (or both) 
at Leipsic or Gottingen. 

THESES QTJJEDAM THEOLOGKLE. 
i. 

" ' Whether God loves a lying angel better 
than a true man ? ' 

ii. 
" ' Whether the archangel Uriel could 
knowingly affirm an untruth, and whether, 
if he could, he would ? ' 

in. 
" ' Whether honesty be an angelic virtue, 
or not rather belonging to that class of 
qualities which the schoolmen term " virtutes 
minus splendidse, et hominis et terrse nimis 
participes % " ' 

IV. 

" ' Whether the seraphim ardentes do not 
manifest their goodness by the way of vision 
and theory ? and whether practice be not a 
sub-celestial, and merely human virtue ? ' 



" ' Whether the higher order of seraphim 
illuminati ever sneer ? ' 



" ' Whether pure intelligences can love, or 
whether they can love anything besides pure 
intellect 1 ' 

VII. 

" ' Whether the beatific vision be anything 
more or less than a perpetual representment 
to each individual angel of his own present 
attainments, and future capabilities, some- 



LETTERS TO SOUTHEY. 



:.l 



thing in the manner of mortal looking- 

?' 



"'"Whether an "immortal and amenable 
soul" may not come to be damned at last, and 
the man never suspect it beforehand ? ' 

"Samuel Taylor hath not deigned an 
answer ; was it impertinent of me to avail 
myself of ' that offered source of knowledge 1 

"Wishing Madoc may be "born into the 
world with as splendid promise as the second 
birth, or purification, of the Maid of 
Neufchatel, — I remain yours sincerely, 

" C. Lamb. 

" I hope Edith is better ; my kindest 
remembrances to her. You have a good 
deal of trifling to forgive in this letter." 



The two next letters to Southey illustrate 
strikingly the restless kindness and exquisite 
spirit of allowance in Lamb's nature ; the 
first an earnest pleading for a poor fellow 
whose distress actually haunted him ; the 
second an affecting allusion to the real good- 
ness of a wild untoward school-mate, and 
fine self-reproval — in this instance how 
unmerited ! 

TO MR. SOUTHEY. 

" Dear Southey, — Your friend John May 
has formerly made kind offers to Lloyd of 
serving me in the India House, by the interest 
of his friend Sir Francis Baring. It is not 
likely that I shall ever put his goodness to 
the test on my own account, for my prospects 
are very comfortable. But I know a man, a 
young man, whom he could serve through 
the same channel, and, I think, would be 
disposed to serve if he were acquainted with 
his case. This poor fellow (whom I know 
just enough of to vouch for his strict integrity 
and worth) has lost two or three employments 
from illness, which he cannot regain ; he 
was once insane, and, from the distressful 
uncertainty of his livelihood, has reason to 
apprehend a return of that malady. He has 
been for some time dependent on a woman 
whose lodger he formerly was, but who can 
ill afford to maintain him ; and I know that 
on Christmas night last he actually walked 
about the streets all night, rather than 



accept of her bed, which she offered him, and 
offered herself to sleep in the kitchen ; and 
that, in consequence of that severe cold, he 
is labouring under a bilious disorder, besides 
a depression of spirits, which incapacitates 
him from exertion when he most needs it. 
For God's sake, Southey, if it does not go 
against you to ask favours, do it now ; ask it 
as for me ; but do not do a violence to your 
feelings, because he does not know of this 
application, and will suffer no disappoint- 
ment. What I meant to say was this, — 
there are in the India House what are called 
extra clerks, not on the establishment, like me, 
but employed in extra business, by-jobs ; 
these get about bOl. a year, or rather more, 
but never rise ; a director can put in at any 
time a young man in this office, and it is by 
no means considered so great a favour as 
making an established clerk. He would 
think himself as rich as an emperor if he 
could get such a certain situation, and be 
relieved from those disquietudes which, I do 
fear, may one day bring back his distemper. 

" You know John May better than I do, 
but I know enough to believe that he is a 
good man ; he did make me that offer I have 
mentioned, but you will perceive that such 
an offer cannot authorise me in applying for 
another person. 

" But I cannot help writing to you on the 
subject, for the young man is perpetually 
before my eyes, and I shall feel it a crime not 
to strain all my petty interest to do him 
service, though I put my own delicacy to the 
question by so doing. I have made one other 
unsuccessful attempt already ; at all events 
I will thank you to write, for I am tormented 
with anxiety. " C. Lamb." 



"Dear Southey, 
" Poor Sam. Le Grice ! I am afraid the 
world, and the camp, and the university, have 
spoilt him among them. 'Tis certain he had 
at one time a strong capacity of turning out 
something better. I knew him, and that not 
long since, when he had a most warm heart. 
I am ashamed of the indifference I have 
sometimes felt towards him. I think the 
devil is in one's heart. I am under obligations 
to that man for the warmest friendship, and 
heartiest sympathy, even for an agony of 
sympathy exprest both by word, and deed, 



32 



LETTERS TO SOUTHEY. 



and tears for me, when I was in my greatest 
distress. But I have forgot that ! as, I fear, 
he has nigh forgot the awful scenes which 
were before his eyes when he served the 
office of a comforter to me. No service was 
too mean or troublesome for him to perform. 
I can't think what but the devil, ' that old 
spider,' could have suck'd my heart so dry 
of its sense of all gratitude. If he does come 
in your way, Southey, fail not to tell him that 
I retain a most affectionate remembrance 
of his old friendliness, and an earnest wish to 
resume our intercourse. In this I am serious. 
I cannot recommend him to your society, 
because I am afraid whether he be quite 
worthy of it. But I have no right to dismiss 
him from my regard. He was at one time, 
and in the worst of times, my own familiar 
friend, and great comfort to me then. I have 
known him to play at cards with my father, 
meal-times excepted, literally all day long, in 
long days too, to save me from being teased 
by the old man, when I was not able to 
bear it. 

" God bless him for it, and God bless you, 
Southey. " C. L." 



Lamb now began to write the tragedy of 
John Woodvil. His admiration of the 
dramatists of Elizabeth's age was yet young, 
and had some of the indiscretion of an early 
love ; but there was nothing affected in the 
antique cast of his language, or the frequent 
roughness of his verse. His delicate sense 
of beauty had found a congenial organ in the 
style which he tasted with rapture ; and 
criticism gave him little encouragement to 
adapt it to the frigid insipidities of the time. 
" My tragedy," says he in the first letter to 
Southey, which alludes to the play, " will be 
a medley (or I intend it to be a medley) of 
laughter and tears, prose and verse ; and, in 
some places, rhyme ; songs, wit, pathos, 
humour ; and, if possible, sublimity ; — at 
least, 'tis not a fault in my intention if it 
does not comprehend most of these discordant 
atoms — Heaven send they dance not the 
dance of death ! " In another letter he there 
introduces the delicious rhymed passage in 
the " Forest Scene," which Godwin, having 
accidentally seen quoted, took for a choice 
fragment of an old dramatist, and went to 
Lamb to assist him in finding the author. 



TO MR. SOUTHEY. 

" I just send you a few rhymes from my 
play, the only rhymes in it. A forest-liver 
giving an account of his amusements. 

4 What sports have you in the forest ? 
Not many, — some few, — as thus, 
To see the sun to bed, and see him rise, 
Like some hot amourist with glowing eyes, 
Bursting the lazy bands of sleep that bound him : 
With all his fires and travelling glories round him : 
Sometimes the moon on soft night-clouds to rest, 
Like beauty nestling in a young man's breast, 
And all the winking stars, her handmaids, keep 
Admiring silence, while those lovers sleep : 
Sometimes outstretch'd in very idleness, 
Nought doing, saying little, thinking less, 
To view the leaves, thin dancers upon air, 
Go eddying round ; and small birds how they fare, 
When mother Autumn fills their beaks with corn, 
Filch'd from the careless Amalthea's horn ; 
And how the woods berries and worms provide, 
Without their pains, when earth hath nought beside 
To answer their small wants ; 
To view the graceful deer come trooping by, 
Then pause, and gaze, then turn they know not why, 
Like bashful younkers in society ; 
To mark the structure of a plant or tree ; 
And all fair things of earth, how fair they be ! ' &c. &c. 

" I love to anticipate charges of unorigin- 
ality : the first line is almost Shakspeare's : — 

' To have my love to bed and to arise.' 

Midsummer Night's Dream. 

" I think there is a sweetness in the versi- 
fication not unlike some rhymes in that 
exquisite play, and the last line but three is 

yours : 

' An eye 
That met the gaze, or turn'd it knew not why.' 

Rosamund's Epistle. 

" I shall anticipate all my play, and have 
nothing to show you. An idea for Leviathan 
— Commentators on Job have been puzzled 
to find out a meaning for Leviathan, — 'tis a 
whale, say some ; a crocodile, say others. 
In my simple conjecture, Leviathan is neither- 
more nor less than the Lord Mayor of London 
for the time being." 



He seems also to have sent about this 
time the solemnly fantastic poem of the 
" Witch," as the following passage relates to 
one of its conceits : 

TO MR. SOUTHEY. 

"Your recipe for a Turk's poison is 
invaluable, and truly Marlowish. . . . 
Lloyd objects to ' shutting up the womb of 



LETTERS TO SOUTHEY. 



33 



his purse ' in my curse, (which, for a Chris- 
tian witch in a Christian country, is not too 
mild, I hope,) do you object 1 I think there 
is a strangeness in the idea, as well as 
' shaking the poor like snakes from his door,' 
which suits the speaker. Witches illustrate, 
as fine ladies do, from their own familiar 
objects, and snakes and shutting up of 
wombs are in their way. I don't know that 
this last charge has been before brought 
against 'em, nor either the sour milk or the 
mandrake babe ; but I affirm these be things 
a witch would do if she could." 

Here is a specimen of Lamb's criticism on 
Southey's poetical communications : — 

TO MR. SOUTHEY. 

" I have read your Eclogue repeatedly, and 
cannot call it bald, or without interest ; the 
cast of it, and the design, are completely 
original, and may set people upon thinking : 
it is as poetical as the subject requires, which 
asks no poetry ; but it is defective in pathos. 
The woman's own story is the tamest part of 
it — I should like you to remould that — it too 
much resembles the young maid's history, 
both had been in service. Even the omission 
would not injure the poem ; after the words 
' growing wants,' you might, not uncon- 
nectedly, introduce ' look at that little chub ' 
down to 'welcome one.' And, decidedly, I 
would have you end it somehow thus, 

' Give them at least this evening a good meal. 

[Gives her- money. 
Now, fare thee well ; hereafter you have taught me 
To give sad meaning to the village-bells,' &c. 

which would leave a stronger impression, (as 
well as more pleasingly recall the beginning 
of the Eclogue,) than the present common- 
place reference to a better world, which the 
woman 'must have heard at church.' I 
should like you too a good deal to enlarge 
the most striking part, as it might have been, 
of the poem— 'Is it idleness?' &c, that 
affords a good field for dwelling on sickness, 
and inabilities, and old age. And you might 
also a good deal enrich the piece with a 
picture of a country wedding : the woman 
might very well, in a transient fit of oblivion, 
dwell upon the ceremony and circumstances 
of her own nuptials six years ago, the 
snugness of the bridegroom, the feastings, 



the cheap merriment, the welcomings, and 
the secret envyings of the maidens — then 
dropping all this, recur to her present lot. 
I do not know that I can suggest anything 
else, or that I have suggested anything new 
or material. I shall be very glad to see some 
more poetry, though, I fear, your trouble in 
transcribing will be greater than the service 
my remarks may do them. 

" Yours affectionately, " C. Lamb. 

" I cut my letter short because I am called 
off to business." 



The following, of the same character, is 
further interesting, as tracing the origin of 
his "Eosamund," and exhibiting his young 
enthusiasm for the old English drama, so 
nobly developed in his " Specimens : " — 

TO MR. SOUTHEY. 

" Dear Southey, — I thank you heartily for 
the Eclogue ; it pleases me mightily, being 
so full of picture-work and circumstances. 
I find no fault in it, unless perhaps that 
Joanna's ruin is a catastrophe too trite : and 
this is not the first or second time you have 
clothed your indignation, in verse, in a tale 
of ruined innocence. The old lady, spinning 
in the sun, I hope would not disdain to claim 
some kindred with old Margaret. I could 
almost wish you to vary some circumstances 
in the conclusion. A gentleman seducer has 
so often been described in prose and verse ; 
what if you had accomplished Joanna's ruin 
by the clumsy arts and rustic gifts of some 
country-fellow ? I am thinking, I believe, of 



' An old woman clothed in grey, 

Whose daughter was charming and young, 
And she was deluded away 

By Roger's false flattering tongue.' 

A Roger-Lothario would be a novel character 
I think you might paint him very well. You 
may think this a very silly suggestion, and 
so, indeed, it is ; but, in good truth, nothing 
else but the first words of that foolish ballad 
put me upon scribbling my ' Rosamund.' 
But I thank you heartily for the poem. Not 
having anything of my own to send you in 
return — though, to tell truth, I am at work 
upon something, which, if I were to cut away 
and garble, perhaps I might send you an 



34 



LETTERS TO SOUTHET. 



extract or two that might not displease you ; 
but I will not do that ; and whether it will 
come to anything, I know not, for I am as 
slow as a Fleming painter when I compose 
anything — I will crave leave to put down a 
few lines of old Christopher Marlow's ; I 
take them from his tragedy, ' The Jew of 
Malta.' The Jew is a famous character, 
quite out of nature ; but, when we consider 
the terrible idea our simple ancestors had of 
a Jew, not more to be discommended for a 
certain discolouring (I think Addison calls 
it) than the witches and fairies of Marlow's 
mighty successor. The scene is betwixt 
Barabas, the Jew, and Ithamore, a Turkish 
captive, exposed to sale for a slave. 

BARABAS. 

(A precious rascal.) 
As for myself, I walk abroad a-nights, 
And kill sick people groaning under walls : 
Sometimes I go about, and poison wells ; 
And now and then, to cherisb Christian thieves, 
I am content to lose some of my crowns, 
That I may, walking in my gallery, 
See 'in go pinioned along by my door. 
Being young, I studied physic, and began 
To practise first upon the Italian : 
There I enriched the priests with burials, 
And always kept the sexton's arms in use 
With digging graves, and ringing dead men's knells ; 
And, after that, was I an engineer, 
And in the wars 'twixt France and Germany 
Under pretence of serving Charles the Fifth, 
Slew friend and enemy with my stratagems. 
Then after that was I an usurer, 
And with extorting, cozening, forfeiting, 
And tricks belonging unto brokery, 
I fill'd the jails with bankrupts in a year, 
And with young orphans planted hospitals, 
And every moon made some or other mad ; 
And now and then one hang himself for grief, 
Pinning upon his breast a long great scroll, 
How I with interest had tormented him. 

(Now hear Ithamore, the other gentle 
nature.) 

ITHAMORE. 

{A comical dog.) 
Faith, master, and I have spent my time 
In setting Christian villages on fire, 
Chaining of eunuchs, binding galley-slaves. 
One time I was an hostler in an inn, 
And in the night-time secretly would I steal 
To travellers' chambers, and there cut their throats. 
Once at Jerusalem, where the pilgrims kneel'd, 
I strewed powder on the marble stones, 
And therewithal their knees would rankle so, 
That I have laugh'd a good to see the cripples 
Go limping home to Christendom on stilts. 

BARABAS. 

Why, this is something — 

" There is a mixture of the ludicrous aud 
the terrible in these lines, brimful of genius 



and antique invention, that at first reminded 
me of your old description of cruelty in "hell, 
which was in the true Hogarthian style. I 
need not tell you that Marlow was author of 
j that pretty madrigal, ' Come live with me 
and be my Love,' and of the tragedy of 
Edward II., in which are certain lines 
unequalled in our English tongue. Honest 
Walton mentions the said madrigal under 
the denomination of ' certain smooth verses 
made long since by Kit Marlow.' 

" I am glad you have put me on the scent 
after old Quarles. If I do not put up those 
eclogues, and that shortly, say I am no true- 
nosed hound. I have had a letter from 
Lloyd ; the young metaphysician of Caius is 
well, and is busy recanting the new heresy, 
metaphysics, for the old dogma, Greek. My 
sister, I thank you, is quite well. 

" Yours sincerely, " C. Lamb." 



The following letters, which must have 
been written after a short interval, show a 
rapid change of opinion, very unusual with 
Lamb (who stuck to his favourite books as 
he did to his friends), as to the relative 
merits of the " Emblems " of Wither and of 
Quarles : 

TO MR. SOUTHEY. 

"Oct. 18th, 1798. 

"Dear Southey, — I have at last been so 
fortunate as to pick up Wither's Emblems 
for you, that ' old book and quaint,' as the 
brief author of Eosamund Gray hath it ; it 
is in a most detestable state of preservation, 
and the cuts are of a fainter impression than 
I have seen. Some child, the curse of anti- 
quaries and bane of bibliopical rarities, hath 
been dabbling in some of them with its paint 
and dirty fingers ; and, in particular, hath a 
little sullied the author's own portraiture, 
which I think valuable, as the poem that 
accompanies it is no common one ; this last 
excepted, the Emblems are far inferior to 
old Quarles. I once told you otherwise, but 
I had not then read old Q. with attention. 
I have picked up, too, another copy of 
Quarles for ninepence ! ! ! O tempora ! O 
lectores ! so that if you have lost or parted 
with your own copy, say so, and I can furnish 
you, for you prize these things more than I 
do. You will be amused, I think, with 
honest Wither's 'Supersedeas to all them 



LETTERS TO SOUTHEY. 



35 



whose custom it is, without any deserving, 
to importune authors to give unto them 
their books.' I am sorry 'tis imperfect, as 
the lottery board annexed to it also is. 
Methinks you might modernise and elegantise 
this Supersedeas, and place it in front of 
your Joan of Arc, as a gentle hint to Messrs. 
Parke, &c. One of the happiest emblems, 
and comicalest cuts, is the owl and little 
chirpers,'page 63. 

" Wishing you all amusement, which your 
true emblem-fancier can scarce fail to find in 
even bad emblems, I remain your caterer to 
command, " C. Lamb. 

" Love and respects to Edith. I hope she 
is well. How does your Calendar prosper 1 " 

TO MR. SOUTHEY. 

"Nov. 8th, 1798. 
" I perfectly accord with your opinion of 
old Wither ; Quarles is a wittier writer, but 
Wither lays more hold of the heart. Quarles 
thinks of his audience when he lectures ; 
Wither soliloquises in company with a full 
heart. What wretched stuff are the ' Divine 
Fancies' of Quarles ! Eeligion appears to 
him no longer valuable than it furnishes 
matter for quibbles and riddles ; he turns 
God's grace into wantonness. Wither is like 
an old friend, whose warm-heartedness and 
estimable qualities make us wish he possessed 
more genius, but at the same time make us 
willing to dispense with that want. I always 
love W., and sometimes admire Q. Still that 
portrait poem is a fine one ; and the extract 
from ' Shepherds' Hunting ' places him in a 
starry height far above Quarles. If you 
wrote that review in ' Crit. Rev.,' I am sorry 
you are so sparing of praise to the ' Ancient 
Marinere ; ' — so far from calling it as you 
do, with some wit, but more severity, ' A 
Dutch Attempt,' &c, I call it a right English 
attempt, and a successful one, to dethrone 
German sublimity. You have selected a 
passage fertile in unmeaning miracles, but 
have passed by fifty passages as miraculous 
as the miracles they celebrate. I never so 
deeply felt the pathetic as in that part, 

' A spring of love gush'd from my heart, 
And I hless'd them unaware — ' 

It stung me into high pleasure through 
sufferings. Lloyd does not like it ; his head 



is too metaphysical, and your taste too 
correct ; at least I must allege something 
against you both, to excuse my own dotage — 

• So lonely 'twas, that God himself 
Scarce seemed there to he ! ' — &c, &c. 

But you allow some elaborate beauties — you 
should have extracted 'em. ' The Ancient 
Marinere ' plays more tricks with the mind 
than that last poem, which is yet one of the 
finest written. But I am getting too dog- 
matical ; and before I degenerate into abuse, 
I will conclude with assuring you that I am 
" Sincerely yours, 

" C. Lamb. 

" I am going to meet Lloyd at Ware on 
Saturday, to return on Sunday. Have you 
any commands or commendations to the 
metaphysician 1 I shall be very happy if 
you will dine or spend any time with me in 
your way through the great ugly city ; but 
I know you have other ties upon you in 
these parts. 

" Love and respects to Edith, and friendly 
remembrances to Cottle." 



In this year, Mr. Cottle proposed to publish 
an annual volume of fugitive poetry by 
various hands, under the title of the " Annual 
Anthology ;" to which Coleridge and Southey 
were principal contributors, the first volume 
of which was published in the following year. 
To this little work Lamb contributed a short 
religious effusion in blank verse, entitled 
"Living without God in the World." The 
following letter to Southey refers to this 
poem by its first words, "Mystery of God," 
and recurs to the rejected sonnet to his 
sister ; and alludes to an intention, after- 
wards changed, of entitling the proposed 
collection " Gleanings." 

TO MR. SOUTHEY. 

"Nov. 28th, 1798. 

"I can have no objection to your printing 
' Mystery of God ' with my name, and all 
due acknowledgments for the honour and 
favour of the communication ; indeed, 'tis a 
poem that can dishonour no name. Now, 
that is in the true strain of modern modesto- 

vanitas But for the sonnet, I heartily 

wish it, as I thought it was, dead and 



d 2 



36 



ATTACKS OF THE ANTI-JACOBIN. 



forgotten. If the exact circumstances under 
which I wrote could be known or told, it 
would be an interesting sonnet ; but, to an 
indifferent and stranger reader, it must 
appear a very bald thing, certainly inadmis- 
sible in a compilation. I wish you could 
affix a different name to the volume ; there 
is a contemptible book, a wretched assort- 
ment of vapid feelings, entitled Pratt's Glean- 
ings, which hath damned and impropriated 
the title for ever. Pray think of some other. 
The gentleman is better known (better had 
he remained unknown) by an Ode to Bene- 
volence, written and spoken for and at the 
annual dinner of the Humane Society, who 
walk in procession once a-year, with all the 
objects of their charity before them, to return 
God thanks for giving them such benevolent 
hearts." 



At this time Lamb's most intimate asso- 
ciates were Lloyd and Jem White, the author 
of the Falstaff Letters. When Lloyd was in 
town, he and White lodged in the same 
house, and were fast friends, though no two 
men could be more unlike, Lloyd having no 
drollery in his nature, and White nothing 
else. " You will easily understand," observes 
Mr. Southey, in a letter with which he 
favoured the publisher, " how Lamb could 
sympathise with both." 

The literary association of Lamb with 
Coleridge and Southey drew down upon him 
the hostility of the young scorners of the 
" Anti-Jacobin," who luxuriating in boyish 
pride and aristocratic patronage, tossed the 
arrows of their wit against all charged with 
innovation, whether in politics or poetry, 
and cared little whom they wounded. No 
one could be more innocent than Lamb of 
political heresy ; no one more strongly 
opposed to new theories in morality, which 
he always regarded with disgust ; and yet 
he not only shared in the injustice which 
accused his friends of the last, but was con- 
founded in the charge of the first, — his only 
crime being that he Jiad published a few 
poems deeply coloured with religious enthu- 
siasm, in conjunction with two other men of 
genius, who were dazzled by the glowing 
phantoms which the French Eevolution had 
raised. The very first number of the " Anti- 
Jacobin Magazine and Review " was adorned 



by a caricature of Gilray's, in which Cole- 
ridge and Southey were introduced with 
asses' heads, and Lloyd and Lamb as toad 
and frog. In the number for July appeared 
the well-known poem of the " New Morality," 
in which all the prominent objects of the 
hatred of these champions of religion and 
order were introduced as offering homage to 
Lepaux, a French charlatan, — of whose 
existence Lamb had never even heard. 



: Couriers and Stars, sedition's evening host, 
Thou Morning Chronicle, and Morning Post, 
Whether ye make the ' Rights of Man ' your theme, 
Your country libel, and your God blaspheme, 
Or dirt on private worth and virtue throw, 
Still blasphemous or blackguard, praise Lepaux. 

And ye five other wandering bards, that move 
In sweet accord of harmony and love, 

C dge and S — th — y, L — d, and L — b and Co., 

Tune all your mystic harps to praise Lepaux ! " 



Not content with thus confounding persons 
of the most opposite opinions and the most 
various characters in one common libel, the 
party returned to the charge in the number 
for September, and thus denounced the 
young poets, in a parody on the "Ode 
to the Passions," under the title of "The 
Anarchists." 

" Next H — lc — ft vow'd in doleful tone, 
No more to fire a thankless age : 
Oblivion mark'd his labours for her own, 

Neglected from the press, and damn'd upon 
the stage. 

See ! faithful to their mighty dam, 

C dge, S— th — y, L— d, and L— b 

In splay-foot madrigals of love, 
Soft moaning like the widow'd dove, . 
Pour, side-by-side, their sympathetic notes ; 
Of equal rights, and civic feasts, 
And tyrant kings, and knavish priests, 
Swift through the land the tuneful mischief floats. 

And now to softer strains they struck the lyre, 

They sung the beetle or the mole, 

The dying kid, or ass's foal, 
By cruel man permitted to expire." 

These effusions have the palliation which 
the excess of sportive wit, impelled by youth- 
ful spirits and fostered by the applause of 
the great, brings with it ; but it will be 
difficult to palliate the coarse malignity of a 
passage in the prose department of the same 
work, in which the writer added to a state- 
ment that Mr. Coleridge was dishonoured at 
Cambridge for preaching Deism : " Since then 
he has left his native country, commenced 
citizen of the world, left his poor children 



LETTERS TO SOUTHEY. 



fatherless, and his wife destitute. Ex his 
disce, his friends Lamb and Southey." It 
was surely rather too much even for partisans, 
when denouncing their political opponents 
as men who " dirt on private worth and 
virtue threw," thus to slander two young 
men of the most exemplary character — one, 
of an almost puritanical exactness of demea- 
nour and conduct — and the other, persevering 
in a life of noble self-sacrifice, chequered 
only by the frailties of a sweet nature, which 
endeared him even to those who were not 
admitted to the intimacy necessary to appre- 
ciate the touching example of his severer 
virtues ! 

If Lamb's acquaintance with Coleridge and 
Southey procured for him the scorn .of the 
more virulent of the Anti-Jacobin party, he 
showed by his intimacy with another dis- 
tinguished object of their animosity, that he 
was not solicitous to avert it. He was 
introduced by Mr. Coleridge to one of the 
most remarkable persons of that stirring 
time — the author of " Caleb Williams," and 
of the " Political Justice." The first meeting 
between Lamb and Godwin did not wear a 
promising aspect. Lamb grew warm as the 
conviviality of the evening advanced, and 
indulged in some freaks of humour which 
had not been dreamed of in Godwin's philo- 
sophy ; and the philosopher, forgetting the 
equanimity with which he usually looked on 
the vicissitudes of the world or the whist- 
table, broke into an allusion to Gilray's 
caricature, and asked, " Pray, Mr. Lamb, are 
you toad or frog ? " Coleridge was appre- 
hensive of a rupture ; but calling the next 
morning on Lamb, he found Godwin seated 
at breakfast with him ; and an interchange 
of civilities and card-parties was established, 
which lasted through the life of Lamb, whom 
Godwin only survived a few months. Indif- 
ferent altogether to the politics of the age, 
Lamb could not help being struck with pro- 
ductions of its new-born energies, so remark- 
able as the works and the character of 
Godwin. He seemed to realise in himself 
what Wordsworth long afterwards described, 
" the central calm at the heart of all agita- 
tion." Through the medium of his mind the 
stormy convulsions of society were seen 
"silent as in a picture." Paradoxes the 
most daring wore the air of deliberate 
wisdom as he pronounced them. He foretold 



the future happiness of mankind, not with 
the inspiration of the poet, but with the 
grave and passionless voice of the oracle. 
There was nothing better calculated at once 
to feed and to make steady the enthusiasm 
of youthful patriots than the high specula- 
tions, in which he taught them to engage on 
the nature of social evils and the great 
destiny of his species. No one would have 
suspected the author of those wild theories, 
which startled the wise and shocked the 
prudent, in the calm, gentlemanly person 
who rarely said anything above the most 
gentle common-place, and took interest in 
little beyond the whist-table. His peculiar 
opinions were entirely subservient to his love 
of letters. He thought any man who had 
written a book had attained a superiority 
over his fellows which placed him in another 
class, and could scarcely understand other 
distinctions. Of all his works Lamb liked 
his " Essay on Sepulchres " the best — a short 
development of a scheme for preserving in 
one place the memory of all great writers 
deceased, and assigning to each his proper 
station, — quite chimerical in itself, but 
accompanied with solemn and touching 
musings on life and death and fame, embodied 
in a style of singular refinement and beauty. 



CHAPTER V. 

[1799, 1800.] 

LETTERS TO SOUTHEY, COLERIDGE, MANNING, AND 
WORDSWORTH. 

The year 1799 found Lamb engaged during 
his leisure hours in completing his tragedy of 
John Woodvil, which seems to have been 
finished about Christmas, and transmitted to 
Mr. Kemble. Like all young authors, who 
are fascinated by the splendour of theatrical 
representation, he longed to see his concep- 
tions embodied on the stage, and to receive 
his immediate reward in the sympathy of a 
crowd of excited spectators. The hope was 
vain ; — but it cheered him in many a lonely 
hour, and inspired him to write when 
exhausted with the business of the day, and 
when the less powerful stimulus of the press 
would have been insufficient to rouse him. 
In the mean time he continued to correspond 



38 



LETTERS TO SOUTHEY. 



with Mr. Southey, to send him portions of 
his play, and to reciprocate criticisms with 
him. The following three letters, addressed 
to Mr. Southey in the spring of this year, 
require no commentary. 

TO MR. SOUTHEY. 

"Jan. 21st, 1799. 

" I am to blame for not writing to you 
before on my own account ; but I know you 
can dispense with the expressions of grati- 
tude or I should have thanked you before for 
all May's kindness.* He has liberally supplied 
the person I spoke to you of with money, 
and had procured him a situation just after 
himself had lighted upon a similar one, and 
engaged too far to recede. But May's kind- 
ness was the same, and my thanks to you and 
him are the same. May went about on this 
business as if it had been his own. But you 
knew John May before this, so I will be 
silent. 

"I shall be very glad to hear from you 
when convenient. I do not know how your 
Calendar and other affairs thrive ; but above 
all, I have not heard a great while of your 
Madoc — the opus magnum. I would willingly 
send you something to give a value to this 
letter ; but I have only one slight passage 
to send you, scarce worth the sending, which 

I want to edge in somewhere into my play, 
which, by the way, hath not received the 
addition of ten lines, besides, since I saw you. 
A father, old Walter Woodvil, (the witch's 
prot£g£) relates this of his son John, who 
' fought in adverse armies,' being a royalist, 
and his father a parliamentary man. 

I I saw him in the day of Worcester fight, 
Whither he came at twice seTen years, 
Under the discipline of the Lord Falkland, 
(His uncle by the mother's side, 

Who gave his youthful politics a bent 

Quite from the principles of his father's house ;) 

There did I see this valiant Lamb of Mars, 

This sprig of honour, this unbearded John, 

This veteran in green years, this sprout, this Woodvil, 

(With dreadless ease guiding a fire-hot steed, 

Which seem'd to scorn the manage of a boy,) 

Prick forth with such a mirth into the field, 

To mingle rivalship and acts of war 

Even with the sinewy masters of the art, — 

You would have thought the work of blood had been 

A play-game merely, and the rabid Mars 

Had put his harmful hostile nature off, 

To instruct raw youth in images of war, 

And practice of the unedged players' foils. 

The rough fanatic and blood-practised soldiery 



* See ante, p. 31. 



Seeing such hope and virtue in the boy, 
Disclosed their ranks to let him pass unhurt, 
Checking their swords' uncivil injuries, 
As loth to mar that curious workmanship 
Of Valour's beauty pourtray'd in his face.' 

" Lloyd objects to 'pourtrayed in his face,' 
do you ? I like the line. 

" I shall clap this in somewhere. I think 
there is a spirit through the lines ; perhaps 
the 7th, 8th, and 9th owe their origin to 
Shakspeare, though no image is borrowed. 

He says in Henry the Fourth — 

' This infant Hotspur, 
Mars in swathing clothes.' 

But pray did Lord Falkland die before 
Worcester fight 1 In that case I must make 
bold to unclify some other nobleman. 
" Kind love and respects to Edith. 

" C. Lamb." 



TO MR. SOUTHEY. 

"March 15th, 1799. 

"Dear Southey, — I have received your 
little volume, for which I thank you, though 
I do not entirely approve of this sort of inter- 
course, where the presents are all on one side. 
I have read the last Eclogue again with 
great pleasure. It hath gained considerably 
by abridgment, and now I think it wants 
nothing but enlargement. You will call this 
one of tyrant Procrustes' criticisms, to cut 
and pull so to his own standard ; but the 
old lady is so great a favourite with me, I 
want to hear more of her ; and of ' Joanna ' 
you have given us still less. But the picture 
of the rustics leaning over the bridge, and 
the old lady travelling abroad on summer 
evening to see her garden watered, are 
images so new and true, that I decidedly 
prefer this ' Buin'd Cottage ' to any poem in 
the book. Indeed I think it the only one 
that will bear comparison with your ' Hymn 
to the Penates,' in a former volume. 

" I compare dissimilar things, as one would 
a rose and a star, for the pleasure they give 
us, or as a child soon learns to choose between 
a cake and a rattle ; for dissimilars have 
mostly some points of comparison. The next 
best poem, I think, is the first Eclogue ; 'tis 
very complete, and abounding in little pic- 
tures and realities. The remainder Eclogues, 
excepting only the ' Funeral,' I do not greatly 
admire. I miss one, which had at least as 



LETTERS TO SOUTHEY. 



8 'j 



good a title to publication as the ' Witch,' 
or the ' Sailor's Mother.' You call'd it the 
'Last of the Family.' The ' Old Woman of 
Berkeley ' comes next ; in some humours I 
would give it the preference above any. But 
who the devil is Matthew of Westminster ? 
You are as familiar with these antiquated 
monastics, as Swedenborg, or, as his followers 
affect to call him, the Baron, with his in- 
visibles. ' But you have raised a very comic 
effect out of the true narrative of Matthew of 
Westminster. 'Tis surprising with how little 
addition you have been able to convert, with 
so little alteration, his incidents, meant for 
terror, into circumstances and food for the 
spleen. The Parody is not so successful ; it 
has one famous line, indeed, which conveys 
the finest death-bed image I ever met' with: 



The doctor whisper'd the nurse, and the surgeon knew 
what he said.' 



But the offering the bride three times bears 
not the slightest analogy or proportion to the 
fiendish noises three times heard ! In ' Jas- 
par,' the circumstance of the great light is 
very affecting. But I had heard you mention 
it before. The 'Rose' is the only insipid 
piece in the volume ; it hath neither thorns 
nor sweetness ; and, besides, sets all chrono- 
logy and probability at defiance. 

" ' Cousin Margaret,' you know, I like. 
The allusions to the Pilgrim's Progress are 
particularly happy, and harmonise tacitly 
and delicately with old cousins and aunts. To 
familiar faces we do associate familiar scenes, 
and accustomed objects ; but what hath 
Apollidon and his sea-nymphs to do in these 
affairs ? Apollyon I could have borne, though 
he stands for the devil, but who is Apollidon 1 ? 
I think you are too apt to conclude faintly, 
with some cold moral, as in the end of the 
poem called ' The Victory ' — 

'Be thou her comforter, who art the widow's friend;' 

a single common-place line of comfort, which 
bears no proportion in weight or number to 
the many lines which describe suffering. 
This is to convert religion into mediocre 
feelings, which should burn, and glow, and 
tremble. A moral should be wrought into 
the body and soul, the matter and tendency 
of a poem, not tagged to the end, like a ' God 
send the good ship into harbour,' at the con- 



clusion of our bills of lading. The finishing 
of the ' Sailor ' is also imperfect. Any dis- 
senting minister may say and do as much. 

" These remarks, I know, are crude and 
unwrought, but I do not lay claim to much 
accurate thinking. I never judge system- 
wise of things, but fasten upon particulars. 
After all, there is a great deal in the book 
that I must, for time, leave unme?itioned, to 
deserve my thanks for its own sake, as well 
as for the friendly remembrances implied in 
the gift. I again return you my thanks. 

" Pray present my love to Edith. 

" C. L." 



TO MR. SOUTHEY. 

"March 20th, 1799. 
" I am hugely pleased with your { Spider,' 
'your old freemason,' as you call him. The 
three first stanzas are delicious ; they seem 
to me a compound of Burns and Old Quarles, 
those kind of home-strokes, where more is 
felt than strikes the ear ; a terseness, a jocular 
pathos, which makes one feel in laughter. 
The measure, too, is novel and pleasing. I 
could almost wonder, Rob. Burns, in his life- 
time never stumbled upon it. The fourth 
stanza is less striking, as being less original. 
The fifth falls off. It has no felicity of 
phrase, no old-fashioned phrase or feeling. 

' Young hopes, and love's delightful dreams,' 

savour neither of Bums nor Quarles ; they 
seem more like shreds of many a modern 
sentimental sonnet. The last stanza hath 
nothing striking in it, if I except the two 
concluding lines, which are Burns all over. 
I wish, if you concur with me, these things 
could be looked to. I am sure this is a kind 
of writing, which comes ten-fold better 
recommended to the heart, comes there more 
like a neighbour or familiar, than thousands 
of Hamnels and Zillahs and Madelons. I 
beg you will send me the ' Holly-tree,' if it 
at all resemble this, for it must please me. 
I have never seen it. I love this sort of 
poems, that open a new intercourse with the 
most despised of the animal and insect race. 
I think this vein may be further opened. 
Peter Pindar hath very prettily apostro- 
phised a fly ; Burns hath his mouse and his 
louse ; Coleridge less successfully hath made 
overtures of intimacy to a jackass, therein 



■in 



LETTERS TO MANNING. 



only following at unresembling distance, 
Sterne and greater Cervantes. Besides these, 
I know of no other examples of breaking 
down the partition between us and our 'poor 
earth-born companions.' It is sometimes 
revolting to be put in a track of feeling by 
other people, not one's own immediate 
thoughts, else I would persuade you, if I 
could (I am in earnest), to commence a series 
of these animal poems, which might have a 
tendency to rescue some poor creatures from 
the antipathy of mankind. Some thoughts 
come across me ; — for instance — to a rat, to 
a toad, to a cockchafer, to a mole — people 
bake moles alive by a slow oven-fire to cure 
consumption — rats are, indeed, the most 
despised and contemptible parts of God's 
earth. I killed a rat the other day by 
punching him to pieces, and feel a weight of 
blood upon me to this hour. Toads you 
know are made to fly, and tumble down and 
crush all to pieces. Cockchafers are old 
sport ; then again to a worm, with an apos- 
trophe to anglers, those patient tyrants, meek 
inflictors of pangs intolerable, cool devils ; to 
an owl ; to all snakes, with an apology for 
their poison ; to a cat in boots or bladders. 
Your own fancy, if it takes a fancy to these 
hints, will suggest many more. A series of 
such poems, suppose them accompanied with 
plates descriptive of animal torments, cooks 
roasting lobsters, fishmongers crimping 
skates, &c, &c. would take excessively. I 
will willingly enter into a partnership in the 
plan with you : I think my heart and soul 
would go with it too — at least, give it a 
thought. My plan is but this minute come 
into my head ; but it strikes me instan- 
taneously as something new, good, and useful, 
full of pleasure, and full of moral. If old 
Quarles and Wither could live again, we 
would invite them into our firm. Burns hath 
done his part." 



In the summer Lamb revisited the scenes 
in Hertfordshire, where, in his grandmother's 
time, he had spent so many happy holidays. 
In the following letter, he just hints at 
feelings which, many years after, he so beau- 
tifully developed in those essays of l Elia,' — 
' Blakesmoor,' and ' Mackery End.' 



TO MR. SOUTHEY. 

"Oct. 31st, 1799. 

" Dear Southey, — I have but just got your 
letter, being returned from Herts, where I 
have passed a few red-letter days with much 
pleasure. I would describe the county to, 
you, as you have done by Devonshire, but 
alas ! I am a poor pen at that same. I could 
tell you of an old house with a tapestry bed- 
room, the c Judgment of Solomon ' composing 
one pannel, and 'A ctseon spying Diana naked ' 
the other. I could tell of an old marble hall, 
with Hogarth's prints, and the Roman 
Caesars in marble hung round. I could tell 
of a wilderness, and of a village church, and 
where the bones of my honoured grandam 
lie ; but there are feelings which refuse to be 
translated, sulky aborigines, which will not 
be naturalised in another soil. Of this nature 
are old family faces, and scenes of infancy. 

" I have given your address, and the books 
you want, to the Arch's ; they will send 
them as soon as they can get them, but they 
do not seem quite familiar to their names. 
I shall have nothing to communicate, I fear, 
to the Anthology. You shall have some 
fragments of my play, if you desire them, but 
I think I had rather print it whole. Have 
you seen it, or shall I lend you a copy ? I 
want your opinion of it. 

" I must get to business, so farewell ; my 
kind remembrances to Edith. " C. L." 



In the autumn of this year Lamb's choice 
list of friends received a most important 
addition in Mr. Thomas Manning, then a 
mathematical tutor at Cambridge ; of whom 
he became a frequent correspondent, and to 
whom he remained strongly attached through 
life. Lloyd had become a graduate of the 
university, and to his introduction Lamb was 
indebted for Manning's friendship. The 
following letters will show how earnestly, 
yet how modestly, Lamb sought it. 



TO MR. MANNING. 



Dec. i; 



" Dear Manning, — The particular kindness, 
even up to a degree of attachment, which I 
have experienced from you, seems to claim 
some distinct acknowledgment on my part. 
I could not content myself with a bare 



LETTERS TO MANNING. 



41 



remembrance to you, conveyed in some letter 
to Lloyd. 

" Will it be agreeable to you, if I occasion- 
ally recruit your memory of me, which must 
else soon fade, if you consider the brief inter- 
course we have had. I am not likely to 
prove a troublesome correspondent. My 
scribbling days are past. I shall have no 
sentiments to communicate, but as they 
spring up from some living and worthy 
occasion. 

" I look forward with great pleasure to the 
performance of your promise, that we should 
meet in London early in the ensuing year. 
The century must needs commence auspi- 
ciously for me, that brings with it Manning's 
friendship, as an earnest of its after gifts. 

" I should have written before, but for a 
troublesome inflammation in one of my eyes, 
brought on by night travelling with the 
coach windows sometimes up. 

"What more I have to say shall be reserved 
for a letter to Lloyd. I must not prove 
tedious to you in my first outset, lest I should 
affright you by my ill-judged loquacity. 
" I am, yours most sincerely, 

" C. Lamb." 

TO MR. MANNING. 

"Dec. 28th, 1799. 

"Dear Manning, — Having suspended my 
correspondence a decent interval, as knowing 
that even good things may be taken to satiety, 
a wish cannot but recur to learn whether 
you be still well and happy. Do all things 
continue in the state I left them in Cam- 
bridge ? 

" Do your night parties still flourish ? and 
do you continue to bewilder your company, 
with your thousand faces, running down 
through all the keys of idiotism (like Lloyd 
over his perpetual harpsichord), from the 
smile and the glimmer of half-sense and 
quarter-sense, to the grin and hanging lip of 
Betty Foy's own Johnny? And does the 
face - dissolving curfew sound at twelve? 
How unlike the great originals were your 
petty terrors in the postscript, not fearful 
enough to make a fairy shudder, or a Lilli- 
putian fine lady, eight months full of child, 
miscarry. Yet one of them, which had more 
beast than the rest, I thought faintly resem- 
bled one of your brutifications. But, seriously, 
I long to see your own honest Manning-face 



again. I did not mean a pun, — your man's 
face, you will be apt to say, I know your 
wicked will to pun. I cannot now write to 
Lloyd and you too, so you must convey as 
much interesting intelligence as this may 
contain or be thought to contain, to him and 
Sophia, with my dearest love and remem- 
brances. 

" By the by, I think you and Sophia both 
incorrect with regard to the title of the play* 
Allowing your objection (which is not neces- 
sary, as pride may be, and is in real life often, 
cured by misfortunes not directly originating 
from its own acts, as Jeremy Taylor will tell 
you a naughty desire is sometimes sent to 
cure it. I know you read these practical 
divines) — but allowing your objection, does 
not the betraying of his father's secret 
directly spring from pride ? — from the pride 
of wine and a full heart, and a proud over- 
stepping of the ordinary rules of morality, 
and contempt of the prejudices of mankind, 
which are not to bind superior souls — 'as 
trust in the matter of secrets all ties of blood, &c. 
&c, keeping of promises, the feeble mind's 
religion, binding our morning knowledge to 
the performance of what last night's ignorance 
spake ' — does he not prate, that 'Great Spirits' 1 
must do more than die for their friend — does 
not the pride of wine incite him to display 
some evidence of friendship, which its own 
irregularity shall make great ? This I know, 
that I meant his punishment not alone to be 
a cure for his daily and habitual pride, but 
the direct consequence and appropriate 
punishment of a particular act of pride. 

" If you do not understand it so, it is my 
fault in not explaining my meaning. 

" I have not seen Coleridge since, and 
scarcely expect to see him, — perhaps he has 
been at Cambridge. 

" Need I turn over to blot a fresh clean 
half-sheet ? merely to say, what I hope you 
are sure of without my repeating it, that I 
would have you consider me, dear Manning, 
" Your sincere friend, " C. Lamb." 

Early in the following year (1800), Lamb, 
with his sister, removed to Chapel-street, 
Pentonville. In the summer he visited 
Coleridge, at Stowey, and spent a few 

* It had been proposed to entitle John Woodvil 
" Pride's Cure." 



42 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



delightful holidays in his society and that 
of Wordsworth, who then resided in the 
neighbourhood. This was the first oppor- 
tunity Lamb had enjoyed of seeing much of 
the poet, who was destined to exercise a 
beneficial and lasting influence on the litera- 
ture and moral sense of the opening century. 
At this time Lamb was scarcely prepared to 
sympathise with the naked simplicity of the 
" Lyrical Ballads," which Wordsworth was 
preparing for the press. The " rich conceits " 
of the writers of Elizabeth's reign had been 
blended with his first love of poetry, and he 
could not at once acknowledge the serene 
beauty of a style, in which language was 
only the stainless mirror of thought, and 
which sought no aid either from the grandeur 
of artificial life or the pomp of words. In 
after days he was among the most earnest of 
this great poet's admirers, and rejoiced as he 
found the scoffers who sneered at his bold 
experiment gradually owning his power. How 
he felt when the little golden opportunity of 
conversation with Wordsworth and Cole- 
ridge had passed will appear from the 
following letter, which seems to have been 
addressed to Coleridge shortly after his 
return to London. 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

" I am scarcely yet so reconciled to the 
loss of you, or so subsided into my wonted 
uniformity of feeling, as to sit calmly down 
to think of you and write to you. But I 
reason myself into the belief that those few 
and pleasant holidays shall not have been 
spent in vain. I feel improvement in the 
recollection of many a casual conversation. 
The names of Tom Poole, of Wordsworth 
and his good sister, with thine and Sarah's, 
are become ' familiar in my mouth as house- 
hold words.' You would make me very 
happy, if you think W. has no objection, by 
transcribing for me that inscription of his. 
I have some scattered sentences ever floating 
on my memory, teasing me that I cannot 
remember more of it. You may believe I 
will make no improper use of it. Believe 
me I can think now of many subjects on 
which I had planned gaining information 
from you ; but I forgot my ' treasure's 
worth' while I possessed it. Your leg is 
now become to me a matter of much more 
importance — and many a little thing, which 



when I was present with you seemed scarce 
to indent my notice, now presses painfully 
on my remembrance. Is the Patriot come 
yet ? Are Wordsworth and his sister gone 
yet ? I was looking out for John Thelwall 
all the way from Bridgewater, and had I met 
him, I think it would have moved almost me 
to tears. You will oblige me too by sending 
me my great-coat, which I left behind in 
the oblivious state the mind is thrown into 
at parting — is it not ridiculous that I 
sometimes envy that great-coat lingering 
so cunningly behind ! — at present I have 
none — so send it me by a Stowey waggon, if 
there be such a thing, directing for C. L., 
No. 45, Chapel -street, Pentonville, near 
London. But above all, that Inscription ! 
— it will recall to me the tones of all your 
voices — and with them many a remembered 
kindness to one who could and can repay 
you all only by the silence of a grateful 
heart. I could not talk much, while I was 
with you, but my silence was not sullenness, 
nor I hope from any bad motive ; but, in 
truth, disuse has made me awkward at it. 
I know I behaved myself, particularly at 
Tom Poole's, and at Cruikshank's, most like 
a sulky child ; but company and converse 
are strange to me. It was kind in you all to 
endure me as you did. 

"Are you and your dear Sarah — to me 
also very dear, because very kind — agreed 
yet about the management of little Hartley ? 
and how go on the little rogue's teeth 1 I 
will see White to-morrow, and he shall send 
you information on that matter ; but as 
perhaps I can do it as well after talking with 
him, I will keep this letter open. 

" My love and thanks to you and all of you. 

" C. L." 

" Wednesday Evening." 



Coleridge shortly after came to town, to 
make arrangements for his contributions to 
the daily press. The following note is 
addressed to him when in London. 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

"Jan. 2nd, 1800. 
" Dear Coleridge, — Now I write, I cannot 
miss this opportunity of acknowledging the 
obligations myself, and the readers in general 
of that luminous paper, the ' Morning Post,' 
are under to you for the very novel and 



LETTERS TO MANNING. 



4 3 



exquisite manner in which you combined 
political with grammatical science, in your 
yesterday's dissertation on Mr. Wyndham's 
unhappy composition. It must have been 
the death-blow to that ministry. I expect 
Pitt and Grenville to resign. More especially 
the delicate and Cottrellian grace with which 
you officiated, with a ferula for a white wand, 
as gentleman usher to the word ' also,' which 
it seems did not know its place. 

" I expect Manning of Cambridge in town 
to-night — will you fulfil your promise of 
meeting him at my house ? He is a man of 
a thousand. Give me a line to say what 
day, whether Saturday, Sunday, Monday, 
&c, and if Sarah and the Philosopher can 
come. I am afraid if I did not at intervals 
call upon you, I should never see you. But I 
forget, the affairs of the nation engross your 
time and your mind. 

"Farewell, " C. L." 

Coleridge afterwards spent some Aveeks 
with Lamb, as appears from the following 
letter : — 

TO MR. MANNING. 

"March 17th, 1800. 

"Dear Manning, — I am living in a con- 
tinuous feast. Coleridge has been with me 
now for nigh three weeks, and the more I see 
of him in the quotidian undress and relax- 
ation of his mind, the more cause I see to 
love him, and believe him a very good man, 
and all those foolish impressions to the 
contrary fly off like morning slumbers. He 
is engaged in translations, which I hope will 
keep him this month to come. He is uncom- 
monly kind and friendly to me. He ferrets 
me day and night to do something. He tends 
me, amidst all his own worrying and heart- 
oppressing occupations, as a gardener tends 
his young tulip. Marry come up ; what a 
pretty similitude, and how like your humble 
servant ! He has lugged me to the brink of 
engaging to a newspaper, and has suggested 
to me for a first plan, the forgery of a 
supposed manuscript of Burton the anatomist 
of melancholy. I have even written the 
introductory letter ; and, if I can pick up a 
few guineas this way, I feel they will be most 
refreshing, bread being so dear. If I go on 
with it, I will apprise you of it, as you may 
like to see my things ! and the tulip of all 
flowers, loves to be admired most. 



"Pray pardon me, if my letters do not 
come very thick. I am so taken up with one 
thing or other, that I cannot pick out (I will 
not say time, but) fitting times to write to 
you. My dear love to Lloyd and Sophia, and 
pray split this thin letter into three parts, and 
present them with the two biggest in my name. 

" They are my oldest friends ; but, ever 
the new friend driveth out the old, as the 
ballad sings ! God bless you all three ! I 
would hear from LI. if I could. 

"C. L." 

" Flour has just fallen nine shillings a 
sack ! we shall be all too rich. 

" Tell Charles I have seen his mamma, 
and have almost fallen in love with her, 
since I mayn't with Olivia. She is so fine 
and graceful, a complete matron-lady-quaker. 
She has given me two little books. Olivia 
grows a charming girl — full of feeling, and 
thinner than she was ; but I have not time 
to fall in love. 

" Mary presents her general compliments. 
She keeps in fine health ! " 

Coleridge, during this visit, recommended 
Lamb to Mr. Daniel Stuart, then editor of 
the "Morning Post," as a writer of light 
articles, by which he might add something 
to an income, then barely sufficient for the 
decent support of himself and his sister. It 
would seem from his next letter to Manning, 
that he had made an offer to try his hand at 
some personal squibs, which, ultimately, was 
not accepted. Manning need not have 
feared that there would have been a particle 
of malice in them ! Lamb afterwards became 
a correspondent to the paper, and has re- 
corded his experience of the misery of toiling 
after pleasantries in one of the " Essays of 
Elia," entitled " Newspapers thirty-five years 
ago." 

TO MR. MANNING. 

" C. L.'s moral sense presents her compli- 
ments to Doctor Manning, is very thankful 
for his medical advice, but is happy to add 
that her disorder has died of itself. 

" Dr. Manning, Coleridge has left us, to go 
into the north, on a visit to his God, Words- 
worth. With him have flown all my splendid 
prospects of engagement with the ' Morning 
Post,' all my visionary guineas, the deceitful 



•14 



LETTERS TO MANNING. 



wages of unborn scandal. In truth, I wonder 
you took it up so seriously. All my inten- 
tion was but to make a little sport with such 
public and fair game as Mr. Pitt, Mr. Wilber- 
force, Mrs. Fitzherbert, the Devil, &c. — 
gentry dipped in Styx all over, whom no 
paper javelin-lings can touch. To have made 
free with these cattle, where was the harm ? 
'twould have been but giving a polish to 
lamp-black, not nigrifying a negro primarily. 
After all, I cannot but regret my involuntary 
virtue. Hang virtue that's thrust upon us ; 
it behaves itself with such constraint, till 
conscience opens the window and lets out 
the goose. I had struck off two imitations 
of Burton, quite abstracted from any modern 
allusions, which was my intent only to lug 
in from time to time to make 'em popular. 

" Stuart has got these, with an introduc- 
tory letter ; but, not hearing from him, I 
have ceased from my labours, but I write to 
him to-day to get a final answer. I am 
afraid they won't do for a paper. Burton is 
a scarce gentleman, not much known, else I 
had done 'em pretty well. 

" I have also hit off a few lines in the name 
of Burton, being a ( Conceit of Diabolic 
Possession.' Burton was a man often assailed 
by deepest melancholy, and at other times 
much given to laughing, and jesting, as is 
the way with melancholy men. I will send 
them you : they were almost extempore, and 
no great things ; but you will indulge them. 
Robert Lloyd is come to town. Priscilla 
meditates going to see Pizarro at Drury 
Lane to-night, (from her uncle's) under cover 
of coming to dine with me . . heu ! tempora ! 
heu ! mores ! — I have barely time to finish, 
as I expect her and Robin every minute. — 
Yours as usual, " C. L." 



The following is an extract from a letter 
addressed about this time to Manning, who 
had taken a view of a personal matter 
relating to a common friend of both, directly 
contrary to tliat of Lamb. 

TO MR. MANNING. 

" Dear Manning, — Best you merry in your 
opinion ! Opinion is a species of property ; 
and though I am always desirous to share 
with my friend to a certain extent, I shall 



property, properly my own. Some day, 
Manning, when we meet, substituting Cory- 
don and fair Amaryllis, for and , 

we will discuss together this question of 
moral feeling, ' In what cases, and how far 
sincerity is a virtue ? ' I do not mean Truth, 
a good Olivia-like creature, God bless her, 
who, meaning no offence, is always ready to 
give an answer when she is asked why she 
did so and so ; but a certain forward-talking 
half-brother of hers, Sincerity, that amphi- 
bious gentleman, who is so ready to perk up 
his obnoxious sentiments unasked into your 
notice, as Midas would his ears into your 
face uncalled for. But I despair of doing 
anything by a letter in the way of explain- 
ing or coming to explanations. A good wish, 
or a pun, or a piece of secret history, may be 
well enough that way conveyed ; nay, it has 
been known, that intelligence of a turkey 
hath been conveyed by that medium, without 
much ambiguity. Godwin I am a good deal 
pleased with. He is a very well-behaved, 
decent man, nothing very brilliant about 
him, or imposing, as you may suppose ; quite 
another guess sort of gentleman from what 
your Anti-jacobin Christians imagine him. 
I was well pleased to find he has neither 
horns nor claws ; quite a tame creature, I 
assure you. A middle-sized man, both in 
stature and in understanding ; whereas, 
from his noisy fame, you would expect to 
find a Briareus Centimanus, or a Tityus tall 
enough to pull Jupiter from his heavens. 

" Pray, is it a part of your sincerity to 
show my letters to Lloyd ? for, really, gentle- 
men ought to explain their virtues upon a 
first acquaintance, to prevent mistakes. 

" God bless you, Manning. Take my 
trifling as trifling ; and believe me, seriously 
and deeply, — Your well-wisher and friend, 

"C.L." 

The following letter was addressed to 
Coleridge shortly after he had left London 
on a visit to Wordsworth, who in the 
meantime had settled on the borders of 
Grasmere. 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

"Aug. 6th, 1800. 

"Dear Coleridge, — I have taken to-day, 
and delivered to L. & Co., Imprimis : your 
ever like to keep some tenets, and some books, viz., three ponderous German diction- 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



45 



aries, one volume (I can find no more) of 
German and French ditto, sundry other 
German books unbound, as you left them, 
1 Percy's Ancient Poetry,' and one volume of 
'Anderson's Poets.' I specify them, that 
you may not lose any. Secundo : a dressing- 
gown (value, fivepence) in which you used to 
sit and look like a conjuror, when you were 
translating Wallenstein. A case of two 
razors, and a shaving-box and strap. This 
it has cost me a severe struggle to part with. 
They are in a brown-paper parcel, which 
also contains sundry papers and poems, 
sermons, some few Epic Poems, — one about 
Cain and Abel, which came from Poole, 
&c, &c, and also your tragedy ; with one or 
two small German books, and that drama in 
which Got-fader performs. Tertio : a small 
oblong box containing all your letters, collected 
from all your waste papers, and which fill 
the said little box. All other waste papers, 
which I judged worth sending, are in the 
paper parcel aforesaid. But you will find all 
your letters in the box by themselves. Thus 
have I discharged my conscience and my 
lumber-room of all your property, save and 
except a folio entitled ' Tyrrell's Bibliotheca 
Politica,' which you used to learn your 
politics out of when you wrote for the ' Post,' 
mutatis mutandis, i. e., applying past in- 
ferences to modern data. I retain that, 
because I am sensible I am very deficient in 
the politics myself; and I have torn up — 
don't be angry, waste paper has risen forty 
per cent., and I can't afford to buy it — all 
' Buonaparte's Letters,' ' Arthur Young's 
Treatise on Corn,' and one or two more light- 
armed infantry, which I thought better 
suited the flippancy of London discussion, 
than the dignity of Keswick thinking. Mary 
says you will be in a passion about them, 
when you come to miss them ; but you must 
study philosophy. Read ' Albertus Magnus 
de Chartis Amissis' five times over after 
phlebotomising, — 'tis Burton's recipe — and 
then be angry with an absent friend if you 
can. Sara is obscure. Am I to understand 
by her letter, that she sends a kiss to Eliza 

B ? Pray tell your wife that a note of 

interrogation on the superscription of a 
letter is highly ungrammatical — she proposes 
writing my name Lamb ? Lambe is quite 
enough. I have had the Anthology, and 
like only one thing in it, Lewti ; but of that 



the last stanza is detestable, the rest most 
exquisite ! — the epithet enviable would dash 
the finest poem. For God's sake (I never 
was more serious), don't make me ridiculous 
any more by terming me gentle-hearted in 
print, or do it in better verses. It did well 
enough five years ago when I came to see 
you, and was moral coxcomb enough at the 
time you wrote the lines, to feed upon such 
epithets ; but, besides that, the meaning of 
gentle is equivocal at best, and almost always 
means poor-spirited ; the very quality of 
gentleness is abhorrent to such vile trumpet- 
ings. My sentiment is long since vanished. 
I hope my virtues have done sucking. I can 
scarce think but you meant it in joke. I hope 
you did, for I should be ashamed to think 
you could think to gratify me by such praise, 
fit only to be a cordial to some green-sick 
sonneteer.* 

" I have hit off the following in imitation 
of old English poetry, which, I imagine, I am 
a dab at. The measure is unmeasureable ; 
but it most resembles that beautiful ballad 
the Old and Young Courtier ; and in its 
feature of taking the extremes of two 
situations for just parallel, it resembles the 
old poetry certainly. If I could but stretch 
out the circumstances to twelve more verses, 
i. e. if I had as much genius as the writer of 
that old song, I think it would be excellent. 
It was to follow an imitation of Burton in 
prose, which you have not seen. But fate 
' and wisest Stewart ' say No.t 

" I can send you 200 pens and six quires 
of paper immediately, if they will answer the 
carriage by coach. It would be foolish to 
pack 'em up cum multis Ubris et ceteris, — 
they would all spoil. I only wait your 
commands to coach them. I would pay five- 
and-forty thousand carriages to read W.'s 



* This refers to a poem of Coleridge's, composed in 
1797, and published in the Anthology of the year 1800, 
under the title of " This Lime-tree Bower my Prison," 
addressed to "Charles Lamb, of the India House, 
London," in which Lamb is thus apostrophised, as 
taking more pleasure in the country than Coleridge's 
other visitors — a compliment which even then he 
scarcely merited :■ — 

" But thou, methinks most glad, 

My gentle-hearted Charles ! For thou hast pined 
And linger'd after nature many a year, 
In the great city pent," — &c. 

f The quaint and pathetic poem, entitled " A Ballad, 
noticing the difference of rich and poor, in the ways of 
a rich noble's palace and a poor workhouse." 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



tragedy, of which I have heard so much and 
seen so little — only what I saw at Stowey. 
Pray give me an order in writing on Long- 
man for ' Lyrical Ballads.' I have the first 
volume, and, truth to tell, six shillings is a 
broad shot. I cram all I can in, to save a 
multiplying of letters, — those pretty comets 
with swinging tails. 

" I '11 just crowd in God bless you ! 

" C. Lamb." 

"John Woodvil" was now printed, 
although not published till a year after- 
wards ; probably withheld in the hope of its 
representation on the stage. A copy was 
sent to Coleridge for Wordsworth, with the 
following letter or cluster of letters, written 
at several times. The ladies referred to, in 
the exquisite description of Coleridge's blue- 
stocking friends, are beyond the reach of 
feeling its application ; nor will it be detected 
by the most apprehensive of their surviving 
friends. 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

" I send you, in this parcel, my play, which 
I beg you to present in my name, with my 
respect and love, to Wordsworth and his 
sister. You blame us for giving your direc- 
tion to Miss W ; the woman has been 

ten times after us about it, and we gave it 
her at last, under the idea that no further 
harm would ensue, but she would once write 
to you, and you would bite your lips and 
forget to answer it, and so it would end. 
You read us a dismal homily upon ' Eeali- 
ties.' We know, quite as well as you do, 
what are shadows and what are realities. 
You, for instance, when you are over your 
fourth or fifth jorum, chirping about old 
school occurrences, are the best of realities. 
Shadows are cold, thin things, that have no 

warmth or grasp in them. Miss W , and 

her friend, and a tribe of authoresses that 
come after you here daily, and, in defect of 
you, hive and cluster upon us, are the shadows. 

You encouraged that mopsey, Miss W , 

to dance after you, in the hope of having her 
nonsense put into a nonsensical Anthology. 
We have pretty well shaken her off, by that 
simple expedient of referring her to you ; 
but there are more burrs in the wind. I 
came home t'other day from business, hungry 
as a hunter, to dinner, with nothing, I am 



sure, of the author but hunger about me, and 
whom found I closeted with Mary but a 



friend of this Miss W- 



one Miss B e, 



or B y ; I don't know how she spells her 

name. I just came in time enough, I believe, 
luckily to prevent them from exchanging 
vows of eternal friendship. It seems she is 
one of your authoresses, that you first foster, 
and then upbraid us with. But I forgive 
you. ' The rogue has given me potions to 
make me love him.' Well ; go she would 
not, nor step a step over our threshold, till 
we had promised to come and drink tea with 
her next night. I had never seen her before, 
and could not tell who the devil it was that 
was so familiar. We went, however, not to 
be impolite. Her lodgings are up two pair 

of stairs in Street. Tea and coffee, and 

macaroons — a kind of cake I much love. 

We sat down. Presently Miss B broke 

the silence, by declaring herself quite of a 
different opinion from If Israeli, who sup- 
poses the differences of human intellect to be 
the mere effect of organisation. She begged 
to know my opinion. I attempted to carry 
it off with a pun upon organ, but that went 
off very flat. She immediately conceived a 
very low opinion of my metaphysics ; and, 
turning round to Mary, put some question to 
her in French, — possibly having heard that 
neither Mary nor I understood French. The 
explanation that took place occasioned some 
embarrassment and much wondering. She 
then fell into an insulting conversation about 
the comparative genius and merits of all 
modern languages, and concluded with 
asserting that the Saxon was esteemed the 
purest dialect in Germany. From thence 
she passed into the subject of poetry ; where 
I, who had hitherto sat mute, and a hearer 
only, humbly hoped I might now put in a 
word to some advantage, seeing that it was 
my own trade in a manner. But I was 
stopped by a round assertion, that no good 
poetry had appeared since Dr. Johnson's 
time. It seems the Doctor has suppressed 
many hopeful geniuses that way, by the 
severity of his critical strictures in his 
' Lives of the Poets.' I here ventured to 
question the fact, and was beginning to 
appeal to names, but I was assured 'it was 
certainly the case.' Then we discussed Miss 
More's book on education, which I had never 
read. It seems Dr. Gregory, another of Miss 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



B 's friends, has found fault with one of 

Miss More's metaphors. Miss More has been 
at some pains to vindicate herself, — in the 

opinion of Miss B , not without success. 

It seems the Doctor is invariably against the 
use of broken or mixed metaphor, which he 
reprobates, against the authority of Shaks- 
peare himself. We next discussed the 
question, whether Pope was a poet 1 I find 
Dr. Gregory is of opinion he was not, though 
Miss Seward does not at all concur with him 
in this. We then sat upon the comparative 
merits of the ten translations of ' Pizarro,' 

and Miss B y or B e advised Mary 

to take two of them home ; she thought it 
might afford her some pleasure to compare 
them verbatim ; which we declined. It 
being now nine o'clock, wine and macaroons 
were again served round, and we parted, 
with a promise to go again next week, and 
meet the Miss Porters, who, it seems, have 
heard much of Mr. Coleridge, and wish to 
meet us, because we are his friends. I have 
been preparing for the occasion. I crowd 
cotton in my ears. I read all the reviews 
and magazines of the past month, against the 
dreadful meeting, and I hope by these means 
to cut a tolerable second-rate figure. 

"Pray let us have no more complaints 
about shadows. We are in a fair way, through 
you, to surfeit sick upon them. 

" Our loves and respects to your host and 
hostess. 

" Take no thought about your proof-sheets ; 
they shall be done as if Woodfall himself did 
them. Pray send us word of Mrs. Coleridge 
and little David Hartley, your little reality. 

" Farewell, dear Substance. Take no um- 
brage at any thing I have written. 

" C. Lamb, Umbra." 

" Land of Shadows, 
Shadow-month the 16th or 17th, 1800." 



" Coleridge, I find loose among your papers 
a copy of Christabel. It wants about thirty 
lines ; you will very much oblige me by 
sending me the beginning as far as that 
line, — 

' And the spring comes slowly up this way ; ' 

and the intermediate lines between — 

* The lady leaps up suddenly, 
The lovely Lady Christabel ; ' 



and the lines, 



She folded her arms beneath her cloak, 
And stole to the other side of the oak.' 



The trouble to you will be small, and the 
benefit to us very great ! A pretty antithesis ! 
A figure in speech I much applaud. 

" Godwin has called upon us. He spent 
one evening here. Was very friendly. Kept 
us up till midnight. Drank punch, and talked 
about you. He seems, above all men, mor- 
tified at your going away. Suppose you 
were to write to that good-natured heathen : 

' Or is he a shadoio 1 ' 

" If I do not write, impute it to the long 
postage, of which you have so much cause to 
complain. I have scribbled over a queer letter, 
as 1 find by perusal, but it means no mis- 
chief. 

" I am, and will be, yours ever, in sober 

" C. L. 



" Write your German as plain as sunshine, 
for that must correct itself. You know I am 
homo unius linguae ; in English, illiterate, a 
dunce, a ninny." 



TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

"Aug. 26th, 1800. 

" How do you like this little epigram ? It 
is not my writing nor had I any finger in it. 
If you concur with me in thinking it very 
elegant and very original, I shall be tempted 
to name the author to you. I will just hint 
that it is almost or quite a first attempt. 

[Here Miss Lamb's little poem of Helen 
was introduced.] 

" By-the-by, I have a sort of recollection 
that somebody, I think you, promised me a 
sight of Wordsworth's Tragedy. I should 
be very glad of it just now ; for I have got 
Manning with me, and should like to read it 
with him. But this, I confess, is a refine- 
ment. Under any circumstances, alone, in 
Cold-Bath prison, or in the desert island, just 
when Prospero and his crew had set off, with 
Caliban in a cage, to Milan, it would be a 
treat to me to read that play. Manning has 
read it, so has Lloyd, and all Lloyd's family ; 
but I could not get him to betray his trust 



•IS 



LETTERS TO MANNING. 



by giving me a sight of it. Lloyd is sadly 
deficient in some of those virtuous vices. 

" George Dyer is the only literary character 
I am happily acquainted with. The oftener I 
see him, the more deeply I admire him. He 
is goodness itself. If I could but calculate 
the precise date of his death, I would write 
a novel on purpose to make George the hero. 
I could hit him off to a hair." 



The tragedy which Lamb was thus anxious 
to read, has been perseveringly withheld from 
the world. A fine passage, quoted in one of 
Hazlitt's prose essays, makes us share in his 
earnest curiosity : — 

" Action is momentary — a word, a blow — 
The motion of a muscle — this way or that ; 
Suffering is long, drear, and infinite." 

Wordsworth's genius is perhaps more fitly 
employed in thus tracing out the springs of 
heroic passion, and developing the profound 
elements of human character, than in fol- 
lowing them out through their exhibition 
in violent contest or majestic repose. Surely 
he may now afford to gratify the world ! 



The next is a short but characteristic letter 
to Manning. 

TO MR. MANNING. 

"Aug. 11th, 1800. 

" My dear fellow, (N.B. mighty familiar of 
late !) for me to come to Cambridge now is 
one of Heaven's impossibilities. Metaphy- 
sicians tell us, even it can work nothing 
which implies a contradiction. I can explain 
this by telling you that I am engaged to do 
double duty (this hot weather !) for a man 
who has taken advantage of this very weather 
to go and cool himself in ' green retreats ' all 
the month of August. 

" But for you to come to London instead ! 
— muse upon it, revolve it, cast it about in 
your mind. I have a bed at your command. 
You shall drink rum, brandy, gin, aqua-vitae, 
usquebaugh, or whiskey a' nights ; and for 
the after-dinner trick, I have eight bottles of 
genuine port, which, mathematically divided, 
gives l-i- for every day you stay, provided you 
stay a week. Hear John Milton sing, 

• Let Euclid rest and Archimedes pause.' 

Twenty-first Sonnet. 



And elsewhere, — 

' What neat repast shall feast us, light * and choice, 
Of Attic taste, with wine,f whence we may rise 
To hear the lute well touch'd, or artful voice 
Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air ? ' 

" Indeed the poets are full of this pleasing 
morality, — 

' Veni cito, Domine Manning ! ' 

" Think upon it. Excuse the paper, it is 
"C. Lamb." 



all I have. 



Lamb now meditated a removal to the 
home-place of his best and most solemn 
thoughts — the Temple ; and thus announced 
it in a letter to Manning. 

TO MR. MANNING. 

"You masters of logic ought to know 
(logic is nothing more than a knowledge of 
words, as the Greek etymon implies), that all 
words are no more to be taken in a literal 
sense at all times than a promise given to a 
tailor. When I exprest an apprehension that 
you were mortally offended, I meant no more 
than by the application of a certain formula 
of efficacious sounds, which had done in 
similar cases before, to rouse a sense of 
decency in you, and a remembrance of what 
was due to me ! You masters of logic should 
advert to this phenomenon in human speech, 
before you arraign the usage of us dramatic 
geniuses. Imagination is a good blood mare, 
and goes well ; but the misfortune is, she has 
too many paths before her. "lis true I might 
have imaged to myself, that you had trundled 
your frail carcass to Norfolk. I might also, 
and did imagine, that you had not, but that 
you were lazy, or inventing new properties 
in a triangle, and for that purpose moulding 
and squeezing Landlord Crisp's three-cornered 
beaver into fantastic experimental forms ; or, 
that Archimedes was meditating to repulse 
the French, in case of a Cambridge invasion, 
by a geometric hurling of folios on their red 
caps ; or, peradventure, that you were in 
extremities, in great wants, and just set out 
for Trinity-bogs when my letters came. In 
short, my genius ! (which is a short word 
now-a-days, for what-a-great-man-am-I !) 

* "We, poets! generally give light dinners." 
f No doubt the poet here alludes to port-wine at 38s. 
the dozen. 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



19 



was absolutely stifled and overlaid with its 
own riches. Truth is one and poor, like the 
cruse of Elijah's widow. Imagination is the 
bold face that multiplies its oil ; and thou, 
the old cracked pipkin, that could not believe 
it could be put to such purposes. Dull pip- 
kin, to have Elijah for thy cook. Imbecile 
recipient of so fat a miracle. I send you 
George Dyer's Poems, the richest production 
of the lyrical muse this century can justly 
boast : for Wordsworth's L. B. were pub- 
lished, or at least written, before Christ- 
mas. 

" Please to advert to pages 291 to 296 for 
the most astonishing account of where Shak- 
speare's muse has been all this while. I 
thought she had been dead, and buried in 
Stratford Church, with the young man that 
kept her company, — 

' But it seems, like the Devil, 
Buried in Cole Harbour, 
Some say she's risen again, 
Gone 'prentice to a Barber.' 

"N.B. — I don't charge anything for the 
additional manuscript notes, which are the 
joint productions of myself and a learned 
translator of Schiller, Stoddart, Esq. 

" N.B. the 2d.— I should not have blotted 
your book, but I had sent my own out to be 
bound, as I was in duty bound. A liberal 
criticism upon the several pieces, lyrical, 
heroical, amatory, and satirical, would be 
acceptable. So, you don't think there's a 
Word's — worth of good poetry in the great 
L. B. ! I daren't put the dreaded syllables at 
their just length, for my back tingles from the 
northern castigation. 

" I am going to change my lodgings, having 
received a hint that it would be agreeable, at 
our Lady's next feast. I have partly fixed 
upon most delectable rooms, which look out 
(when you stand a tip- toe) over the Thames, 
and Surrey Hills ; at the upper end of 
King's Bench walks, in the Temple. There 
I shall have all the privacy of a house with- 
out the encumbrance, and shall be able to 
lock my friends out as often as I desire to 
hold free converse with my immortal mind, 
for my present lodgings resemble a minister's 
levee, I have so increased my acquaintance 
(as they call 'em) since I have resided in 
town. Like the country mouse, that had 
tasted a little of urbane manners, I long to 



be nibbling my own cheese by my dear self, 
without mouse-traps and time-traps. By my 
new plan, I shall be as airy, up four pair of 
stairs, as in the country ; and in a garden, in 
the midst of enchanting, more than Maho- 
metan paradise, London, whose dirtiest drab- 
frequented alley, and her lowest bowing 
tradesman, I would not exchange for Skid- 
daw, Helvellyn, James, Walter, and the 
parson into the bargain. O ! her lamps of a 
night ! her rich goldsmiths, print-shops, toy- 
shops, mercers, hardwaremen, pastry-cooks ! 
St. Paul's churchyard ! the Strand ! Exeter 
Change ! Charing Cross, with the man upon 
a black horse ! These are thy gods, O Lon- 
don ! An't you mightily moped on the banks 
of the Cam 1 Had not you better come and 
set up here ? You can't think what a differ- 
ence. All the streets and pavements are 
pure gold, I warrant you. At least, I know 
an alchemy that turns her mud into that 
metal, — a mind that loves to be at home in 
crowds. 

" 'Tis half-past twelve o'clock, and all sober 
people ought to be a-bed. 

" C. Lamb (as you may guess)." 



The following two letters appear to have 
been written during Coleridge's visit to 
Wordsworth. 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

" By some fatality, unusual with me, I have 
mislaid the list of books which you want. 
Can you from memory, easily supply me 
with another ? 

" I confess to Statius, and I detained him 
wilfully, out of a reverent regard to your 
style. Statius, they tell me, is turgid. As 
to that other Latin book, since you know 
neither its name nor subject, your wants (I 
crave leave to apprehend) cannot be very 
urgent. Meanwhile, dream that it is one of 
the lost Decades of Livy. 

" Your partiality to me has led you to form 
an erroneous opinion as to the measure of 
delight you suppose me to take in obliging. 
Pray, be careful that it spread no further. 
'Tis one of those heresies that is very preg- 
nant. Pray, rest more satisfied with the 
portion of learning which you have got, and 
disturb my peaceful ignorance as little as 
possible with such sort of commissions. 



60 



LETTER TO WORDSWORTH. 



"Did you never observe an appearance 
well known by the name of the man in the 
moon ? Some scandalous old maids have set 
on foot a report, that it is Endymion. 

" Your theory about the first awkward 
step a man makes being the consequence 
of learning to dance, is not universal. We 
have known many youths bred up at Christ's, 
who never learned to dance, yet the world 
imputes to them no very graceful motions. 
I remember there was little Hudson, the 
immortal precentor of St. Paul's, to teach 
us our quavers ; but, to the best of my recol- 
lection, there was no master of motions when 
we were at Christ's. 

" Farewell, in haste. 

"C. L." 

TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 

" Oct. 13th, 1800. 

"Dear "Wordsworth, — I have not forgot 
your commissions. But the truth is, — and 
why should I not confess it ? — I am not 
plethorically abounding in cash at this 
present. Merit, God knows, is very little 
rewarded ; but it does not become me to 
speak of myself. My motto is, 'contented 
with little, yet wishing for more.' Now, the 
books you wish for would require some 
pounds, which, I am sorry to say, I have 
not by me ; so, I will say at once, if you 
will give me a draft upon your town banker 
for any sum you propose to lay out, I will 
dispose of it to the very best of my skill in 
choice old books, such as my own soul loveth. 
In fact, I have been waiting for the liquida- 
tion of a debt to enable myself to set about 
your commission handsomely ; for it is a 
scurvy thing to cry, 'Give me the money 
first,' and I am the first of the family of the 
Lambs that have done it for many centuries ; 
but the debt remains as it was, and my old 
friend that I accommodated has generously 
forgot it ! The books which you want, I 
calculate at about 81. Ben Jonson is a 
guinea book. Beaumont and Fletcher, in 
folio, the right folio not now to be met with ; 
the octavos are about 21. As to any other 
dramatists, I do not know where to find 
them, except what are in Dodsley's Old 
Plays, which are about 21. also. Massinger 
I never saw but at one shop, but it is now 
gone ; but one of the editions of Dodsley 
contains about a fourth (the best) of his 



plays. Congreve, and the rest of King 
Charles's moralists, are cheap and accessible. 
The works on Ireland I will inquire after, 
but, I fear, Spenser's is not to be had apart 
from his poems ; I never saw it. But you 
may depend upon my sparing no pains to 
furnish you as complete a library of old 
poets and dramatists as will be prudent to 
buy ; for, I suppose you do not include the 
2,01. edition of Hamlet, single play, which 
Kemble has. Marlowe's plays and poems 
are totally vanished ; only one edition of 
Dodsley retains one, and the other two of 
his plays : but John Ford is the man after 
Shakspeare. Let me know your will and 
pleasure soon, for I have observed, next to 
the pleasure of buying a bargain for one's 
self, is the pleasure of persuading a Mend to 
buy it. It tickles one with the image of an 
imprudency, without the penalty usually 
annexed. " C. Lamb." 



CHAPTEE VI. 

[1800.] 

LETTERS TO MANNING, AFTER LAMB'S REMOVAL TO THE 
TEMPLE. 

In the year 1800, Lamb carried into effect 
his purpose of removing to Mitre-court 
Buildings, Temple. During this time" he 
wrote only a few small poems, which he 
transmitted to Manning. In his letters to 
Manning a vein of wild humour breaks out, 
of which there are but slight indications in 
the correspondence with his more sentimen- 
tal friends ; as if the very opposition of 
Manning's more scientific power to his own 
force of sympathy provoked the sallies which 
the genial kindness of the mathematician 
fostered. The prodigal and reckless humour 
of some of these letters forms a striking 
contrast to the deep feeling of the earlier 
letters to Coleridge. His ' Essays of Elia ' 
show the harmonious union of both. The 
following letter contains Lamb's description 
of his new abode. 



TO MR. MANNING. 

" I was not aware that you owed me any- 
thing beside that guinea ; but I dare say you 
are right. I live at No. 16, Mitre -court 



LETTERS TO MANNING. 



51 



Buildings, a pistol-shot off Baron Maseres'. 
You must introduce me to the Baron. I 
think we should suit one another mainly. 
He lives on the ground floor, for convenience 
of the gout ; I prefer the attic story, for the 
air ! He keeps three footmen and two 
maids ; I have neither maid nor laundress, 
not caring to be troubled with them ! His 
forte, I understand, is the higher mathe- 
matics ; my turn, I confess, is more to poetry 
and the belles lettres. The very antithesis 
of our characters would make up a harmony. 
You must bring the baron and me together. 
— N.B. when you come to see me, mount up 
to the top of the stairs — I hope you are not 
asthmatical— and come in flannel, for it's pure 
airy up there. And bring your glass, and I 
will show you the Surrey Hills. My bed 
faces the river, so as by perking up upon my 
haunches, and supporting my carcase with 
my elbows, without much wrying my neck, I 
can see the white sails glide by the bottom 
of the King's Bench walks as I lie in my 
bed. An excellent tiptoe prospect in the 
best room : — casement windows, with small 
panes, to look more like a cottage. Mind, I 
have got no bed for you, that 's flat ; sold it 
to pay expenses of moving. The very bed 
on which Manning lay ; the friendly, the 
mathematical Manning ! How forcibly does 
it remind me of the interesting Otway ! 'The 
very bed which on thy marriage night gave 
thee into the arms of Belvidera, by the coarse 
hands of ruffians — ' (upholsterers' men,) &c. 
My tears will not give me leave to go on. 
But a bed I will get you, Manning, on con- 
dition you will be my day-guest. 

" I have been ill more than a month, with 
a bad cold, which comes upon me (like a 
murderer's conscience) about midnight, and 
vexes me for many hours. I have succes- 
sively been drugged with Spanish licorice, 
opium, ipecacuanha, paregoric, and tincture 
of foxglove (tinctura purpurse digitalis of the 
ancients). I am afraid I must leave off 
drinkiug." 

Lamb then gives an account of his visit to 
an exhibition of snakes — of a frightful vivid- 
ness and interesting — as all details of these 
fascinating reptiles are, whom we at once 
loathe and long to look upon, as the old 
enemies and tempters of our race. 



TO MR. MANNING. 

"Oct. 16th, 1800. 

"Dear Manning, — Had you written one 
week before you did, I certainly should have 
obeyed your injunction ; you should have 
seen me before my letter. I will explain to 
you my situation. There are six of us in one 
department. Two of us (within these four 
days) are confined with severe fevers ; and 
two more, who belong to the Tower Militia, 
expect to have marching orders on Friday. 
Now six are absolutely necessary. I have 
already asked and obtained two young hands 
to supply the loss of the feverites. And, with 
the other prospect before me, you may believe 
I cannot decently ask leave of absence for 
myself. All I can promise (and I do promise, 
with the sincerity of Saint Peter, and the 
contrition of sinner Peter if I fail) that I will 
come the very first spare week, and go nowhere 
till I have been at Cambridge. No matter 
if you are in a state of pupilage when I come ; 
for I can employ myself in Cambridge very 
pleasantly in the mornings. Are there not 
libraries, halls, colleges, books, pictures, 
statues ? I wish you had made London in 
your way. There is an exhibition quite 
uncommon in Europe, which could not have 
escaped your genius, — a live rattlesnake, ten 
feet in length, and the thickness of a big leg. 
I went to see it last night by candlelight. 
We were ushered into a room very little 
bigger than ours at Pentonville. A man and 
woman and four boys live in this room, joint 
tenants with nine snakes, most of them such 
as no remedy has been discovered for their 
bite. We walked into the middle, which is 
formed by a half-moon of wired boxes, all 
mansions of snakes, — whip-snakes, thunder- 
snakes, pig-nose-snakes, American vipers, and 
this monster. He lies curled up in folds ; and 
immediately a stranger enters (for he is used 
to the family, and sees them play at cards,) 
he set up a rattle like a watchman's in 
London, or near as loud, and reared up a 
head, from the midst of these folds, like a 
toad, and shook his head, and showed every 
sign a snake can show of irritation. I had 
the foolish curiosity to strike the wires with 
my finger, and the devil flew at me with his 
toad-mouth wide open : the inside of his 
mouth is quite white. I had got my finger 
away, nor could he well have bit me with his 



e 2 



52 



LETTERS TO MANNING. 



big mouth, which would have been certain 
death in five minutes. But it frightened me 
so much, that I did not recover my voice for 
a minute's space. I forgot, in my fear, that 
lie was secured. You would have forgot too, 
for 'tis incredible how such a monster can be 
confined in small gauzy-looking wires. I 
dreamed of snakes in the night. I wish to 
heaven you could see it. He absolutely 
swelled with passion to the bigness of a large 
thigh. I could not retreat without infringing 
on another box, and just behind, a little devil 
not an inch from my back, had got his nose 
out, with some difficulty and pain, quite 
through the bars ! He was soon taught 
better manners. All the snakes were curious, 
and objects of terror : but this monster, like 
Aaron's serpent, swallowed up the impres- 
sion of the rest. He opened his cursed 
mouth, when he made at me, as wide as his 
head was broad. I hallooed out quite loud, 
and felt pains all over my body with the 
fright. 

" I have had the felicity of hearing George 
Dyer read out one book of 'The Farmer's 
Boy.' I thought it rather childish. No 
doubt, there is originality in it, (which, in 
your self-taught geniuses, is a most rare 
quality, they generally getting held of some 
bad models, in a scarcity of books, and form- 
ing their taste on them,) but no selection. 
All is described. 

" Mind, I have only heard read one book. 
" Yours sincerely, 

"Philo-Snake, 

" C. L." 



The following are fragments from a letter 
chiefly on personal matters, the interest of 
which is gone by : — 

TO MR. MANNING. 

" And now, when shall I catch a glimpse of 
your honest face-to-face countenance again 1 
Your fine dogmatical sceptical face by punch- 
light 1 O ! one glimpse of the human face, 
and shake of the human hand, is better than 
whole reams of this cold, thin correspondence; 
yea, of more worth than all the letters that 
have sweated the fingers of sensibility, from 
Madame Sevign6 and Balzac to Sterne and 
Shenstone. 

" Coleridge is settled with his wife and the 



young philosopher at Keswick, with the 
Wordsworths. They have contrived to spawn 
a new volume of lyrical ballads, which is to 
see the light in about a month, and causes no 
little excitement in the literary world. George 
Dyer too, that good-natured heathen, is more 
than nine months gone with his twin volumes 
of ode, pastoral, sonnet, elegy, Spenserian, 
Horatian, Akensidish, and Masonic verse — 
Clio prosper the birth ! it will be twelve 
shillings out of somebody's pocket. I find 
he means to exclude 'personal satire,' so it 
appears by his truly original advertisement. 
"Well, God put it into the hearts of the 
English gentry to come in shoals and sub- 
scribe to his poems, for He never put a 
kinder heart into flesh of man than George 
Dyer's ! 

" Now farewell, for dinner is at hand. 

" a l." 



Lamb had engaged to spend a few days 
when he could obtain leave, with Manning 
at Cambridge, and, just as he hoped to 
accomplish his wish, received an invitation 
from Lloyd to give his holiday to the poets 
assembled at the Lakes. In the joyous 
excitement of spirits which the anticipated 
visit to Manning produced, he thus plays off 
Manning's proposal on his friend, abuses 
mountains and luxuriates in his love of 
London : — 

TO MR. MANNING. 

" Dear Manning, — I have received a very 
kind invitation from Lloyd and Sophia, to go 
and spend a month with them at the Lakes. 
Now it fortunately happens, (which is so 
seldom the case !) that I have spare cash by 
me, enough to answer the expenses of so long 
a journey ; and I am determined to get away 
from the office by some means. The purpose 
of this letter is to request of you (my dear 
friend), that you will not take it unkind, if I 
decline my proposed visit to Cambridge for 
the present. Perhaps I shall be able to take 
Cambridge in my way, going or coming. I 
need not describe to you the expectations 
which such an one as myself, pent up all my 
life in a dirty city, have formed of a tour to 
the Lakes. Consider Grasmere ! Amble- 
side ! Wordsworth ! Coleridge ! Hills, woods, 
lakes, and mountains, to the eternal devil. 



LETTERS TO MANNING. 



I will eat snipes with thee, Thomas Manning. 
Only confess, confess, a bite. 

"P. S. I think you named the 16th ; but 
was it not modest of Lloyd to send such an 
invitation ! It shows his knowledge of money 
and time. I would be loth to think, he 
meant 

' Ironic satire sidelong sklented 
On my poor pursie.' Buitxs. 

For my part, with reference to my friends 
northward, I must confess that I am not 
romance-bit about Nature. The earth, and 
sea, and sky (when all is said,) is but as a 
house to dwell in. If the inmates be courteous, 
and good liquors flow like the conduits at an 
old coronation, if they can talk sensibly, and 
feel properly, I have no need to stand staring 
upon the gilded looking-glass (that strained 
my friend's purse-strings in the purchase) 
nor his five-shilling print over the mantel- 
piece of old Nabbs the carrier (which only 
betrays his false taste). Just as important 
to me (in a sense) is all the furniture of my 
world ; eye-pampering, but satisfies no heart. 
Streets, streets, streets, markets, theatres, 
churches, Covent Gardens, shops sparkling 
with pretty faces of industrious milliners, 
neat sempstresses, ladies cheapening, gentle- 
men behind counters lying, authors in the 
street with spectacles, George Dyers, (you 
may know them by their gait,) lamps lit at 
night, pastry-cooks' and silver-smiths' shops, 
beautiful Quakers of Pentonville, noise of 
coaches, drowsy cry of mechanic watchmen 
at night, with bucks reeling home drunk ; if 
you happen to wake at midnight, cries of 
Fire and Stop thief ; inns of court, with their 
learned air, and halls, and butteries, just like 
Cambridge colleges ; old book-stalls, ' Jeremy 
Taylors,' 'Burtons on Melancholy,' and 
1 Eeligio Medicis,' on every stall. These are 
thy pleasures, O London ! with-the-many- 

sins. 0, city, abounding in , for these 

may Keswick and her giant brood go hang ! 

"C. L." 



On this occasion Lamb was disappointed ; 
but he was consoled by the acquisition of a 
new friend, in Mr. Eickman of the House of 
Commons, and exults in a strain which he 
never had reason to regret. This piece of 
rare felicity enabled him even to bear the loss 



of his manuscripts, and the delay of his hopes; 
which, according to the old theatrical usage, 
he was destined to endure. 



TO MR. MANNING. 

"Nov. 3rd, 1800. 
"Bcquid meditatur Archimedes ? What is 
Euclid doing? What hath happened to 
learned Trismegist ? — doth he take it in ill 
part, that his humble friend did not comply 
with his courteous invitation ? Let it suffice, 
I could not come — are impossibilities nothing? 
— be they abstractions of the intellect ? — or 
not (rather) most sharp and mortifying 
realities ? nuts in the Will's mouth too hard 
for her to crack ? brick and stone walls in 
her way, which she can by no means eat 
through ? sore lets, impedimenta viarum, no 
thoroughfares ? racemi nimium alte pendentes? 
Is the phrase classic ? I allude to the grapes 
in iEsop, which cost the fox a strain, and 
gained the world an aphorism. Observe the 
superscription of this letter. In adapting the 
size of the letters, which constitute your name 
and Mr. Crisp's name respectively, I had an 
eye to your different stations in life. 'Tis 
truly curious, and must be soothing to an 
aristocrat. I wonder it has never been hit 
on before my time. I have made an acquisi- 
tion latterly of a pleasant hand, one Hickman, 
to whom I was introduced by George Dyer, 
not the most flattering auspices under which 
one man can be introduced to another — 
George brings all sorts of people together, 
setting up a sort of agrarian law, or common 
property, in matter of society ; but for once 
he has done me a great pleasure, while he 
was only pursuing a principle, as ignes fatui 
may light you home. This Eickman lives in 
our Buildings, immediately opposite our 
house ; the finest fellow to drop in a' nights, 
about nine or ten o'clock — cold bread-and- 
cheese time — -just in the wishing time of the 
night, when you wish for somebody to come 
in, without a distinct idea of a probable any- 
body. Just in the nick, neither too early to 
be tedious, nor too late to sit a reasonable 
time. He is a most pleasant hand ; a fine 
rattling fellow, has gone through life laughing 
at solemn apes ; — himself hugely literate, 
oppressively full of information in all stuff of 
conversation, from matter of fact to Xenophon 
and Plato — can talk Greek with Porson, 
politics with Thel wall, conjecture with George 



54 



LETTERS TO MANNING. 



Dyer, nonsense with me, and anything with 
anybody ; a great farmer, somewhat con- 
cerned in an agricultural magazine — reads no 
poetry but Shakspeare, very intimate with 
Southey, but never reads his poetry, relishes 
George Dyer, thoroughly penetrates into the 
ridiculous wherever found, understands the 
first time (a great desideratum in common 
minds) — you need never twice speak to him ; 
does not want explanations, translations, 
limitations, as Professor Godwin does when 
you make an assertion ; up to anything ; down 
to everything ; whatever sapit hominem. A 
perfect man. All this farrago, which must 
perplex you to read, and has put me to a little 
trouble to select! only proves how impossible it 
is to describe a pleasant hand. You must see 
Eickman to know him, for he is a species in 
one. A new class. An exotic, any slip of 
which I am proud to put in my garden-pot. 
The clearest headed fellow. Fullest of matter, 
with least verbosity. If there be any alloy 
in my fortune to have met with such a man, 
it is that he commonly divides his time 
between town and country, having some 
foolish family ties at Christchurch, by which 
means he can only gladden our London hemi- 
sphere with returns of light. He is now 
going for six weeks." 

"At last I have written to Kemble, to 
know the event of my play, which was pre- 
sented last Christmas. As I suspected, came 
an answer back that the copy was lost, and 
could not be found — no hint that anybody 
had to this day ever looked into it — with a 
courteous (reasonable !) request of another 
copy (if I had one by me,) and a promise of 
a definitive answer in a week. I could not 
resist so facile and moderate demand, so 
scribbled out another, omitting sundry things, 
such as the witch story, about half of the 
forest scene (which is too leisurely for story), 
and transposing that soliloquy about England 
getting drunk, which, like its reciter, stupidly 
stood alone, nothing prevenient orantevenient 
— and cleared away a good deal besides, and 
sent this copy, written all out (with altera- 
tions, &c. requiring judgment) in one day and 
a half! I sent it last night, and am in 
weekly expectation of the tolling-bell, and 
death-warrant. 

" This is all my London news. Send me 
some from the hanks of Cam, as the poets 



delight to speak, especially George Dyer, who 
has no other name, nor idea, nor definition of 
Cambridge, — namely, its being a market- 
town, sending members to Parliament, never 
entered into his definition — it was and is, 
simply, the banks of the Cam, or the fair 
Cam ; as Oxford is the banks of the Isis, or 
the fair Isis. Yours in all humility, most 
illustrious Trismegist, " C. Lamb. 

" (Read on, there 's more at the bottom.) 

" You ask me about the ' Farmer's Boy,' — 
don't you think the fellow who wrote it (who 
is a shoemaker) has a poor mind 1 Don't you 
find he is always silly about poor Giles, and 
those abject kind of phrases, which mark a 
man that looks up to wealth ? None of 
Burns's poet dignity. What do you think 1 
I have just opened him ; but he makes me 
sick." 



Constant to the fame of Jem White, Lamb 
did not fail to enlist Manning among the 
admirers of the "Falstaff's Letters." The 
next letter, referring to them is, however, 
more interesting for the light which it casts 
on Lamb's indifference to the politics of the 
time, and fond devotion to the past. 

TO MR. MANNING. 

" I hope by this time you are prepared to 
say, the ' Falstaff's letters ' are a bundle of 
the sharpest, queerest, profoundest humours, 
of any these juice-drained latter times have 
spawned. I should have advertised you, that 
the meaning is frequently hard to be got at ; 
and so are the future guineas, that now lie 
ripening and aurifying in the womb of some 
undiscovered Potosi ; but dig, dig, dig, dig, 
Manning ! I set to, with an unconquerable 
propulsion to write, with a lamentable want 
of what to write. My private goings on are 
orderly as the movements of the spheres, and 
stale as their music to angels' ears. Public 
affairs — except as they touch upon me, and 
so turn into private, — I cannot whip up my 
mind to feel any interest in. I grieve, indeed, 
that War, and Nature, and Mr. Pitt, that 
hangs up in Lloyd's best parlour, should have 
conspired to call up three necessaries, simple 
commoners as our fathers knew them, into 
the upper house of luxuries ; bread, and beer, 
and coals, Manning. But as to France and 



LETTERS TO MANNING. 



55 



Frenchmen, and the Abbe Sieyes and his 
constitutions, I cannot make these present 
times present to me. I read histories of the 
past, and I live in them ; although, to 
abstract senses, they are far less momentous, 
than the noises which keep Europe awake. 
I am reading 'Burnet's own Times.' Did 
you ever read that garrulous, pleasant 
history ? He tells his story like an old man 
past political service, bragging to his sons on 
winter evenings of the part he took in public 
transactions, when 'his old cap was new.' 
Full of scandal, which all true history is. 
No palliatives ; but all the stark wickedness, 
that actually gives the momentum to national 
actors. Quite the prattle of age, and outlived 
importance. Truth and sincerity staring out 
upon you perpetually in alto relievo. Himself 
a party man — he makes you a party man. 
None of the cursed philosophical Humeian 
indifference, so cold, and unnatural, and 
inhuman ! None of the cursed Gibbonian 
fine writing, so fine and composite. None 
of Dr. Robertson's periods with three mem- 
bers. None of Mr. Eoscoe's sage remarks, 
all so apposite, and coming in so clever, lest 
the reader should have had the trouble of 
drawing an inference. Burnet's good old 
prattle I can bring present to my mind ; I 
can make the revolution present to me — the 
French revolution, by a converse perversity 
in my nature, I fling as far from me. To 
quit this tiresome subject, and to relieve you 
from two or three dismal yawns, which I 
hear in spirit, I here conclude my more than 
commonly obtuse letter ; dull, up to the 
dulness of a Dutch commentator on Shaks- 
peare. 

" My love to Lloyd and to Sophia. 

" C. L." 



While Lamb's dramatic destinies were in 
suspense, he was called on " to assist " at the 
production of a tragedy, by a friend, whose 
more mature reputation gave him readier 
access to the manager, but who had no better 
claim to success than himself. Mr. Godwin, 
whose powerful romance of Caleb Williams 
had supplied the materials for " The Iron 
Chest " of Colman, naturally aspired, on his 
own account, to the glory of the scene, and 
completed a tragedy under the title of "An- 
tonio, or the Soldier's Return," which was 



accepted at Drury-Lane Theatre, and an- 
nounced for representation on Saturday the 
13th December in this year. Lamb supplied 
the epilogue, which he copied in the following 
letter addressed to Manning on the eventful 
day : — 

TO MR. MANNING. 

"Dec. 13th, 1800. 
" I have received your letter this moment, 
not having been at the office. I have just 
time to scribble down the epilogue. To your 
epistle I will just reply, that I will certainly 
come to Cambridge before January is out : 
I'll come when I can. You shall have an 
emended copy of my play early next week. 
Mary thanks you ; but her handwriting is 
too feminine to be exposed to a Cambridge 
gentleman, though I endeavour to persuade 
her that you understand algebra, and must 
understand her hand. The play is the man's 
you wot of; but for Heaven's sake do not 
mention it — it is to come out in a feigned 
name, as one Tobin's. I will omit the intro- 
ductory lines which connect it with the play, 
and give you the concluding tale, which is 
the mass and bulk of the epilogue. The 
name is Jack Incident. It is about promise- 
breaking — you will see it all, if you read the 



Jack, of dramatic genius justly vain, 

Purchased a renter's share at Drury-lane ; 

A prudent man in every other matter, 

Known at his club-room for an honest hatter ; 

Humane and courteous, led a civil life, 

And has been seldom known to beat his wife ; 

But Jack is now grown quite another man, 

Frequents the green-room, knows the plot and plan 

Of each new piece, 
And has been seen to talk with Sheridan ! 
In at the play-house just at six he pops, 
And never quits it till the curtain drops, 
Is never absent on the author's night, 

Knows actresses and actors too by sight ; 

So humble, that with Suett he'll confer, 

Or take a pipe with plain Jack Bannister ; 

Nay, with an author has been known so free, 

He once suggested a catastrophe — 

In short, John dabbled till his head was turn'd : 

His wife remonstrated, his neighbours mourn'd, 

His customers were dropping off apace, 

And Jack's affairs began to wear a piteous face. 

One night his wife began a curtain lecture ; 
' My dearest Johnny, husband, spouse, protector, 
Take pity on your helpless babes and me, 
Save us from ruin, you from bankruptcy — 
Look to your business, leave these cursed plays, 
And try again your old industrious ways.' 

Jack, who was always scared at the Gazette, 
And had some bits of scull uninjured yet, 
Promised amendment, vow'd his wife spake reason, 
' He would not see another play that season — ' 



56 



GODWIN. 



Three stubborn fortnights Jack his promise kept, 
Was late and early in his shop, eat, slept, 
And walk'd and talk'd, like ordinary men ; 
No wit, but John the hatter once again — • 
Visits his club : when lo ! one fatal night 
His wife with horror view'd the well-known sight — 
John's hat, wig, snuff-box — well she knew his tricks — 
And Jack decamping at the hour of six. 
Just at the counter's edge a playbill lay, 
Announcing that ' Pizarro ' was the play — 
4 O Johnny, Johnny, this is your old doing.' 
Quoth Jack, ' Why what the devil storm's a-brewing ? 
About a harmless play why all this fright ? 
I'll go and see it, if it's but for spite — 
Zounds, woman ! Nelson's* to be there to-night.' 

" N.B. — This was intended for Jack Ban- 
nister to speak ; but the sage managers have 
chosen Miss Heard, except Miss Tidswell, 
the worst actress ever seen or heard. Now, 
I remember I have promised the loan of my 
play. I will lend it instantly, and yon shall 
get it ('pon honour !) by this day week. 

" I must go and dress for the boxes ! First 
night ! Finding I have time, I transcribe 
the rest. Observe, you have read the last 
first ; it begins thus : — The names I took 
from a little outline G. gave me. I have not 
read the play ! 

' Ladies, ye've seen how Guzman's consort died, 

Poor victim of a Spaniard brother's pride, 

When Spanish honour through the world was blown, 

And Spanish beauty for the best was known.-t 

In that romantic, unenlighten'd time, 

A breach of promise\ was a sort of crime — 

Which of you handsome English ladies here, 

But deems the penance bloody and severe 1 

A whimsical old Saragossa § fashion, 

That a dead father's dying inclination, 

Should live to thwart a living daughter's passion, |) 

Unjustly on the sex we^ men exclaim, 

Pail at your ** vices, — and commit the same ; — 

Man is a promise-breaker from the womb, 

And goes a promise-breaker to the tomb — ■ 

What need we instance here the lover's vow, 

The sick man's purpose, or the great man's bow?tt 

The truth by few examples best is shown — 

Instead of many which are better known, 

Take poor Jack Incident, that's dead and gone. 

Jack, &c. &c. &c.' 

" Now you have it all — how do you like 
it 1 I am going to hear it recited ! ! ! 

"C. L." 



Alas for human hopes ! The play was de- 
cisively damned, and the epilogue shared its 

* " A good clan-trap. Nelson has exhibited two or 
three times at both theatres — and advertised himself." 
t " Four easy lines." 
% " For which the heroine died." 
§ " In Spain ! ! " || " Two neat lines." 

% " Or you." ** " Or our, as they have altered it." 
T| "Antithesis!!" 



fate. The tragedy turned out a miracle of 
dulness for the world to wonder at, although 
Lamb always insisted it had one fine line, 
which he was fond of repeating — sole relic 
of the else forgotten play. Kenible and 
Mrs. Siddons, the brother and sister of the 
drama, toiled through four acts and a half 
without applause or disapprobation ; one 
speech was not more vapid than another ; 
and so dead was the level of the dialogue, 
that, although its destiny was seen from afar, 
it presented no opportunity for hissing. But 
as the play drew towards a close, when, after 
a scene of frigid chiding not vivified by any 
fire of Kemble's own, Antonio drew his 
sword and plunged it into the heroine's 
bosom, the " sad civility " of the audience 
vanished, they started as at a real murder, 
and hooted the actors from the stage. 
"Philosophy," which could not "make a 
Juliet," sustained the author through the 
trial. He sat on one of the front benches of 
the pit, unmoved amidst the storm. When 
the first act passed off without a hand, he 
expressed his satisfaction at the good sense 
of the house ; " the proper season of applause 
had not arrived ; " all was exactly as it 
should be. The second act proceeded to its 
close in the same uninterrupted calm ; his 
friends became uneasy, but still his optimism 
prevailed ; he could afford to wait. And 
though he did at last admit the great move- 
ment was somewhat tardy, and that the 
audience seemed rather patient than inter- 
ested, he did not lose his confidence till the 
tumult arose, and then he submitted with 
quiet dignity to the fate of genius, too lofty 
to be understood by a world as yet in its 
childhood ! Notwithstanding this rude re- 
pulse, Mr. Godwin retained his taste for the 
theatre to the last. On every first night of 
a new piece, whether tragedy, comedy, or 
farce, whether of friend or foe, he sat with 
gentle interest in a side-box, and bore its 
fate, whatever it might be, with resignation, 
as he had done his own. The following is 
Lamb's account of the catastrophe rendered 
to Manning, in which the facetious charge 
against the unlucky author of " Violent and 
Satanical Pride of Heart," has reference to 
some banter which Lamb had encountered 
among his friends by the purposed title of 
his own play, "Pride's Cure," and his dis- 
quisition in its defence. 



LETTERS TO MANNING. 



57 



TO MR. MANNING. 

"Dec. 16th, 1800. 

" We are damned ! — Not the facetious 
epilogue itself could save us. For, as the 
editor of the Morning Post, quick-sighted 
gentleman ! hath this morning truly ob- 
served, (I beg pardon if I falsify his words, 
their profound sense I am sure I retain,) both 
prologue and epilogue were worthy of accom- 
panying such a piece ; and indeed (mark the 
profundity, Mr. Manning) were received with 
proper indignation by such of the audience 
only as thought either worth attending to. 
Professor, thy glories wax dim ! Again, the 
incomparable author of the 'True Briton' 
declareth in his paper (bearing same date) 
that the epilogue was an indifferent attempt 
at humour and character, and failed in both. 
I forbear to mention the other papers, 
because I have not read them. O Professor, 
how different thy feelings now (quantum 
mutatus ab illo professore, qui in agris 
philosophise tantas victorias acquisivisti), — 
how different thy proud feelings but one 
little week ago, — thy anticipation of thy nine 
nights, — those visionary claps, which have 
soothed thy soul by day, and thy dreams by 
night ! Calling in accidentally on the Pro- 
fessor while he was out, I was ushered into 
the study ; and my nose quickly (most 
sagacious always) pointed me to four tokens 
lying loose upon thy table, Professor, which 
indicated thy violent and satanical pride of 
heart. Imprimis, there caught mine eye a 
list of six persons, thy friends, whom thou 
didst meditate inviting to a sumptuous dinner 
on the Thursday, anticipating the profits of 
thy Saturday's play to answer charges ; I 
was in the honoured file ! Next, a stronger 
evidence of thy violent and almost satanical 
pride, lay a list of all the morning papers 
(from the ' Morning Chronicle ' downwards to 
the ' Porcupine '), with the places of their 
respective offices, where thou wast meditating 
to insert, and didst insert, an elaborate 
sketch of the story of thy play ; stones in 
thy enemy's hand to bruise thee with, and 
severely wast thou bruised, O Professor ! 
nor do I know what oil to pour into thy 
wounds. Next, which convinced me to a 
dead conviction, of thy pride, violent and 
almost satanical pride — lay a list of books, 
which thy un-tragedy-favoured pocket could 



never answer ; Dodsley's Old Plays, Malone's 
Shakspeare (still harping upon thy play, thy 
philosophy abandoned meanwhile to chris- 
tians and superstitious minds) ; nay, I be- 
lieve (if I can believe my memory), that the 
ambitious Encyclopedia itself was part of 
thy meditated acquisitions ; but many a 
playbook was there. All these visions are 
damned; and thou, Professor, must read 
Shakspeare in future out of a common 
edition ; and, hark ye, pray read him to a 
little better purpose ! Last and strongest 
against thee (in colours manifest as the hand 
upon Belshazzar's wall), lay a volume of 
poems by C. Lloyd and C. Lamb. Thy heart 
misgave thee, that thy assistant might pos- 
sibly not have talent enough to furnish thee 
an epilogue ! Manning, all these things came 
over my mind ; all the gratulations that 
would have thickened upon him, and even 
some have glanced aside upon his humble 
friend ; the vanity, and the fame, and the 
profits (the Professor is 500?. ideal money out 
of pocket by this failure, besides 200?. he 
would have got for the copyright, and the 
Professor is never much beforehand with the 
world ; what he gets is all by the sweat of his 
brow and dint of brain, for the Professor, 
though a sure man, is also a slow) ; and now 
to muse upon thy altered physiognomy, thy 
pale and squalid appearance (a kind of blue 
sickness about the eyelids), and thy crest 
fallen, and thy proud demand of 200?. from 
thy bookseller changed to an uncertainty of 
his taking it at all, or giving thee full 50?. 
The Professor has won my heart by this his 
mournful catastrophe. You remember Mar- 
shall, who dined with him at my house ; I 
met him in the lobby immediately after the 
damnation of the Professor's play, and he 
looked to me like an angel : his face was 
lengthened, and all over perspiration ; I never 
saw such a care-fraught visage ; I could have 
hugged him, I loved him so intensely. ' From 
every pore of him a perfume fell.' I have 
seen that man in many situations, and, from 
my soul, I think that a more god-like honest 
soul exists not in this world. The Professor's 
poor nerves trembling with the recent shock, 
he hurried him away to my house to supper, 
and there we comforted him as well as we 
could. He came to consult me about a 
change of catastrophe ; but alas ! the piece 
was condemned long before that crisis. I at 



58 



LETTERS TO MANNING. 



first humoured him with a specious proposi- 
tion, but have since joined his true friends 
in advising him to give it up. He did it 
with a pang, and is to print it as his. 

"L." 



In another letter, a few days after, Lamb 
thus recurs to the subject, and closes the 
century in anticipation of a visit to his friend 
at Cambridge. 

TO MR. MANNING. 

"Dec. 27th, 1800. 

" As for the other Professor, he has actually 
begun to dive into Tavernier and Chardin's 
Persian Travels for a story, to form a new 
drama for the sweet tooth of this fastidious 
age. Hath not Bethlehem College a fair 
action for non-residence against such profes- 
sors 1 Are poets so feiv in this age, that He 
must write poetry 1 Is morals a subject so 
exhausted, that he must quit that line 1 Is 
the metaphysic well (without a bottom) 
drained dry 1 

" If I can guess at the wicked pride of the 
Professor's heart, I would take a shrewd 
wager, that he disdains ever again to dip his 
pen in Prose. Adieu, ye splendid theories! 
Farewell, dreams of political justice ! Law- 
suits, where I was counsel for Archbishop 
Fenelon versus my own mother, in the famous 
fire cause ! 

"Vanish from my mind, professors, one 
and all. I have metal more attractive on 
foot. 

"Man of many snipes, — I will sup with 
thee, Deo volente, et diabolo nolente, on 
Monday night, the 5th of January, in the 
new year, and crush a cup to the infant 
century. 

" A word or two of my progress. Embark 
at six o'clock in the morning, with a fresh gale, 
on a Cambridge one-decker ; very cold till 
eight at night ; land at St. Mary's light-house, 
muffins and coffee upon table (or any other 
curious production of Turkey, or both Indies), 
snipes exactly at nine, punch to commence at 
ten, with argument ; difference of opinion is 
expected to take place about eleven ; perfect 
unanimity, with some haziness and dimness, 
before twelve. — N. B. My single affection is" 
not so singly wedded to snipes ; but the 
curious and epicurean eye would also take 



a pleasure in beholding a delicate and well- 
chosen assortment of teals, ortolans, the 
unctuous and palate-soothing flesh of geese, 
wild and tame, nightingales' brains, the 
sensorium of a young sucking pig, or any 
other Christmas dish, which I leave to the 
judgment of you and the cook of Gonville. 

"C. Lamb." 



CHAPTER VII. 

[1801 to 1804.] 

LETTERS TO MANNING, WORDSWORTH, AND COLERIDGE ; 
JOHN WOODVIL REJECTED, PUBLISHED, AND REVIEWED. 

The ominous postponement of Lamb's theat- 
rical hopes was followed by their disappoint- 
ment at the commencement of the century. 
He was favoured with at least one inter- 
view by the stately manager of Drury-lane, 
Mr. Kemble, who extended his high-bred 
courtesy even to authors, whom he inva- 
riably attended to the door of his house in 
Great Russell-street, and bade them " beware 
of the step." Godwin's catastrophe had 
probably rendered him less solicitous to 
encounter a similar peril ; which the fondest 
admirers of " John Woodvil " will not regret 
that it escaped. While the occasional rough- 
ness of its verse would have been felt as 
strange to ears as yet unused to the old 
dramatists whom Lamb's Specimens had not 
then made familiar to the town, the delicate 
beauties enshrined within it would scarcely 
have been perceived in the glare of the 
theatre. Exhibiting " the depth, and not the 
tumults of the soul," — presenting a female 
character of modest and retiring loveliness 
and noble purpose, but undistracted with any 
violent emotion, — and developing a train of 
circumstances which work out their gentle 
triumphs on the heart only of the hero, 
without stirring accident or vivid grouping 
of persons, — it would scarcely have supplied 
sufficient of coarse interest to disarm the 
critical spirit which it would certainly have 
encountered in all its bitterness. Lamb 
cheerfully consoled himself by publishing it ; 
and at the close of the year 1801 it appeared 
in a small volume, of humble appearance, 
with the " Fragments of Burton," (to which 
Lamb alluded in one of his previous letters,) 



EDINBURGH REVIEW. 



59 



two of his quarto ballads, and the " Helen " 
of his sister. 

The daring peculiarities attracted the notice 
of the Edinburgh reviewers, then in the 
infancy of their slashing career, and the 
volume was immolated, in due form, by the 
self-constituted judges, who, taking for their 
motto "Judex damnatur cum nocens absol- 
vitur" treated our author as a criminal con- 
victed of publishing, and awaiting his doom 
from their sentence. With the gay reckless- 
ness of power, at once usurped and irrespon- 
sible, they introduced Lord Mansfield's wild 
construction of the law of libel into litera- 
ture ; like him, holding every man prima 
facie guilty, who should be caught in the act 
of publishing a book, and referring to the 
court to decide whether sentence should be 
passed on him. The article on "John 
Woodvil," which adorned their third num- 
ber, is a curious example of the old style of 
criticism vivified by the impulses of youth. 
We wonder now — and probably the writer of 
the article, if he is living, will wonder with 
us — that a young critic should seize on a 
little eighteen-penny book, simply printed, 
without any preface ; make elaborate merri- 
ment of its outline, and, giving no hint of its 
containing one profound thought or happy 
expression, leave the reader of the review at 
a loss to suggest a motive for noticing such 
vapid absurdities. This article is written in 
a strain of grave banter, the theme of which 
is to congratulate the world on having a 
specimen of the rudest condition of the 
drama, " a man of the age of Thespis." " At 
length," says the reviewer, " even in compo- 
sition a mighty veteran has been born. 
Older than iEschylus, and with all the spirit 
of originality, in an age of poets who had 
before them the imitations of some thousand 
years, he comes forward to establish his claim 
to the ancient hircus, and to satiate the most 
remote desires of the philosophic antiquary." 
On this text the writer proceeds, selecting 
for his purpose whatever, torn from its 
context, appeared extravagant and crude, 
and ending without the slightest hint that 
there is merit, or promise of merit, in the 
volume. There certainly was no malice, or 
desire to give pain, in all this ; it was merely 
the result of the thoughtless adoption, by 
lads of gaiety and talent, of the old critical 
canons of the Monthly Eeviews, which had 



been accustomed to damn all works of un- 
patronised genius in a more summary way, 
and after a duller fashion. These very critics 
wrought themselves into good-nature as they 
broke into deeper veins of thought ; grew 
gentler as they grew wiser : and sometimes, 
even when, like Balaam, they came to curse, 
like him, they ended with "blessing alto- 
gether," as in the review of the " Excursion," 
which, beginning in the old strain, "This 
will never do," proceeded to give examples of 
its noblest passages, and to grace them with 
worthiest eulogy. And now, the spirit of 
the writers thus ridiculed, especially of 
Wordsworth, breathes through the pages of 
this very Eeview, and they not seldom wear 
the " rich embroidery " of the language of 
the poet once scoffed at by their literary 
corporation as too puerile for the nursery. 

Lamb's occasional connexion with news- 
papers introduced him to some of the editors 
and contributors of that day, who sought to 
repair the spirit wasted by perpetual exer- 
tion, in the protracted conviviality of the 
evening, and these associates sometimes left 
poor Lamb with an aching head, and a purse 
exhausted by the claims of their necessities 
upon it. Among those was Fen wick, immor- 
talised as the Bigod of " Elia," who edited 
several ill-fated newspapers in succession, 
and was the author of many libels, which did 
his employers no good and his Majesty's 
government no harm. These connexions 
will explain some of the allusions in the 
following letters. 

TO MR. MANNING. 

" I heard that you were going to China,* 
with a commission from the Wedgwoods to 
collect hints for their pottery, and to teach 
the Chinese perspective. But I did not know 
that London lay in your way to Pekin. I am 
seriously glad of it, for I shall trouble you 
with a small present for the Emperor of 
Usbeck Tartary, as you go by his territories : 
it is a fragment of a ' Dissertation on the 
state of political parties in England at the 
end of the eighteenth century,' which will 
no doubt be very interesting to his Imperial 
Majesty. It was written originally in English 

* Mr. Manning had begun to be haunted with the 
idea of China, and to talk of going thither, which he 
accomplished some years afterwards, without any motive 
but a desire to see that great nation. 



60 



LETTERS TO MANNING. 



for the use of the two and twenty readers of 
' The Albion,' (this calculation includes a 
printer, four pressmen, and a devil) ; but 
becoming of no use, when ' The Albion ' 
stopped, I got it translated into Usbeck 
Tartar by my good friend Tibet Kulm, who 
is come to London with a civil invitation 
from the Cham to the English nation to go 
over to the worship of the Lama. 

" ' The Albion ' is dead — dead as nail in 
door — and my revenues have died with it ; 
but I am not as a man without hope. I have 
got a sort of an opening to the ' Morning 
Chronicle ! ! ! ' Mr. Manning, by means of 
that common dispenser of benevolence, 
Mister Dyer. I have not seen Perry, the 
editor, yet : but I am preparing a specimen. 
I shall have a difficult job to manage, for you 
must know that Mr. Perry, in common with 
the great body of the Whigs, thinks 'The 
Albion ' very loiv. I find I must rise a peg or 
so, be a little more decent, and less abusive ; 
for, to confess the truth, I had arrived to an 
abominable pitch ; I spared neither age nor 
sex when my cue was given me. NHmporte, 
(as they say in French,) any climate will suit 
me. So you are about to bring your old 
face-making face to London. You could not 
come in a better time for my purposes ; for 
I have just lost Blckman, a faint idea of 
whose character I sent you. He is gone to 
Ireland for a 'year or two, to make his 
fortune ; and I have lost by his going, what 
seems to me I can never recover — a finished 
man. His memory will be to me as the 
brazen serpent to the Israelites, — I shall look 
up to it, to keep me upright and honest. 
But he may yet bring back his honest face 
to England one day. I wish your affairs with 
the Emperor of China had not been so urgent, 
that you might have stayed in Great Britain 
a year or two longer, to have seen him ; for, 
judging from my own experience, I almost 
dare pronounce you never saw his equal. 
I never saw a man, that could be at all a 
second or substitute for him in any sort. 

" Imagine that what is here erased, was an 
apology and explanation, perfectly satisfac- 
tory you may be sure ! for rating this man 

so highly at the expense of , and , 

and , and M , and , and , 

and . But Mr. Burke has explained 

this phenomenon of our nature very prettily 
in his letter to a Member of the National 



Assembly, or else in Appeal to the old 
Whigs, I forget which — do you remember 
an instance from Homer, (who understood 
these matters tolerably well,) of Priam 
driving away his other sons with expressions 
of wrath and bitter reproach, when Hector 
was just dead. 

" I live where I did in a private manner, 
because I don't like state. Nothing is so 
disagreeable to me as the clamours and 
applauses of the mob. For this reason I live 
in an obscure situation in one of the courts of 
the Temple. " C. L. 

" I send you all of Coleridge's letters* to 
me, which I have preserved : some of them 
are upon the subject of my play. I also 
send you Kemble's two letters, and the 
prompter's courteous epistle, with a curious 
critique on ' Pride's Cure,' by a young physi- 
cian from Edinbro', who modestly suggests 
quite another kind of a plot. These are 
monuments of my disappointment which 
I like to preserve. 

" In Coleridge's letters you will find a good 
deal of amusement, to see genuine talent 
struggling against a pompous display of it. 
I also send you the Professor's letter to me, 
(careful professor ! to conceal his name even 
from his correspondent,) ere yet the Profes- 
sor's pride was cured. Oh ! monstrous and 
almost satanical pride ! 

"You will carefully keep all (except the 
Scotch Doctor's, which burn) in statu quo, 
till I come to claim mine own. 

"C.Lamb," 

The following is in reply to a pressing 
invitation from Mr. Wordsworth, to visit 
him at the Lakes. 

TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 

"Jan. 30th, 1801. 

"I ought before this to have replied to 
your very kind invitation into Cumberland. 
With you and your sister I could gang any- 
where ; but I am afraid whether I shall 
ever be able to afford so desperate a 
journey. Separate from the pleasure of your 
company, I don't much care if I never see a 

» Lamb afterwards, in some melancholy mood, de- 
stroyed all Coleridge's Letters, and was so vexed with 
what he had done, that he never preserved any letters 
which he received afterwards. 



LETTERS TO MANNING. 



61 



mountain in my life. I have passed all my 
days in London, until I have formed as many 
and intense local attachments, as any of you 
mountaineers can have done with dead 
nature. The lighted shops of the Strand 
and Fleet-street ; the innumerable trades, 
tradesmen, and customers, coaches, waggons, 
playhouses ; all the bustle and wickedness 
round about Co vent Garden ; the very 
women of the Town ; the watchmen, drunken 
scenes, rattles — life awake, if you awake, at 
all hours of the night ; the impossibility of 
being dull in Fleet-street ; the crowds, the 
very dirt and mud, the sun shining upon 
houses and pavements, the print-shops, the 
old-book stalls, parsons cheapening books, 
coffee-houses, steams of soups from kitchens, 
the pantomimes — London itself a pantomime 
and a masquerade — all these things work 
themselves into my mind, and feed me with- 
out a power of satiating me. The wonder 
of these sights impels me into night-walks 
about her crowded streets, and I often shed 
tears in the motley Strand from fulness of 
joy at so much life. All these emotions must 
be strange to you ; so are your rural emo- 
tions to me. But consider, what must I have 
been doing all my life, not to have lent great 
portions of my heart with usury to such 
scenes ? 

" My attachments are all local, purely local 
— I have no passion (or have had none since 
I was in love, and then it was the spurious 
engendering of poetry and books,) to groves 
and valleys. The rooms where I was born, 
the furniture which has been before my eyes 
all my life, a book-case which has followed 
me about like a faithful dog, (only exceeding 
him in knowledge,) wherever I have moved, 
old chairs, old tables, streets, squares, where 
I have sunned myself, my old school, — these 
are my mistresses — have I not enough, 
without your mountains ? I do not envy 
you. I should pity you, did I not know that 
the mind will make friends with anything. 
Your sun, and moon, and skies, and hills, and 
lakes, affect me no more, or scarcely come to 
me in more venerable characters, than as a 
gilded room with tapestry and tapers, where 
I might live with handsome visible objects. 
I consider the clouds above me but as a roof 
beautifully painted, but unable to satisfy the 
mind : and at last, like the pictures of the 
apartment of a connoisseur, unable to afford 



him any longer a pleasure. So fading upon 
me, from disuse, have been the beauties of 
Nature, as they have been confidently called ; 
so ever fresh, and green, and warm are all 
the inventions of men, and assemblies of 
men in this great city. I should certainly 
have laughed with dear Joanna.* 

" Give my kindest love, and my sister's to 
D. and yourself. And a kiss from me to 
little Barbara Lewthwaite.f Thank you for 
liking my play ! " C. L." 



The next two letters were written to 
Manning when on a tour upon the Conti- 
nent. 

TO MR. MANNING. 

"Feb. 15th, 1802. 

"Apropos, I think you wrong about my 
play. All the omissions are right. And the 
supplementary scene, in which Sandford 
narrates the manner in which his master is 
affected, is the best in the book. It stands 
where a hodge-podge of German puerilities 
used to stand. I insist upon it that you like 
that scene. Love me, love that scene. I will 
now transcribe the 'Londoner ' (No. 1), and 
wind up all with affection and humble 
servant at the end." 

[Here was transcribed the essay called 
" The Londoner," which was published some 
years afterwards in " The Eeflector," and 
which forms part of Lamb's collected works.] 
He then proceeds : — 

" ' What is all this about ! ' said Mrs. 
Shandy. 'A story of a cock and a bull,' 
said Yorick : and so it is ; but Manning will 
take good-naturedly what God will send him 
across the water : only I hope he won't shut 
his eyes, and open his mouth, as the children 
say, for that is the way to gape, and not to 
read- Manning, continue your laudible pur- 
pose of making me your register. I will 
render back all your remarks ; and /, not you, 
shall have received usury by having read 
them. In the mean time, may the great 
Spirit have you in his keeping, and preserve 

* Alluding to the Inscription of Wordsworth's, en- 
titled " Joanna," containing a magnificent description of 
the effect of laughter echoing amidst the great moun- 
tains of Westmoreland. 

t Alluding to Wordsworth's poem, " The Pet Lamb." 



02 



LETTER TO COLERIDGE. 



our Englishman from the inoculation of 
frivolity and sin upon French earth. 

" Allons — or what is it you say, instead of 
good-bye ? 

" Mary sends her kind remembrance, and 
covets the remarks equally with me. 

" C. Lamb." 



TO MR. MANNING. 

"My dear Manning, — I must positively 
write, or I shall miss you at Toulouse. I sit 
here like a decayed minute-hand (I lie ; that 
does not sit,) and being myself the exponent 
of no time, take no heed how the clocks 
about me are going. You possibly by this 
time may have explored all Italy, and toppled, 
unawares, into Etna, while you went too 
near those rotten-jawed, gap-toothed, old 
worn-out chaps of hell, — while I am medi- 
tating a quiescent letter to the honest post- 
master of Toulouse. But in case you should 
not have been felo de se, this is to tell you, 
that your letter was quite to my palate — in 
particular your just remarks upon Industry, 
cursed Industry, (though indeed you left me 
to explore the reason,) were highly relishing. 
I have often wished I lived in the golden 
age, when shepherds lay stretched upon 
flowers, — the genius there is in a man's 
natural idle face, that has not learned his 
multiplication table ! before doubt, and pro- 
positions, and corollaries, got into the world ! 
* * * * * 

" Apropos : if you should go to Florence 
or to Rome, inquire what works are extant 
in gold, silver, bronze, or marble, of Benvenuto 
Cellini, a Florentine artist, whose Life, doubt- 
less, you have read ; or, if not, without con- 
troversy, you must read, so hark ye, send for 
it immediately from Lane's circulating library. 
It is always put among the romances, very 
properly ; but you have read it, I sup- 
pose. In particular, inquire at Florence 
for his colossal bronze statue (in the grand 
square, or somewhere) of Perseus. You 
may read the story in ' Tooke's Pantheon.' 
Nothing material has transpired in these parts. 
Coleridge has indited a violent philippic 
against Mr. Fox in the ' Morning Post,' which 
is a compound of expressions of humility, 
gentlemen-ushering-in most arrogant charges. 
It will do Mr. Fox no real injury among 
those that know him." 



In the summer of 1802, Lamb, in company 
with his sister, visited the Lakes, and spent 
three weeks with Coleridge at Keswick. 
There he also met the true annihilator of 
the slave-trade, Thomas Clarkson, who was 
then enjoying a necessary respite from his 
stupendous labours, in a cottage on the 
borders of Ulswater. Lamb had no taste 
for oratorical philanthropy ; but he felt 
the grandeur and simplicity of Clarkson's 
character, and appreciated the unexampled 
self-denial with which he steeled his heart, 
trembling with nervous sensibility, to endure 
intimate acquaintance with the foulest details 
of guilt and wickedness which he lived, and 
could have died, to abolish. Wordsworth 
was not in the Lake-country during Lamb's 
visit ; but he made amends by spending some 
time in town after Lamb's return, and then 
quitted it for Yorkshire to be married. 
Lamb's following letters show that he made 
some advances towards fellowship with the 
hills which at a distance he had treated so 
cavalierly ; but his feelings never heartily 
associated with " the bare earth, and moun- 
tains bare," which sufficed Wordsworth ; he 
rather loved to cleave to the little hints and 
suggestions of nature in the midst of crowded 
cities. In his latter years I have heard 
him, when longing after London among the 
pleasant fields of Enfield, declare that his 
love of natural scenery would be abundantly 
satisfied by the patches of long waving grass, 
and the stunted trees, that blacken in the 
old-church-yard nooks which you may yet 
find bordering on Thames-street. 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

" Sept. 8th, 1802. 
" Dear Coleridge, — I thought of not writing 
till we had performed some of our commis- 
sions ; but we have been hindered from 
setting about them, which yet shall be done 
to a tittle. We got home very pleasantly on 
Sunday. Mary is a good deal fatigued, and 
finds the difference of going to a place, and 
coming from it. I feel that I shall remember 
your mountains to the last day I live. They 
haunt me perpetually. I am like a man who 
has been falling in love unknown to himself, 
which he finds out when he leaves the lady. 
I do not remember any very strong impression 
while they were present ; but, being gone, 
their mementos are shelved in my brain. 



LETTER TO MANNING. 



C:5 



We passed a very pleasant little time with 
the Clarksons. The Words worths are at 
Montague's rooms, near neighbours to us.* 
They dined with us yesterday, and I was 
their guide to Bartlemy Fair ! " 



TO MR. MANNING. 

"24th Sept. 1802, London. 

"My dear Manning, — Since the date of 
my last letter, I have been a traveller. A 
strong desire seized me of visiting remote 
regions. My first impulse was to go and see 
Paris. It was a trivial objection to my 
aspiring mind, that I did not understand a 
word of the language, since I certainly intend 
some time in my life to see Paris, and equally 
certainly intend never to learn the language ; 
therefore that could be no objection. How- 
ever, I am very glad I did not go, because 
you had left Paris (I see) before I could have 
set out. I believe, Stoddart promising to go 
with me another year, prevented that plan. 
My next scheme, (for to my restless, ambitious 
mind London was become a bed of thorns) 
was to visit the far-famed peak in Derby- 
shire, where the Devil sits, they say, without 
breeches. This my purer mind rejected as 
indelicate. And my final resolve was, a tour 
to the Lakes. I set out with Mary to 
Keswick, without giving Coleridge any notice, 
for, my time being precious, did not admit of 
it. He received us with all the hospitality 
in the world, and gave up his time to show 
us all the wonders of the country. He 
dwells upon a small hill by the side of 
Keswick, in a comfortable house, quite en- 
veloped on all sides by a net of mountains : 
great floundering bears and monsters they 
seemed, all couchant and asleep. We got in 
in the evening, travelling in a post-chaise 
from Penrith, in the midst of a gorgeous 
sunshine, which transmuted all the mountains 
into colours, purple, &e. &c. We thought we 
had got into fairy-land. But that went off 
(as it never came again, while we stayed we 
had no more fine sunsets) ; and we entered 
Coleridge's comfortable study just in the 
dusk, when the mountains were all dark with 
clouds upon their heads. Such an impression 
I never received from objects of sight before, 

* Mr. Basil Montague and his lady, who were, during 
Lamb's life, among his most cordial and most honoured 
friends. 



nor do I suppose that I can ever again. 
Glorious creatures, fine old fellows, Skiddaw, 
&c. I never shall forget ye, how ye lay about 
that night, like an intrenchment ; gone to 
bed, as it seemed for the night, but promising 
that ye were to be seen in the morning. 
Coleridge had got a blazing fire in his study ; 
which is a large, antique, ill-shaped room, 
with an old-fashioned organ, never played 
upon, big enough for a church, shelves of 
scattered folios, an .iEolian harp, and an old 
sofa, half bed, &c. And all looking out upon 
the last fading view of Skiddaw, and his 
broad-breasted brethren : what a night ! 
Here we stayed three full weeks, in which 
time I visited Wordsworth's cottage, where 
we stayed a day or two with the Clarksons 
(good people, and most hospitable, at whose 
house we tarried one day and night,) and saw 
Lloyd. The Wordsworths were gone to 
Calais. They have since been in London, 
and past much time with us : he is now gone 
into Yorkshire to be married. So we have 
seen Keswick, Grasmere, Ambleside. Uls- 
water (where the Clarksons live), and a place 
at the other end of Ulswater : I forget the 
name ;* to which we travelled on a very 
sultry day, over the middle of Helvellyn. 
We have clambered up to the top of Skiddaw, 
and I have waded up the bed of Lodore. In 
fine, I have satisfied myself, that there is 
such a thing as that which tourists call 
romantic, which I very much suspected before : 
they make such a spluttering about it, and 
toss their splendid epithets around them, till 
they give as dim a light as at four o'clock 
next morning the lamps do after an illumina- 
tion. Mary was excessively tired, when she 
got about half-way up Skiddaw, but we came 
to a cold rill (than which nothing can be 
imagined more cold, running over cold stones), 
and with the reinforcement of a draught of cold 
water she s urmounted it most manfully. Oh, 
its fine black head, and the bleak air atop of 
it, with a prospect of mountains all about 
and about, making you giddy ; and then 
Scotland afar off, and the border countries so 
famous in song and ballad ! It was a day 
that will stand out, like a mountain, I am 
sure, in my life. But I am returned (I have 
now been come home near three weeks — I 
was a month out), and you cannot conceive 
the degradation I felt at first, from being 
* Patterdale. 



u 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



accustomed to wander free as air among 
mountains, and bathe in rivers without being 
controlled by any one, to come home and 
work. I felt very little. I had been dream- 
ing I* was a very great man. But that is 
going off, and I find I shall conform in time 
to that state of life to which it has pleased 
God to call me. Besides, after all, Fleet- 
street and the Strand are better places to 
live in for good and all than amidst Skiddaw. 
Still, I turn back to those great places where 
1 wandered about, participating in their 
greatness. After all, I could not live in 
Skiddaw. I could spend a year, two, three 
years among them, but I must have a 
prospect of seeing Fleet-street at the end of 
that time, or I should mope and pine away, 
I know. Still, Skiddaw is a fine creature. 
My habits are changing, I think, i. e. from 
drunk to sober. Whether I shall be happier 
or not, remains to be proved. I shall cer- 
tainly be more happy in a morning ; but 
whether I shall not sacrifice the fat, and the 
marrow, and the kidneys, i. e. the night, 
glorious care-drowning night, that heals all 
our wrongs, pours wine into our mortifica- 
tions, changes the scene from indifferent and 
flat to bright and brilliant ? — O Manning, if | 
I should have formed a diabolical resolution, 
by the time you come to England, of not 
admitting any spirituous liquors into my 
house, will you be my guest on such shame- 
worthy terms ] Is life, with such limitations, 
worth trying 1 The truth is, that my liquors 
bring a nest of friendly harpies about my 
house, who consume me. This is a pitiful 
tale to be read at St. Gothard, but it is just 

now nearest my heart. F is a ruined 

man. He is hiding himself from his credi- 
tors, and has sent his wife and children into 
the country. , my other drunken com- 
panion (that has been : nam hie caestus 
artemque repono), is turned editor of a 
Naval Chronicle. Godwin continues a steady 
friend, though the same facility does not 
remain of visiting him often. Holcroft is 
not yet come to town. I expect to see him, 
and will deliver your message. Things come 
crowding in to say, and no room for 'em. 
Some things are too little to be told, i. e. to 
have a preference ; some are too big and 
circumstantial. Thanks for yours, which 
was most delicious. Would I had been with 
you, benighted, &c. I fear my head is turned 



with wandering. I shall never be the same 
acquiescent being. Farewell ; write again 
quickly, for I shall not like to hazard a 
letter, not knowing where the fates have 
carried you. Farewell, my dear fellow. 

" C. Lamb." 



Lamb was fond of Latin composition when 
at school, and was then praised for it. He 
was always fond of reading Latin verse, and 
late in life taught his sister to read it. About 
this time, he hazarded the following Latin 
letter to Coleridge, of whose classical acquire- 
ments he stood in awe. 



CAROLUS AGNUS COLERIDGIO SUO S. 

"Carissime, — Scribis, ut nummos scilicet 
epistolarios solvam et postremo in Tartara 
abeam : immo tu potius Tartaricum (ut 
aiunt) deprehendisti, qui me vernacula meS, 
lingu& pro scriba conductitio per tot annos 
satis eleganter usum ad Latind impure et 
canino fere ore latrandum per tuasmet epis- 
tolas bene* compositas et concinnatas percellire 
studueris. Conabor tamen : Attamen vereor, 
ut ^Edes istas nostri Christi, inter quas tanta 
diligentia magistri improba bonis literulis, 
quasi per clysterem quendam injectis, infra 
supraque olim penitus imbutus fui, Barnesii 
et Marklandii doctissimorum virorum nomin- 
ibus adhuc gaudentes, barbarismis meis 
peregrinis et aliunde quaesitis valde dehones- 
tavero. Sed pergere quocunque placet. 
Adeste igitur, quotquot estis, conjugationum 
declinationumve turmae, terribilia spectra, et 
tu imprimis ades, Umbra et Imago maxima 
obsolete (Diis gratiae) Virgae, qui! novissime 
in mentem recepta, horrescunt subito natales, 
et parum deest quo minus braccas meas ultro 
usque ad crura demittam, et ipse puer pueril- 
iter ejulem. 

"Ista tua Carmina Chamouniana satis 
grandia esse mihi constat ; sed hoc mihi non- 
nihil displicet, quod in iis illse montium 
Grisosonum inter se responsiones totidem 
reboant anglicd, God, God, haud aliter atque 
temet audivi tuas montes Cumbrianas 
resonare docentes, Tod, Tod, nempe Doctorem 
infelicem : vocem certe haud Deum Sonan- 
tem. Pro caeteris plaudo. 

" Itidem comparationes istas tuas satis 
callidas et lepidas certe novi : sed quid hoc 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



65 



ad verum ? cum illi Consulari viro et mentem 
irritabilem istum Julianum ; et etiam astutias 
frigidulas quasdeni Augusto propriores, 
nequaquam congruenter uno afnatu compara- 
tionis causa insedisse affirmaveris : necnon 
nescio quid similitudinis etiam cum Tiberio 
tertio in loco solicite produxeris. Quid tibi 
equidem cum uno vel altero Caesare, cum 
universi Duodecim ad comparationes tuas se 
ultro tulerint 1 Praeterea, vetustati adnutans, 
comparationes iniquas odi. 

"Istas Words worthianas nuptias (velpotius 
cujusdam Edmundii tui) te retulisse mirifi- 
cum gaudeo. Valeas, Maria, fortunata 
nimium, et antiquae illae Mariae Virgini 
(comparatione plusquam Caesareana) forsitan 
comparanda, quoniam 'beata inter mulieres:' 
et etiam fortasse Wordsworthium ipsum 
tuum maritum Angelo Salutatori aequare fas 
erit, quoniam e Coelo (ut ille) descendunt et 
Musae et ipsse Musicol93 : at Wordsworthium 
Musarum observantissimum semper novi. 
Necnon te quoque affinitate hac nova, Doro- 
thea, gratulor : et tu certe alteram donum Dei. 

"Istum Ludum, quern tu, Coleridgi, Ameri- 
canum garris, a Ludo (ut Ludi sunt) maxime 
abhorrentem praetereo : nempe quid ad 
Ludum attinet,totius illse gentis Columbianae, 
a nostra gente, eadem stirpe orta, ludi singuli 
causa voluntatem perperam alienare 1 Quaeso 
ego materiam ludi : te Bella ingeris. 

" Denique valeas, et quid de Latinitate mea 
putes, dicas : facias ut opossum ilium nostrum 
volantem vel (ut tu malis) quendam Piscem 
errabundum, a me salvum et pulcherrimum 
esse jubeas. Valeant uxor tua cum Hartleiio 
nostro. Soror mea salva est et ego : vos et 
ipsa salvere jubet. Ulterius progrediri non 
liquet : homo sum aeratus. 

" P.S. Pene mihi exciderat, apud me esse 
Librorum a Johanno Miltono Latine" scripto- 
rum volumina duo, quae (Deo volente) cum 
caeteris tuis libris ocyus citius per Maria ad 
te missura curabo ; sed me in hoc tali genere 
rerum nullo modo festinantem novisti : habes 
confitentem reum. Hoc solum dici restat, 
praedicta volumina pulchra esse et omnia 
opera Latina J. M. in se continere. Circa 
defensionem istam Pro Pop . Ang°. acerrimam 
in praesens ipse praeclaro gaudio moror. 

" Jussa tua Stuartina faciam ut diligenter 
colam. 

" Iterum iterumque valeas . 

" Et facias memor sis nostri." 



The publication of the second volume of 
the " Anthology " gave occasion to the fol- 



lowing letter : — 



TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

" In the next edition of the ' Anthology ' 
(which Phoebus avert, and those nine other 
wandering maids also !) please to blot out 
gentle-hearted, and substitute drunken dog, 
ragged-head, seld-shaven, odd-eyed, stut- 
tering, or any other epithet which truly and 
properly belongs to the gentleman in question. 
And for Charles read Tom, or Bob, or 
Richard for mere delicacy. Hang you, I was 
beginning to forgive you, and believe in 
earnest that the lugging in of my proper 
name was purely unintentional on your part, 
when looking back for further conviction, 
stares me in the face Charles Lamb of the 
India House. Noiv I am convinced it was all 
done in malice, heaped sack-upon-sack, con- 
gregated, studied malice. You dog ! your 
141st page shall not save you. I own I was 
just ready to acknowledge that there is a 
something not unlike good poetry in that 
page, if you had not run into the unintelli- 
gible abstraction-fit about the manner of the 
Deity's making spirits perceive his presence. 
God, nor created thing alive, can receive any 
honour from such thin show-box attributes. 
By-the-by, where did you pick up that scan- 
dalous piece of private history about the 
angel and the Duchess of Devonshire ? If it 
is a fiction of your own, why truly it is a very 
modest one for you. Now I do affirm, that 
Lewti is a very beautiful poem. I was in 
earnest when I praised it. It describes a 
silly species of one not the wisest of passions. 
Therefore it cannot deeply affect a disen- 
thralled mind. But such imagery, such 
novelty, such delicacy, and such versification 
never got into an 'Anthology ' before. I am 
only sorry that the cause of all the passionate 
complaint is not greater than the trifling 
circumstance of Lewti being out of temper 
one day. Gaulberto certainly has considerable 
originality, but sadly wants finishing. It is, 
as it is, one of the very best in the book. 
Next to Lewti I like the Raven, which has 
a good deal of humour. I was pleased to see 
it again, for you once sent it me, and I have 
lost the letter which contained it. Now I 
am on the subject of Anthologies, I must say 
I am sorry the old pastoral way is fallen into 



66 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



disrepute. The gentry which now indite 
sonnets are certainly the legitimate descen- 
dants of the ancient shepherds. The same 
simpering face of description, the old family 
face, is visibly continued in the line. Some 
of their ancestors' labours are yet to be found 
in Allan Ramsay's and Jacob Tonson's Mis- 
cellanies. But miscellanies decaying, and the 
old pastoral way dying of mere want, their 
successors (driven from their paternal acres) 
now-a-days settle and live upon Magazines 
and Anthologies. This race of men are 
uncommonly addicted to superstition. Some 
of them are idolators and worship the moon. 
Others deify qualities, as love, friendship, 
sensibility ; or bare accidents, as Solitude. 
Grief and Melancholy have their respective 
altars and temples among them, as the 
heathens builded theirs to Mors, Febris, 
Pallor, &c. They all agree in ascribing a 
peculiar sanctity to the number fourteen. 
One of their own legislators affirmeth, that 
whatever exceeds that number ' encroacheth 
upon the province of the elegy ' — vice versa, 
whatever 'cometh short of that number 
abutteth upon the premises of the epigram.' 
I have been able to discover but few images 
in their temples, which, like the caves of 
Delphos of old, are famous for giving echoes. 
They impute a religious importance to the 
letter O, whether because by its roundness it 
is thought to typify the moon, their principal 
goddess, or for its analogies to their own 
labours, all ending where they began, or for 
whatever other high and mystical reference, 
I have never been able to discover, but I 
observe they never begin their invocations to 
their gods without it, except indeed one 
insignificant sect among them, who use the 
Doric A, pronounced like Ah ! broad, instead. 
These boast to have restored the old Dorian 
mood. C. L." 

The following fragment of a letter about 
this time to Coleridge refers to an offer of 
Coleridge to supply Lamb with literal trans- 
lations from the German, which he might 
versify for the "Morning Post," for the 
increase of Lamb's slender income. 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

"Oct. 11th, 1802. 

"Dear Coleridge, — Your offer about the 
German poems is exceedingly kind ; but I 



do not think it a wise speculation, because 
the time it would take you to put them into 
prose would be nearly as great as if you 
versified them. Indeed I am sure you could 
do the one nearly as soon as the other ; so 
that instead of a division of labour, it would 
be only a multiplication. But I will think 
of your offer in another light. I dare say I 
could find many things, of a light nature, to 
suit that paper, which you would not object 
to pass upon Stuart as your own, and I 
should come in for some light profits, and 
Stuart think the more highly of your 
assiduity. ' Bishop Hall's Characters ' I 
know nothing about, having never seen them. 
But I will reconsider your offer, which is 
very plausible ; for as to the drudgery of 
going every day to an editor with my scraps, 
like a pedlar, for him to pick out and tumble 
about my ribbons and posies, and to wait in 
his lobby, &c, no money could make up for 
the degradation. You are in too high request 
with him to have anything unpleasant of that 
sort to submit to. 

[The letter refers to several articles and 
books which Lamb promised to send to 
Coleridge, and proceeds : — ] 

" You must write me word whether the 
Miltons are worth paying carriage for. You 
have a Milton ; but it is pleasanter to eat 
one's own peas out of one's own garden, than 
to buy them by the peck at Covent Garden ; 
and a book reads the better, which is our 
own, and has been so long known to us, that 
we know the topography of its blots, and 
dog's-ears, and can trace the dirt in it to 
having read it at tea with buttered muffins, 
or over a pipe, which I think is the maximum. 
But, Coleridge, you must accept these little 
things, and not think of returning money 
for them, for I do not set up for a factor or 
general agent. As for fantastic debts of 151., 
I'll think you were dreaming, and not trouble 
myself seriously to attend to you. My bad 
Latin you properly correct ; but natales for 
nates was an inadvertency : I knew better. 
Progrediri, or progredi, I thought indifferent, 
my authority being Ainsworth. However, 
as I have got a fit of Latin, you will now and 
then indulge me with an epistola. I pay the 
postage of this, and propose doing it by turns. 
In that case I can now and then write to you 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



67 



without remorse ; not that you would mind 
the money, but you have not always ready 
cash to answer small demands, the epistolarii 
nummi. 

"Your l Epigram on the Sun and Moon 
in Germany ' is admirable. Take 'em all 
together, they are as good as Harrington's. 
I will muster up all the conceits I can, and 
you shall have a packet some day. You and 
I together can answer all demands surely : 
you, mounted on a terrible charger, (like 
Homer, in the Battle of the Books,) at the 
head of the cavalry : I will lead the light 
horse. I have just heard from Stoddart. 
Allen and he intend taking Keswick in their 
way home. Allen wished particularly to 
have it a secret that he is in Scotland, and 
wrote to me accordingly very urgently. As 
luck was, I had told not above three or four ; 
but Mary had told Mrs. Green of Christ's 
Hospital ! For the present, farewell : never 
forgetting love to Pipos and his friends. 

"C.Lamb." 

The following letter embodies in strong 
language Lamb's disgust at the rational 
mode of educating children. While he gave 
utterance to a deep and hearted feeling of 
jealousy for the old delightful books of 
fancy, which were banished by the sense of 
Mrs. Barbauld, he cherished great respect 
for that lady's power as a true English prose 
writer ; and spoke often of her " Essay on 
Inconsistent Expectations," as alike bold and 
original in thought and elegant in style. 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

"Oct. 23rd, 1802. 

" I read daily your political essays. I was 
particularly pleased with ' Once a Jacobin : ' 
though the argument is obvious enough, the 
style was less swelling than your things 
sometimes are, and it was plausible adpopu- 
lum. A vessel has just arrived from Jamaica 
with the news of poor Sam Le Grice's death. 
He died at Jamaica of the yellow fever. His 
course was rapid and he had been very 
foolish, but I believe there was more of 
kindness and warmth in him than in almost 
any other of our schoolfellows. The annual 
meeting of the Blues is to-morrow, at the 
London Tavern, where poor Sammy dined 
with them two years ago, and attracted the 
notice of all by the singular foppishness of 



his dress. When men go off the stage so 
early, it scarce seems a noticeable thing in 
their epitaphs, whether they had been wise 
or silly in their lifetime. 

" I am glad the snuff and Pi-pos's * books 
please. ' Goody Two Shoes ' is almost out of 
print. Mrs. Barbauld's stuff has banished all 
the old classics of the nursery ; and the shop- 
man at Newberry's hardly deigned to reach 
them off an old exploded corner of a shelf, 
when Mary asked for them. Mrs. B.'s and 
Mrs. Trimmer's nonsense lay in piles about. 
Knowledge insignificant and vapid as Mrs. 
B.'s books convey, it seems, must come to a 
child in the shape of knowledge, and his empty 
noddle must be turned with conceit of his 
own powers when he has learnt, that a horse 
is an animal, and Billy is better than a horse, 
and such like ; instead of that beautiful 
interest in wild tales, which made the child 
a man, while all the time he suspected him- . 
self to be no bigger than a child. Science 
has succeeded to poetry no less in the little 
walks of children than with men. Is there 
no possibility of averting this sore evil ? 
Think what you would have been now, if 
instead of being fed with tales and old wives' 
fables in childhood, you had been crammed 
with geography and natural history ! 

"Hang them ! — I mean the cursed Barbauld 
crew, those blights and blasts of all that is 
human in man and child. 

" As to the translations, let me do two or 
three hundred lines, and then do you try the 
nostrums upon Stuart in any way you please. 
If they go down, I will bray more. In fact, 
if I got or could but get 501. a year only, in 
addition to what I have, I should live in 
affluence. 

" Have you anticipated it, or could not you 
give a parallel of Bonaparte with Cromwell, 
particularly as to the contrast in their deeds 
affecting foreign states 1 Cromwell's inter- 
ference for the Albigenses, B.'s against the 
Swiss. Then religion would come in ; and 
Milton and you could rant about our coun- 
trymen of that period. This is a hasty 
suggestion, the more hasty because I want 
my supper. I have just finished Chapman's 
Homer. Did you ever read it 1 — it has most 
the continuous power of interesting you all 
along, like a rapid original, of any ; and in 

* A nickname of endearment for little Hartley 
Coleridge. 



F 2 



68 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



the uncommon excellence of the more finished 
parts goes beyond Fairfax or any of 'em. 
The metre is fourteen syllables, and capable 
of all sweetness and grandeur. Cowper's 
ponderous blank verse detains you every 
step with some heavy Miltonism ; Chapman 
gallops off with you his own free pace. Take 
a simile for example. The council breaks 
up — 

' Being abroad, the earth was overlaid 
With flockers to them, that came forth ; as when of 

frequent bees 
Swarms rise out of a hollow rock, repairing the degrees 
Of their egression endlessly, with ever rising new 
From forth their sweet nest ; as their store, still as it 

faded, grew, 
And never would cease sending forth her clusters to the 

spring, 
They still crowd out so ; this flock here, that there, 

belabouring 
The loaded flowers. So,' &c. &c. 

" What endless egression of phrases the dog 
.commands ! 

" Take another, Agamemnon wounded, 
bearing his wound heroically for the sake 
of the army (look below) to a woman in 
labour. 

' He, with his lance, sword, mighty stones, pour'd his 

heroic wreak 
On other squadrons of the foe, whiles yet warm blood 

did break 
Tbro' his cleft veins : but when the wound was quite 

exhaust and crude, 
The eager anguish did approve his princely fortitude. 
As when most sharp and bitter pangs distract a labouring 

dame, 
Which the divine Ilithise, that rule the painful frame 
Of human childbirth, pour on her ; the Ilithise that are 
The daughters of Saturnia ; with whose extreme repair 
The woman in her travail strives to take the worst it 

gives ; 
With thought, it must he, His love's fruit, the end for 

which she lives ; 
The mean to make herself new born, what comforts will 

redound : 
So,' &c. 

" I will tell you more about Chapman and 
his peculiarities in my next. I am much 
interested in him. 

" Yours ever affectionately, and Pi-Pos's, 

" C. L." 



TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

"Nov. 4th, 1802. 

"Observe, there comes to you, by the 
Kendal waggon to-morrow, the illustrious 
5th of November, a box, containing the 
Miltons, the strange American Bible, with 
White's brief note, to which you will attend ; 
1 Baxter's Holy Commonwealth,' for which 



you stand indebted to me 35. 6c?.; an odd 
volume of Montaigne, being of no use to me, 
I having the whole ; certain books belonging 
to Wordsworth, as do also the strange thick- 
hoofed shoes, which are very much admired 
at in London. All these sundries I commend 
to your most strenuous looking after. If you 
find the Miltons in certain parts dirtied and 
soiled with a crumb of right Gloucester 
blacked in the candle, (my usual supper,) or 
peradventure a stray ash of tobacco wafted 
into the crevices, look to that passage more 
especially : depend upon it, it contains good 
matter. I have got your little Milton, which, 
as it contains 'Salmasius' — and I make a 
rule of never hearing but one side of the 
question (why should I distract myself?) I 
shall return to you when I pick up the 
Latino, opera. The first Defence is the 
greatest work among them, because it is 
uniformly great, and such as is befitting the 
very mouth of a great nation, speaking for 
itself. But the second Defence, which is 
but a succession of splendid episodes, slightly 
tied together, has one passage, which, if you 
have not read, I conjure you to lose no time, 
but read it; it is his consolations in his 
blindness, which had been made a reproach 
to him. It begins whimsically, with poetical 
flourishes about Tiresias and other blind 
worthies, (which still are mainly interesting 
as displaying his singular mind, and in what 
degree poetry entered into his daily soul, 
not by fits and impulses, but engrained and 
innate,) but the concluding page, i. e. of this 
passage, (not of the Lefensio,) which you will 
easily find, divested of all brags and flourishes, 
gives so rational, so true an enumeration of 
his comforts, so human, that it cannot be 
read without the deepest interest. Take one 
touch of the religious part : — ' Et sane haud 
ultima Dei cura cseci — (ive blind folks, I 
understand it ; not nos for ego) — sumus ; qui 
nos, quominus quicquam aliud prseter ipsum 
cernere valemus, eo clementius atque benig- 
nius respicere dignatur. Vse qui illudit nos, 
vse qui lsedit, execratione publica devovendo ; 
nos ab injuriis hominum non modo incolumes, 
sed pene sacros divina lex reddidit, divinus 
favor : nee tarn oculorum hebetudine quam 
coelestium alarum umbra has nobis fecisse 
tenebras videtur, factas illustrare rursus 
interiore ac longe praestabiliore lumine haud 
raro solet. Hue refero, quod et amici officio- 



LETTERS TO MANNING. 



sius nunc etiam quam solebant, colunt, 
observant, adsunt ; quod et nonnulli sunt, 
quibuscum Pyladeas atque Theseas alternare 
voces verorum amicorum liceat, 

" Vade gubernaculum mei pedis. 
Da manum ministro amico. 
Da collo inanuin tuain, ductor autem via) ero tibi ego." ' 

All this, and much more, is highly pleasing 
to know. But you may easily find it ; — and 
I don't know why I put down so many words 
about it, but for the pleasure of writing to 
you, and the want of another topic. 

" Yours ever, C. Lamb." 

"To-morrow I expect with anxiety S.T. C.'s 
letter to Mr. Fox." 



The year 1803 passed without any event 
to disturb the dull current of Lamb's toilsome 
life. He wrote nothing this year, except some 
newspaper squibs, and the delightful little 
poem on the death of Hester Savory. This 
he sent to Manning at Paris, with the 
following account of its subject : — 

" Dear Manning, I send you some verses 
I have made on the death of a young Quaker 
you may have heard me speak of as being in 
love with for some years while I lived at 
Pentonville, though I had never spoken to 
her in my life. She died about a month since. 
If you have interest with the Abbe de Lisle, 
you may get 'em translated : he has done as 
much for the Georgics." 

The verses must have been written in the 
very happiest of Lamb's serious mood. I 
cannot refrain from the luxury of quoting 
the conclusion, though many readers have it 
by heart. 

" My sprightly neighbour, gone before 
To that unknown and silent shore ! 
Shall we not meet as heretofore, 

Some summer morning. 

When from thy cheerful eyes a ray 
Hath struck a bliss upon the day, 
A bliss that would not go away, 

A sweet forewarning ? " 



The following letters were written to 
Manning, at Paris, while still haunted with 
the idea of oriental adventure. 



TO MR. MANNING. 

"Feb. 19th, 1803. 

" My dear Manning, — The general scope of 
your letter afforded no indications of insanity, 
but some particular points raised a scruple. 
For God's sake don't think any more of 
'Independent Tartary.' What are you to 
do among such Ethiopians 1 Is there no 
lineal descendant of Prester John % Is the 
chair empty 1 Is the sword unswayed ? — 
depend upon it they'll never make you their 
king, as long as any branch of that great 
stock is remaining. I tremble for your 
Christianity. They will certainly circumcise 
you. Eead Sir John Mandeville's travels to 
cure you, or come over to England. There is 
a Tartar-man now exhibiting at Exeter 
Change. Come and talk with him, and hear 
what he says first. Indeed, he is no very 
favourable specimen of his countrymen ! 
But perhaps the best thing you can do, is to 
try to get the idea out of your head. For 
this purpose repeat to yourself every night, 
after you have said your prayers, the words 
Independent Tartary, Independent Tartary, 
two or three times, and associate with 
! them the idea of oblivion, ('tis Hartley's 
method with obstinate memories,) or 
say, Independent, Independent, have I not 
already got an independence ? That was 
a clever way of the old puritans, pun- 
divinity. My dear friend, think what a 
sad pity it would be to bury such parts in 
heathen countries, among nasty, unconver- 
sable, horse-belching, Tartar-people ! Some 
say, they are Cannibals ; and then, conceive 
a Tartar-fellow eating my friend, and adding 
the cool malignity of mustard and vinegar ! 
I am afraid 'tis the reading of Chaucer has 
misled you ; his foolish stories about Cam- 
buscan, and the ring, and the horse of brass. 
Believe me, there are no such things, 'tis all 
the poet's invention ; but if there were such 
darling things as old Chaucer sings, I would 
up behind you on the horse of brass, and frisk 
off for Prester John's country. But these 
are all tales ; a horse of brass never flew, and 
a king's daughter never talked with birds ! 
The Tartars, really, are a cold, insipid, 
smouchy set. You'll be sadly moped (if 
you are not eaten) among them. Pray try 
and cure yourself. Take hellebore (the coun- 
sel is Horace's, 'twas none of my thought 



7u 



LETTERS TO MANNING. 



originally). Shave yourself oftener. Eat no 
saffron, for saffron-eaters contract a terrible 
Tartar-like yellow. Pray, to avoid the fiend. 
Eat nothing that gives the heart-burn. Shave 
the upper lip. Go about like an European. 
Eead no books of voyages (they are nothing 
but lies), only now and then a romance, to 
keep the fancy under. Above all, don't go 
to any sights of wild beasts. That has been 
your ruin. Accustom yourself to write 
familiar letters, on common subjects, to 
your friends in England, such as are of 
a moderate understanding. And think 
about common things more. I supped last 
night with Eickman, and met a merry 
natural captain, who pleases himself vastly 
with once having made a pun at Otaheite 
in the O. language.* Tis the same man 
who said Shakspeare he liked, because he 
was so much of the gentleman. Eickman 
is a man ( absolute in all numbers.' I think 
I may one day bring you acquainted, if you 
do not go to Tartary first ; for you'll never 
come back. Have a care, my dear friend, of 
Anthropophagi ! their stomachs are always 
craving. 'Tis terrible to be weighed out at 
fivepence a-pound. To sit at table (the 
reverse of fishes in Holland), not as a guest, 
but as a meat. 

"God bless you: do come to England. 
Air and exercise may do great things. Talk 
with some minister. Why not your father ? 

" God dispose all for the best. I have 
discharged my duty. 

" Your sincere friend, 

"C.Lamb." 

to mr. manning. 

" Not a sentence, not a syllable of Trisme- 
gistus, shall be lost through my neglect. I 
am his word-banker, his store-keeper of puns 
and syllogisms. You cannot conceive (and 
if Trismegistus cannot, no man can) the 
strange joy which I felt at the receipt of a 
letter from Paris. It seemed to give me a 
learned importance, which placed me above 
all who had not Parisian correspondents. 
Believe that I shall carefully husband every 
scrap, which will save you the trouble of 

* Captain, afterwards Admiral Burney, who became 
one of the most constant attendants on Lamb's parties, 
and whose son, Martin, grew up in his strongest regard, 
and received the honour of the dedication of the second 
volume of his works. 



memory, when you come back. You cannot 
write things so trifling, let them only be 
about Paris, which I shall not treasure. In 
particular, I must have parallels of actors 
and actresses. I must be told if any building 
in Paris is at all comparable to St. Paul's, 
which, contrary to the usual mode of that 
part of our nature called admiration, I have 
looked up to with unfading wonder, every 
morning at ten o'clock, ever since it has lain 
in my way to business. At noon I casually 
glance upon it, being hungry ; and hunger 
has not much taste for the fine arts. Is any 
night-walk comparable to a walk from St. 
Paul's to Charing Cross, for lighting, and 
paving, crowds going and coming without 
respite, the rattle of coaches, and the cheer- 
fulness of shops ? Have you seen a man 
guillotined yet ? is it as good as hanging ? 
are the women all painted, and the men all 
monkeys 1 or are there not a few that look 
like rational of both sexes ? Are you and the 
first consul thick ? All this expense of ink I 
may fairly put you to, as your letters will not 
be solely for my proper pleasure ; but are to 
serve as memoranda and notices, helps for 
short memory, a kind of Eumfordising recol- 
lection, for yourself on your return. Your 
letter was just what a letter should be, 
crammed, and very funny. Every part of it 
pleased me, till you came to Paris, and your 
philosophical indolence, or indifference, stung 
me. You cannot stir from your rooms till 
you know the language ! What the devil ! 
are men nothing but word-trumpets ? are 
men all tongue and ear ? have these creatures, 
that you and I profess to know something 
about, no faces, gestures, gabble, no folly, no 
absurdity, no induction of French education 
upon the abstract idea of men and women, no 
similitude nor dissimilitude to English ! 
Why ! thou cursed Smellfungus ! your 
account of your landing and reception, and 
Bullen, (I forget how you spell it, it was 
spelt my way in Harry the Eighth's time,) 
was exactly in that minute style which 
strong impressions inspire (writing to a 
Frenchman, I write as a Frenchman would). 
It appears to me, as if I should die with joy 
at the first landing in a foreign country. It 
is the nearest pleasure, which a grown man 
can substitute for that unknown one, which 
he can never know, the pleasure of the first 
entrance into life from the womb. I dare 



LETTERS TO MANNING. 



71 



say, in a short time, my habits would come 
back like a ' stronger man ' armed, and drive 
out that new pleasure ; and I should soon 
sicken for known objects. Nothing has 
transpired here that seems to me of sufficient 
importance to send dry-shod over the water : 
but I suppose you will want to be told some 
news. The best and the worst to me is, that 
I have given up two guineas a week at the 
' Post,' and regained my health and spirits, 
which were upon the wane. I grew sick, 
and Stuart unsatisfied. Ludisti satis, tempus 
abire est; I must cut closer, that 's all. Mister 
Fell, or as you, with your usual facetiousness 
and drollery, call him Mr. F + 11 has stopped 
short in the middle of his play. Some friend 
has told him that it has not the least merit 
in it. O ! that I had the rectifying of the 
Litany ! I would put in a libera nos {Scrip- 
tores videlicet) ab amicis ! That 's all the 
news. A propos (is it pedantry, writing to a 
Frenchman, to express myself sometimes by 
a French word, when an English one would 
not do as well 1 methinks, my thoughts fall 
naturally into it) — C. L." . 



TO MR. MANNING. 

" My dear Manning, — Although something 
of the latest, and after two months' waiting, 
your letter was highly gratifying. Some 
parts want a little explication ; for example, 
' the god-like face of the first consul.' What 
god does he most resemble, Mars, Bacchus, or 
Apollo ? or the god Serapis, who, flying (as 
Egyptian chronicles deliver) from the fury of 
the dog Anubis (the hieroglyph of an English 
mastiff), lighted upon Monomotapa (or the 
land of apes), by some thought to be Old 
France, and there set up a tyranny, &c. Our 
London prints of Mm represent him gloomy 
and sulky, like an angry Jupiter. I hear 
that he is very small, even less than me. I 
envy you your access to this great man, 
much more than your seances and conver- 
saziones, which I have a shrewd suspicion 
must be something dull. What you assert 
concerning the actors of Paris, that they 
exceed our comedians, bad as ours are, is 
impossible. In one sense it may be true, that 
their fine gentlemen, in what is called genteel 
comedy, may possibly be more brisk and 
degage than Mr. Caulfield, or Mr. Whitfield ; 
but have any of them the power to move 



laughter in excess? or can a Frenchman 
laugh ? Can they batter at your judicious 
ribs till they shake, nothing loth to be so 
shaken ? This is John Bull's criterion, and 
it shall be mine. You are Frenchified. Both 
your taste and morals are corrupt and per- 
verted. By-and-by you will come to assert, 
that Buonaparte is as great a general as the 
old Duke of Cumberland, and deny that one 
Englishman can beat three Frenchmen. 
Eead Henry the Fifth to restore your ortho- 
doxy. All things continue at a stay- still in 
London. I cannot repay your new novelties 
with my stale reminiscences. Like the 
prodigal, I have spent my patrimony, and 
feed upon the superannuated chaff and dry 
husks of repentance ; yet sometimes I re- 
member with pleasure the hounds and horses, 
which I kept in the days of my prodigality. 
I find nothing new, nor anything that has so 
much of the gloss and dazzle of novelty, as 
may rebound in narrative, and cast a reflec- 
tive glimmer across the channel. Did I send 
you an epitaph I scribbled upon a poor girl 
who died at nineteen, a good girl, and a 
pretty girl, and a clever girl, but strangely 
neglected by all her friends and kin % 

* Under this cold marble stone 
Sleep the sad remains of one 
Who, when alive, by few or none 
Was loved, as loved she might have been, 
If she prosperous days had seen, 
Or had thriving been, I ween. 
Only this cold funeral stone 
Tells she was beloved by one, 
Who on the marble graves his moan.' 

" Brief, and pretty, and tender, is it not 1 
I send you this, being the only piece of 
poetry I have done, since the muses all went 
with T. M. to Paris. I have neither stuff in 
my brain, nor paper in my drawer, to write 
you a longer letter. Liquor, and company, 
and wicked tobacco, a'nights, have quite 
dispericraniated me, as one may say ; but 
you, who spiritualise upon Champagne, may 
continue to write long long letters, and stuff 
'em with amusement to the end. Too long 
they cannot be, any more than a codicil to a 
will, which leaves me sundry parks and 
manors not specified in the deed. But don't 
be two months before you write again. — These 
from merry old England, on the day of her 
valiant patron St. George. 

"C.Lamb." 



72 



LETTERS TO MANNING. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

[1804 to 1806.] 

LETTERS TO MANNING, "WORDSWORTH, RICKMAN, AND 
HAZLITT. " MR. H." WRITTEN, ACCEPTED, DAMNED. j 

There is no vestige of Lamb's correspond- ! 
ence in the year 1804, nor does he seem to 
have written for the press. This year, how- j 
ever, added to his list of friends — one in j 
whose conversation he took great delight, 
until death severed them — William Hazlitt. 
This remarkable metaphysician and critic 
had then just completed his first work, 
the " Essay on the Principles of Human 
Action," but had not entirely given up his 
hope of excelling as a painter. After a pro- 
fessional tour through part of England, 
during which he satisfied his sitters better 
than himself, he remained some time at the 
house of his brother, then practising as a 
portrait painter with considerable success ; 
and while endeavouring to procure a pub- 
lisher for his work, painted a portrait of 
Lamb, of which an engraving is prefixed to 
the present volume.* It is one of the last of 
Hazlitt's efforts in an art which he after- 
wards illustrated with the most exquisite 
criticism which the knowledge and love of 
it could inspire. 

Among the vestiges of the early part of 
1805, are the four following letters to 
Manning. If the hero of the next letter, 
Mr. Richard Hopkins, is living, I trust he 
will not repine at being ranked with those 
who 

" Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame." 



TO MR. MANNING. 

"16, Mitre-court Buildings, 

" Saturday, 24th Feb. 1805. 

" Dear Manning, — I have been very unwell 
since I saw you. A sad depression of spirits, 
a most unaccountable nervousness ; from 
which I have been partially relieved by an 
odd accident. You knew Dick Hopkins, the 
swearing scullion of Caius % This fellow, by 
industry and agility, has thrust himself into 
the important situations (no sinecures, believe 
me) of cook to Trinity Hall and Caius 
College : and the generous creature has con- 
trived, with the greatest delicacy imaginable, 
to send me a present of Cambridge brawn. 

Edition, 1837. 



"What makes it the more extraordinary is, 
that the man never saw me in his life that I 
know of. I suppose he has heard of me. I 
did not immediately recognise the donor ; 
but one of Richard's cards, which had acci- 
dentally fallen into the straw, detected him 
in a moment. Dick, you know, was always 
remarkable for flourishing. His card im- 
ports, that ' orders (to wit, for brawn) from 
any part of England, Scotland, or Ireland, 
will be duly executed,' &c. At first, I thought 
of declining the present ; but Richard knew 
my blind side when he pitched upon brawn. 
"Tis of all my hobbies the supreme in the 
eating way. He might have sent sops from 
the pan, skimmings, crumpets, chips, hog's 
lard, the tender brown judiciously scalped 
from a fillet of veal (dexterously replaced by 
a salamander), the tops of asparagus, fugitive 
livers, runaway gizzards of fowls, the eyes 
of martyred pigs, tender effusions of laxative 
woodcocks, the red spawn of lobsters, 
leveret's ears, and such pretty filchings 
common to cooks ; but these had been 
ordinary presents, the everyday courtesies 
of dish washers to their sweethearts. Brawn 
was a noble thought. It is not every common 
gullet-fancier that can properly esteem of it. 
It is like a picture of one of the choice old 
Italian masters. Its gusto is of that hidden 
sort. As Wordsworth sings of a modest poet, 
— 'you must love him, ere to you he will 
seem worthy of your love ; ' so brawn, you 
must taste it ere to you it will seem to have 
any taste at all. But 'tis nuts to the adept : 
those that will send out their tongue and 
feelers to find it out. It will be wooed, and 
not unsought be won. Now, ham-essence, 
lobsters, turtle, such popular minions, abso- 
lutely court you, lay themselves out to strike 
you at first smack, like one of David's 
pictures (they call him Darveed), compared 
with the plain russet-coated wealth of a 
Titian or a Correggio, as I illustrated above. 
Such are the obvious glaring heathen virtues 
of a corporation dinner, compared with the 
reserved collegiate worth of brawn. Do me 
the favour to leave off the business which 
you may be at present upon, and go imme- 
diately to the kitchens of Trinity and Caius, 
and make my most respectful compliments 
to Mr. Richard Hopkins, and assure him 
that his brawn is most excellent ; and that I 
am moreover obliged to him for his innuendo 



LETTERS TO MANNING. 



73 



about salt water and bran, which I shall not 
fail to improve. I leave it to you whether 
you shall choose to pay him the civility of 
asking him to dinner while you stay in 
Cambridge, or in whatever other way you 
may best like to show your gratitude to 
my friend. Richard Hopkins, considered in 
many points of view, is a very extraordinary 
character. Adieu : I hope to see you to 
supper in London soon, where we will taste 
Richard's brawn, and drink his health in a 
cheerful but moderate cup. We have not 
many such men in any rank of life as Mr. R. 
Hopkins. Crisp, the barber, of St. Mary's, 
was just such another. I wonder he never 
sent me any little token, some chesnuts, or 
a puff, or two pound of hair : just to remember 
him by. Gifts are like nails. Prsesens ut 
absens ; that is, your present makes amends 
for your absence. 

"Yours, C.Lamb." 



TO MR. MANNING. 

" Dear Archimedes, — Things have gone on 
badly with thy ungeometrical friend ; but 
they are on the turn. My old housekeeper 
has shown signs of convalescence, and will 
shortly resume the power of the keys, so I 
sha'n't be cheated of my tea and liquors. 
Wind in the west, which promotes tran- 
quillity. Have leisure now to anticipate 
seeing thee again. Have been taking leave 
of tobacco in a rhyming address. Had 
thought that vein had long since closed up. 
Find I can rhyme and reason too. Think of 
studying mathematics, to restrain the fire of 
my genius, which G, D. recommends, Have 
frequent bleedings at the nose, which shows 
plethoric. Maybe shall try the sea myself, 
that great scene of wonders. Got incredibly 
sober and regular ; shave oftener, and hum a 
tune, to signify cheerfulness and gallantry. 

" Suddenly disposed to sleep, having taken 
a quart of peas with bacon, and stout. Will 
not refuse Nature, who has done such things 
for me ! 

" Nurse ! don't call me unless Mr. Manning 
comes. — What ! the gentleman in spectacles 1 
—Yes. 

"jDormit. C. L. 

" Saturday, 

"Hot Noon." 



TO MR. MANNING. 

nning, — I sent to 
mediately. Mr. Brown (or Pijou, as he is 
called by the moderns) denied the having 
received a letter from you. The one for you 
he remembered receiving, and remitting to 
Leadenhall Street ; whither I immediately 
posted (it being the middle of dinner), my 
teeth unpicked. There I learned that if you 
want a letter set right, you must apply at the 
first door on the left hand before one o'clock. 
I returned and picked my teeth. And this 
morning I made my application in form, and 
have seen the vagabond letter, which most 
likely accompanies this. If it does not, I 
will get Rickman to name it. to the Speaker, 
who will not fail to lay the matter before 
Parliament the next sessions, when you may 
be sure to have all abuses in the Post 
Department rectified. 

" N.B. There seems to be some informality 
epidemical. You direct yours to me in Mitre 
Court ; my true address is Mitre Court 
Buildings. By the pleasantries of Fortune, 
who likes a joke or a double entendre as well 
as the best of us her children, there happens 
to be another Mr. Lamb (that there should 
be two ! !) in Mitre Court. 

" Farewell, and think upon it. C. L." 



TO MR. MANNING. 

" Dear Manning, — Certainly you could not 
have called at all hours from two till ten, for 
we have been only out of an evening Monday 
and Tuesday in this week. But if you think 
you have, your thought shall go for the deed. 
We did pray for you on Wednesday night. 
Oysters unusually luscious — pearls of extra- 
ordinary magnitude found in them. I have 
made bracelets of them — given them in 
clusters to ladies. Last night we went out 
in despite, because you were not come at your 
hour. 

" This night we shall be at home, so shall 
we certainly both Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, 
and Wednesday. Take your choice, mind I 
don't say of one : but choose which evening 
you will not, and come the other four. Doors 
open at five o'clock. Shells forced about 
nine. Every gentleman smokes or not as he 
pleases. C. L." 



u 



LETTER TO MISS WORDSWORTH. 



During the last five years, tobacco had 
been at once Lamb's solace and his bane. In 
the hope of resisting the temptation of late 
conviviality to which it ministered, he formed 
a resolution, the virtue of which can be but 
dimly guessed, to abandon its use, and em- 
bodied the floating fancies which had attended 
on his long wavering in one of the richest of 
his poems — " The Farewell to Tobacco." 
After many struggles he divorced himself 
from his genial enemy ; and though he after- 
wards renewed acquaintance with milder 
dalliance, he ultimately abandoned it, and 
was guiltless of a pipe in his later years. 
The following letter, addressed while his 
sister was laid up with severe and protracted 
illness, will show his feelings at this time. 
Its affecting self-upbraidings refer to no 
greater failings than the social indulgences 
against which he was manfully struggling. 

TO MISS WORDSWORTH. 

" 14th. June, 1805. 
"My dear Miss Wordsworth, — I have every 
reason to suppose that this illness, like all 
Mary's former ones, will be but temporary. 
But I cannot always feel so. Meantime she 
is dead to me, and I miss a prop. All my 
strength is gone, and I am like a fool, bereft 
of her co-operation. I dare not think, lest I 
should think wrong; so used am I to look 
up to her in the least and the biggest per- 
plexity. To say all that I know of her 
would be more than I think anybody could 
believe or ever understand ; and when I hope 
to have her well again with me, it would be 
sinning against her feelings to go about to 
praise her ; for I can conceal nothing that I 
do from her. She is older, and wiser, and 
better than me, and all my wretched imper- 
fections I cover to myself by resolutely 
thinking on her goodness. She would share 
life and death, heaven and hell, with me. 
She lives but for me ; and I know I have 
been wasting and teasing her life for five 
years past incessantly with my cursed ways 
of going on. But even in this upbraiding of 
myself, I am offending against her, for I 
know that she has cleaved to me for better, 
for worse ; and if the balance has been 
^gainst her hitherto, it was a noble trade. 
I am stupid, and lose myself in what I write. 
I write rather what answers to my feelings 
(which are sometimes sharp enough) than 



express my present ones, for I am only flat 
and stupid. 

" I cannot resist transcribing three or four 
lines which poor Mary made upon a picture 
(a Holy Family) which we saw at an auction 
only one week before she left home. They 
are sweet lines and upon a sweet picture. 
But I send them only as the last memorial of 
her. 

' VIRGIN AND CHILD, L. DA VINCI. 

1 Maternal Lady with thy virgin-grace, 
Heaven-born, thy Jesus seemeth sure, 
And thou a virgin pure. 
Lady most perfect, -when thy angel face 
Men look upon, they wish to he 
A Catholic, Madonna fair, to worship thee.' 

" You had her lines about the ' Lady 
Blanch.' You have not had some which she 
wrote upon a copy of a girl from Titian, 
which I had hung up where that print of 
Blanch and the Abbess (as she beautifully 
interpreted two female figures from L. da 
Vinci) had hung in our room. 'Tis light and 
pretty. 

' Who art thou, fair one, who usurp'st the place 
Of Blanch, the lady of the matchless grace ? 
Come, fair and pretty, tell to me 
Who in thy lifetime thou mightst be ? 
Thou pretty art and fair, 

But with the Lady Blanch thou never must compare. 
No need for Blanch her history to tell, 
Whoever saw her face, they there did read it well ; 
But when I look on thee, I only know, 
There lived a pretty maid some hundred years ago.' 

" This is a little unfair, to tell so much 
about ourselves, and to advert so little to 
your letter, so full of comfortable tidings of 
you all. But my own cares press pretty 
close upon me, and you can make allowance. 
That you may go on gathering strength and 
peace is the next wish to Mary's recovery. 

" I had almost forgot your repeated invita- 
tion. Supposing that Mary will be well and 
able, there is another ability which you may 
guess at, which I cannot promise myself. In 
prudence we ought not to come. This illness 
will make it still more prudential to wait. 
It is not a balance of this way of spending 
our money against another way, but an 
absolute question of whether we shall stop 
now, or go on wasting away the little we 
have got beforehand. My best love, however, 
to you all ; and to that most friendly creature, 
Mrs.'Clarkson, and better health to her, when 
you see or write to her. 

"Charles Lamb." 



LETTER TO MR. AND MISS WORDSWORTH. 



7r, 



The " Farewell to Tobacco " was shortly 
after transmitted to Mr. and Miss Words- 
worth with the following : — ■ 

TO MR. AND MISS WORDSWORTH. 

"Sept. 28th, 1805. 
" I wish you may think this a handsome 
farewell to my ' Friendly Traitress.' Tobacco 
has been my evening comfort and my morning 
curse for these five years ; and you know 
how difficult it is from refraining to pick 
one's lips even, when it has become a habit. 
This poem is the only one which I have 
finished since so long as when I wrote 
' Hester Savory.' I have had it in my head 
to do it these two years, but tobacco stood in 
its own light when it gave me headaches that 
prevented my singing its praises. Now you 
have got it, you have got all my store, for I 
have absolutely not another line. No more 
has Mary. We have nobody about us that 
cares for poetry, and who will rear grapes 
when he shall be the sole eater 1 Perhaps if 
you encourage us to show you what we may 
write, we may do something now and then 
before we absolutely forget the quantity of 
an English line for want of practice. The 
'Tobacco/ being a little in the way of 
Withers (whom Southey so much likes), 
perhaps you will somehow convey it to him 
with my kind remembrances. Then, every- 
body will have seen it that I wish to see it, 
I having sent it to Malta. 

" I remain, dear W. and D., yours truly, 
"C.Lamb." 



The following letter to Hazlitt bears date 
18th Nov. 1805 :— 

TO MR. HAZLITT. 

" Dear Hazlitt, — I was very glad to hear 
from you, and that your journey was so 
picturesque. We miss you, as we foretold we 
should. One or two things have happened, 
which are beneath the dignity of epistolary 
communication, but which, seated about our 
fireside at night, (the winter hands of pork 
have begun,) gesture and emphasis might 
have talked into some importance. Some- 
thing about 's wife ; for instance, how 

tall she is, and that she visits pranked up 
like a Queen of the May, with green 
streamers : a good-natured woman though, 



which is as much as you can expect from a 
friend's wife, whom you got acquainted with 
a bachelor. Some things too about Monkey,* 
which can't so well be written : how it set 
up for a fine lady, and thought it had got 
lovers, and was obliged to be convinced of its 
age from the parish register, where it was 
proved to be only twelve ; and an edict 
issued, that it should not give itself airs yet 
these four years ; and how it got leave to be 
called Miss, by grace : these, and such like 
hows, were in my head to tell you, but who 
can write ? Also how Manning is come to 
town in spectacles, and studies physic ; is 
melancholy, and seems to have something in 
his head, which he don't impart. Then, how 
I am going to leave off smoking. O la ! your 
Leonardos of Oxford made my mouth water. 
I was hurried through the gallery, and they 
escaped me. What do I say ? I was a Goth 
then, and should not have noticed them. I 
had not settled my notions of beauty ; — I 
have now for ever ! — the small head, the 
long eye, — that sort of peering curve, — the 
wicked Italian mischief ; the stick-at-nothing, 
Herodias' daughter-kind of grace. You un- 
derstand me ? But you disappoint me, in 
passing over in absolute silence the Blenheim 
Leonardo. Didn't you see it % Excuse a 
lover's curiosity. I have seen no pictures of 
note since, except Mr. Dawe's gallery. It is 
curious to see how differently two great men 
treat the same subject, yet both excellent in 
their way. For instance, Milton and Mr. 
Dawe. Mr. D. has chosen to illustrate the 
story of Samson exactly in the point of 
view in which Milton has been most happy : 
the interview between the Jewish hero, 
blind and captive, and Dalilah. Milton has 
imagined his locks grown again, strong as 
horse-hair or porcupine's bristles ; doubtless 
shaggy and black, as being hairs ' which, of a 
nation armed, contained the strength.' I 
don't remember he says black ; but could 
Milton imagine them to be yellow ? Do 
you ? Mr. Dawe, with striking originality of 
conception, has crowned him with a thin 
yellow wig, in colour precisely like Dyson's ; 

in curl and quantity, resembling Mrs.P 's; 

his limbs rather stout, — about such a man 
as my brother or Hickman, — but no Atlas 
nor Hercules, nor yet so long as Dubois, the 

* The daughter of a friend, whom Lamh exceedingly 
liked from a child, and always called hy this epithet. 



76 



LETTERS TO HAZLITT. 



clown of Sadler's Wells. This was judicious, 
taking the spirit of the story rather than 
the fact ; for doubtless God could communi- 
cate national salvation to the trust of flax 
and tow as well as hemp and cordage, and 
could draw down a temple with a golden tress 
as soon as with all the cables of the British 
navy. 

" Wasn't you sorry for Lord Nelson ? I 
have followed him in fancy ever since I saw 
him walking in Pall Mall, (I was prejudiced 
against him before,) looking just as a hero 
should look ; and I have been very much 
cut about it indeed. He was the only pre- 
tence of a great man we had. Nobody is 
left of any name at all. His secretary died 
by his side. I imagined him, a Mr. Scott, to 
be the man you met at Hume's ; but I learnt 
from Mrs. Hume that it is not the same. I 
met Mrs. H. one day and agreed to go on 
the Sunday to tea, but the rain prevented us, 
and the distance. I have been to apologise, 
and we are to dine there the first fine 
Sunday ! Strange perverseness. I never 
went while you stayed here, and now I go to 
find you. What other news is there, Mary 1 
What puns have I made in the last fort- 
night ? You never remember them. You 
have no relish of the comic. ' Oh ! tell 
Hazlitt not to forget to send the American 
Farmer. I dare say it is not so good as he 
fancies ; but a book's a book.' I have not 
heard from Wordsworth or from Malta since. 
Charles Kemble, it seems, enters into pos- 
session to-morrow. We sup at 109, Russell- 
street, this evening. I wish your friend 
would not drink. It's a blemish in the 
greatest characters. You send me a modern 
quotation poetical. How do you like this in 
an old play 1 Vittoria Corombona, a spunky 
Italian lady, a Leonardo one, nick-named 
the White Devil, being on her trial for 
murder, &c. — and questioned about seducing 
a duke from his wife and the state, makes 
answer : — 

4 Condemn you me for that the Duke did love me 1 
So may you blame some fair and crystal river, 
For that some melancholic distracted man 
Hath drown'd himself in it.' 

" N. B. I shall expect a line from you, if 
but a bare line, whenever you write to 
Russell-street, and a letter often when you 
do not. I pay no postage. But I will have 
consideration for you until Parliament time 



and franks. Luck to Ned Search and the 
new art of colouring. Monkey sends her 
love ; and Mary especially. 

" Yours truly, C. Lamb." 



Lamb introduced Hazlitt to Godwin ; and 
we find him early in the following year thus 
writing respecting the offer of Hazlitt's work 
to Johnson, and his literary pursuits. 

TO MR. HAZLITT. 

"Jan. 15th, 1806. 

" Dear Hazlitt, — Godwin went to Johnson's 
yesterday about your business. Johnson 
would not come down, or give any answer, 
but has promised to open the manuscript, 
and to give you an answer in one month. 
Godwin will punctually go again (Wednesday 
is Johnson's open day) yesterday four weeks 
next : i. e. in one lunar month from this 
time. Till when, Johnson positively declines 
giving any answer. I wish you joy on ending 
your Search. Mrs. H. was naming some- 
thing about a ' Life of Fawcett,' to be by 
you undertaken : the great Fawcett, as she 
explained to Manning, when he asked, ' What 
Fawcett ? ' He innocently thought Fawcett 
the Player. But Fawcett the divine is known 
to many people, albeit unknown to the 
Chinese inquirer. I should think, if you 
liked it, and Johnson declined it, that Phillips 
is the man. He is perpetually bringing out 
biographies, Richardson, Wilks, Foot, Lee 
Lewis, without number : little trim things 
in two easy volumes, price 12s. the two, made 
up of letters to and from, scraps, posthumous 
trifles, anecdotes, and about forty pages of 
hard biography ; you might dish up a Faw- 
cettiad in three months and ask 60£. or SOI. 
for it. I dare say that Phillips would catch 
at it. I wrote you the other day in a great 
hurry. Did you get it ? This is merely a 
letter of business at Godwin's request. Lord 
Nelson is quiet at last. His ghost only keeps 
a slight fluttering in odes and elegies in news- 
papers, and impromptus, which could not be 
got ready before the funeral. 

" As for news, is coming to town on 

Monday (if no kind angel intervene) to 
surrender himself to prison. He hopes to 
get the rules of the Fleet. On the same, or 
nearly the same day, F — , my other quondam 
co-friend and drinker, will go to Newgate, 



LETTERS TO HAZLITT. 



77 



and his wife and four children, I suppose, to 
the parish. Plenty of reflection and motives 
of gratitude to the wise Disposer of all 
things in us, whose prudent conduct has 
hitherto ensured us a warm fire and snug 
roof over our heads. Nullum numen abest si 
sit Prudentia. Alas ! Prudentia is in the 
last quarter of her tutelary shining over me. 

A little time and I ; but maybe I may, 

at last, hit upon some mode of collecting 
some of the vast superfluities of this money- 
voiding town. Much is to be got, and I do 
not want much. All I ask is time and leisure ; 
and I am cruelly off for them. When you 
have the inclination, I shall be very glad to 
have a letter from you. Your brother and 
Mrs. H., I am afraid, think hardly of us for 
not coming oftener to see them, but we are 
distracted beyond what they can conceive 
with visitors and visitings. I never have an 
hour for my head to work quietly its own 
workings ; which you know is as necessary 
to the human system as sleep. Sleep, too, 
I can't get for these winds of a night : and 
without sleep and rest what should ensue 1 
Lunacy. But I trust it won't. 

" Yours, dear H., C. Lamb." 



TO MR. HAZLITT. 

" Feb. 19th, 1806. 

" Dear H. — Godwin has just been here in 
his way from Johnson's. Johnson has had a 
fire in his house ; this happened about five 
weeks ago ; it was in the day-time, so it did 
not burn the house down, but it did so much 
damage that the house must come down, to 
be repaired. His nephew that we met on 
Hampstead Hill put it out. Well, this fire 
has put him so back, that he craves one 
more month before he gives you an answer. 
I will certainly goad Godwin (if necessary) to 
go again this very day four weeks ; but I am 
confident he will want no goading. Three or 
four most capital auctions of pictures adver- 
tised in May, Wellbore Ellis Agars, the first 
private collection in England, so Holcroft 
says. In March, Sir George Young's in 
Stratford-place (where Cosway lives), and a 
Mr. Hulse's at Blackheath, both very capital 
collections, and have been announced for 
some months. Also the Marquis of Lans- 
downe's pictures in March ; and though infe- 
rior to mention, lastly, the Tructhsessian 



Gallery. Don't your mouth water to be 
here ? T' other night Loftus called, whom 
we have not seen since you went before. 
We meditate a stroll next Wednesday, fast- 
day. He happened to light upon Mr. Holcroft, 
wife, and daughter, their first visit at our 
house. Your brother called last night. We 
keep up our intimacy. He is going to begin 
a large Madonna and child from Mrs. H. and 
baby. I fear he goes astray after ignesfatui. 
He is a clever man. By-the-by I saw a 
miniature of his as far excelling any in his 
show cupboard (that of your sister not 
excepted) as that show cupboard excels the 
show things you see in windows — an old 
woman — hang her name — but most superla- 
tive ; he has it to clean — I'll ask him the 
name — but the best miniature I ever saw. 
But for oil pictures ! — what has he to do 
with Madonnas % — if the Virgin Mary were 
alive and visitable, he would not hazard 
himself in a Oovent-Garden-pit-door-crowd 
to see her. It an't his style of beauty, is it 1 
But he will go on painting things he ought 
not to paint, and not painting things he 
ought to paint. Manning not gone to China, 
but talks of going this spring. God forbid. 
Coleridge not heard of. I am going to leave 
off smoke. In the meantime I am so smoky 
with last night's ten pipes, that I must leave 
off. Mary begs her kind remembrances. 
Pray write to us. This is no letter, but I 
supposed you grew anxious about Johnson. 

" N. B. Have taken a room at three shil- 
lings a-week, to be in between five and eight 
at night, to avoid my nocturnal alias knock- 
eternal visitors. The first-fruits of my retire- 
ment has been a farce which goes to manager 
to-morrow. Wish my ticket luck. God bless 
you and do write. — Yours, fumosissimus, 

"C.Lamb." 

The farce referred to in the foregoing 
letter is the delightful jeu-d'' esprit, "Mr. H.," 
destined to only one night's stage existence, 
but to become " good jest for ever." It must 
be confessed that it has not substance enough 
for a dramatic piece in two acts — a piece 
which must present a show of real interest — 
involve its pair of young lovers in actual 
perplexities — and terminate in the serious- 
ness of marriage ! It would be rare sport 
in Milton's " Limbo of Vanity," but is too 



7S 



LETTER TO WORDSWORTH. 



airy for the ponderous sentimentalism of 
the modern school of farce. As Swift, in 
" Gulliver," brings everything to the standard 
of size, so in this farce everything is reduced 
to an alphabetical standard. Humour is 
sent to school to learn its letters ; or, rather, 
letters are made instinct with the most 
delicate humour. It is the apotheosis of the 
alphabet, and teaches the value of a good 
name without the least hint of moral purpose. 
This mere pleasantry — this refining on sounds 
and letters — this verbal banter, and watery 
collision of the pale reflexions of words, 
could not succeed on a stage which had 
begun to require interest, moral or immoral, 
to be interwoven with the web of all its 
actions ; which no longer rejoiced in the riot 
of animal spirits and careless gaiety ; which 
no longer permitted wit to take the sting 
from evil, as well as the load from care ; but 
infected even its prince of rakes, Charles 
Surface, with a cant of sentiment which 
makes us turn for relief to the more honest 
hypocrite his brother. Mr. H. " could never 
do ;" but its composition was pleasant, and 
its acceptance gave Lamb some of the hap- 
piest moments he ever spent. Thus he 
announces it to Wordsworth, in reply to a 
letter communicating to him that the poet 
was a father. 

TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 

" Dear Wordsworth, — We are pleased, you 
may be sure, with the good news of Mrs. 

W . Hope all is well over by this time. 

'A fine boy! — have you any more, — one 
more and a girl — poor copies of me ! ' vide 
Mr. H., a farce which the proprietors have 
done me the honour ; but I will set down 
Mr. Wroughton's own words. N. B. The 
ensuing letter was sent in answer to one 
which I wrote, begging to know if my piece 
had any chance, as I might make alterations, 
&c. I, writing on Monday, there comes this 
letter on the Wednesday. Attend ! 

[Copy of a Letter from Mr. R Wroughton.] 

1 Sir, — Your piece of Mr. H., I am desired 
to say, is accepted at Drury-Lane Theatre, 
by the proprietors, and, if agreeable to you, 
will be brought forwards when the proper 
opportunity serves. The piece shall be sent 
to you, for your alterations, in the course of 



a few days, as the same is not in my hands, 
but with the proprietors. 

' I am, sir, your obedient servant, 

'Kichard Wroughton.' 

[Dated] 
'66, Gower Street, 

'Wednesday, June 11, 1806.' 

"On the following Sunday Mr. Tobin 
comes. The scent of a manager's letter 
brought him. He would have gone further 
any day on such a business. I read the 
letter to him. He deems it authentic and 
peremptory. Our conversation naturally 
fell upon pieces, different sorts of pieces ; 
what is the best way of offering a piece, how 
far the caprice of managers is an obstacle in 
the way of a piece, how to judge of the 
merits of a piece, how long a piece may 
remain in the hands of the managers before 
it is acted ; and my piece, and your piece, 
and my poor brother's piece — my poor 
brother was all his life endeavouring to 
get a piece accepted. 

" I wrote that, in mere wantonness of 
triumph. Have nothing more to say about 
it. The managers, I thank my stars, have 
decided its merits for ever. They are the 
best judges of pieces, and it would be insen- 
sible in me to affect a false modesty after 
the very flattering letter which I have 
received. 



ADMIT 

TO 

BOXES. 

Mr. H. 



Ninth Night. 



Charles Lamb. 



" I think this will be as good a pattern for 
orders as I can think on. A little thin flowery 
border, round, neat, not gaudy, and the 
Drury-lane Apollo, with the harp at the 
top. Or shall I have no Apollo ? — simply 
nothing ? Or perhaps the comic muse ? 

"The same form, only I think without 
the Apollo, will serve for the pit and galleries. 
I think it will be best to write my name at 
full length ; but then if I give away a great 
many, that will be tedious. Perhaps Ch. Lamb 
will do. 

" BOXES, now I think on it, I'll have in 



LETTERS TO RICKMAN. 



79 



capitals. The rest, in a neat Italian hand. 
Or better, perhaps Boies, in old English 
characters, like Madoc or Thalaba ? 

"A -propos of Spenser (you will find him 
mentioned a page or two before, near enough 
for an a-propos), I was discoursing on poetry 
(as one's apt to deceive one's self, and when a 
person is willing to talk of what one likes, to 
believe that he also likes the same, as lovers 
do) with a young gentleman of my office, 
who is deep read in Anacreon Moore, Lord 
Strangford, and the principal modern poets, 
and I happened to mention Epithalamiums, 
and that I could show him a very fine one of 
Spenser's. At the mention of this, my gentle- 
man, who is a very fine gentleman, pricked 
up his ears and expressed great pleasure, and 
begged that I would give him leave to copy 
it : he did not care how long it was (for I 
objected the length), he should be very happy 
to see anything by him. Then pausing, and 
looking sad, he ejaculated 'Poor Spencer ! ' 
I begged to know the reason of his ejacula- 
tion, thinking that time had by this time 
softened down any calamities which the bard 
might have endured. ' Why, poor fellow ! ' 
said he, ' he has lost his wife ! ' ' Lost his 
wife ! ' said I, ' who are you talking of ? ' 
1 Why, Spencer ! ' said he ; ' I've read the 
" Monody " he wrote on the occasion, and a 
very pretty thing it is? This led to an ex- 
planation (it could be delayed no longer), 
that the sound Spenser, which, when poetry 
is talked of, generally excites an image of an 
old bard in a ruff, and sometimes with it dim 
notions of Sir P. Sydney, and perhaps Lord 
Burleigh, had raised in my gentleman a quite 
contrary image of the Honourable William 
Spencer, who has translated some things 
from the German very prettily, which are 
published with Lady Di. Beauclerk's designs. 
Nothing like defining of terms when we talk. 
What blunders might I have fallen into of 
quite inapplicable criticism, but for this 
timely explanation. 

" N.B. At the beginning of Edm. Spenser, 
(to prevent mistakes,) I have copied from my 
own copy, and primarily from a book of 
Chalmers' on Shakspeare, a sonnet of Spen- 
ser's never printed among his poems. It is 
curious, as being manly, and rather Miltonic, 
and as a sonnet of Spenser's with nothing 
in it about love or knighthood. I have no 
room for remembrances ; but I hope our 



doing your commission will prove we do not 
quite forget you. C. L." 

The interval between the completion of 
the farce, " and its first acting," though full 
of bright hopes of dramatic success, was not 
all a phantom. The following two letters to 
Mr. Eickman, now one of the Clerks of the 
House of Commons, show Lamb's unwearied 
kindness. 

TO MR. RICKMAN. 

" Dear Eickman, — You do not happen to 
have any place at your disposal which would 
suit a decayed Literatus ? I do not much 
expect that you have, or that you will go 
much out of the way to serve the object, 
when you hear it is F. But the case is, by a 
mistaking of his turn, as they call it, he is 
reduced, I am afraid, to extremities, and 
would be extremely glad of a place in an 
office. Now it does sometimes happen, that 
just as a man wants a place, a place wants 
him ; and though this is a lottery to which 
none but G. B. would choose to trust his all, 
there is no harm just to call in at Despair's 
office for a friend, and see if his number is 
come up (B.'s further case I enclose by way 
of episode). Now, if you should happen, or 
anybody you know, to want a hand, here is 
a young man of solid but not brilliant genius, 
who would turn his hand to the making out 
dockets, penning a manifesto, or scoring a 
tally, not the worse (I hope) for knowing 
Latin and Greek, and having in youth con- 
versed with the philosophers. But from 
these follies I believe he is thoroughly 
awakened, and would bind himself by a ter- 
rible oath never to imagine himself an 
extraordinary genius again. 

"Yours, &c. C. Lamb." 



TO MR. RICKMAN. 

"March, 1806. 
" Dear Eickman, — I send you some papers 
about a salt-water soap, for which the 
inventor is desirous of getting a parlia- 
mentary reward, like Dr. Jenner. Whether 
such a project be feasible, I mainly doubt, 
taking for granted the equal utility. I should 
suppose the usual way of paying such pro- 
jectors is by patents and contracts. The 
patent, you see, he has got. A contract he 



so 



LETTERS TO MANNING. 



is about with the navy board. Meantime, 
the projector is hungry. Will you answer 
me two questions, and return them with the 
papers as soon as you can 1 Imprimis, is 
there any chance of success in application to 
Parliament for a reward ? Did you ever 
hear of the invention ? You see its benefits 
and saving to the nation (always the first 
motive with a true projector) are feelingly 
set forth : the last paragraph but one of the 
estimate, in enumerating the shifts poor 
seamen are put to, even approaches to the 
pathetic. But, agreeing to all he says, is 
there the remotest chance of Parliament 
giving the projector anything ; and when 
should application be made, now or after a 
report (if he can get it) from the navy 
board 1 Secondly, let the infeasibility be as 
great as you will, you will oblige me by 
telling me the way of introducing such an 
application to Parliament, without buying 
over a majority of members, which is 
totally out of projector's power. I vouch 
nothing for the soap myself; for I always 
wash in fresh water, and find it answer tole- 
rably well for all purposes of cleanliness ; 
nor do I know the projector; but a relation 
of mine has put me on writing to you, for 
whose parliamentary knowledge he has great 
veneration. 

"P.S. The Capt. and Mrs. Burney and 
Phillips take their chance at cribbage here 
on Wednesday. Will you and Mrs. E. join 
the party 1 Mary desires her compliments 
to Mrs. P., and joins in the invitation. 

"Yours truly, C. Lamb." 



Before the production of " Mr. EL," Lamb 
was obliged, in sad earnest, to part from 
Manning, who, after talking and thinking 
about China for years, took the heroic reso- 
lution of going thither, not to acquire wealth 
or fame, but to realise the phantom of his 
restless thought. Happy was he to have a 
friend, like Mr. Burney, to indulge and to 
soften his grief, which he thus expresses in 
his first letter to his friend. 

TO MR. MANNING. 

"May 10th, 1806. 
" My dear Manning, — I didn't know what 
your going was till I shook a last fist with 
you, and then 'twas just like having shaken 



hands with a wretch on the fatal scaffold, 
and, when you are down the ladder, you can 
never stretch out to him again. Mary says 
you are dead, and there's nothing to do but 
to leave it to time to do for us in the end 
what it always does for those who mourn for 
people in such a case. But she'll see by your 
letter you are not quite dead. A little 

kicking and agony, and then . Martin 

Burney took me out a walking that evening, 
and we talked of Manning ; and then I came 
home and smoked for you, and at twelve 
o'clock came home Mary and Monkey Louisa 
from the play, and there was more talk and 
more smoking, and they all seemed first-rate 
characters, because they knew a certain 
person. But what's the use of talking about 
'em ? By the time you'll have made your 
escape from the Kalmuks, you'll have stayed 
so long I shall never be able to bring to your 
mind who Mary was, who will have died 
about a year before, nor who the Holcrofts 
were ! me perhaps you will mistake for 
Phillips, or confound me with Mr. Dawe, 
because you saw us together. Mary (whom 
you seem to remember yet) is not quite easy 
that she had not a formal parting from you. 
I wish it had so happened. But you must 
bring her a token, a shawl or something, 
and remember a sprightly little mandarin for 
our mantel-piece, as a companion to the child 
I am going to purchase at the museum. She 
says you saw her writings about the other 
day, and she wishes you should know what 
they are. She is doing for Godwin's book- 
seller twenty of Shakspeare's plays, to be 
made into children's tales. Six are already 
done by her, to wit, ' The Tempest,' ' Winter's 
Tale,' 'Midsummer Night,' 'Much Ado,' 
'Two Gentlemen of Verona,' and 'Cymbe- 
line ; ' and ' The Merchant of Venice ' is in 
forwardness. I have done ' Othello ' and 
' Macbeth,' and mean to do all the tragedies. 
I think it will be popular among the little 
people, besides money. It's to bring in sixty 
guineas. Mary has done them capitally, I 
think, you'd think. These are the humble 
amusements we propose, while you are gone 
to plant the cross of Christ among barbarous 
pagan anthropophagi. Quam homo homini 
praestat ! but then, perhaps, you'll get mur- 
dered, and we shall die in our beds with a 
fair literary reputation. Be sure, if you see 
any of those people, whose heads do grow 



LETTERS TO MANNING. 



M 



beneath their shoulders, that you make a 
draught of them. It will be very curious. 
Oh ! Manning, I am serious to sinking almost, 
when I think that all those evenings, which 
you have made so pleasant, are gone perhaps 
for ever. Four years, you talk of, may be 
ten, and you may come back and find such 
alterations ! Some circumstances may grow 
up to you or to me, that may be a bar to the 
return of any such intimacy. I dare say all 
this is hum ! and that all will come back ; 
but, indeed, we die many deaths before we 
die, and I am almost sick when I think that 
such a hold as I had of you is gone. I have 
friends, but some of 'em are changed. Mar- 
riage, or some circumstance, rises up to make 
them not the same. But I felt sure of you. 
And that last token you gave me of express- 
ing a wish to have my name joined with 
yours, you know not how it affected me : 
like a legacy. 

" God bless you in every way you can form 
a wish. May He give you health, and safety, 
and the accomplishment of all your objects, 
and return you again to us, to gladden some 
fireside or other (I suppose we shall be moved 
from the Temple). I will nurse the remem- 
brance of your steadiness and quiet, which 
used to infuse something like itself into our 
nervous minds. Mary called you our venti- 
lator. Farewell, and take her best wishes 
and mine. 

"Goodbye, C. L." 



Christmas approached, and Lamb then 
conveyed to Manning, now at the antipodes, 
news of poor Holcroft's failure in his play of 
"The Vindictive Man," and his own approach- 
ing trial. 

TO MR. MANNING. 

"December 5th, 1806. 
* Manning, your letter dated Hottentots, 
August the what-was-it ? came to hand. I 
can scarce hope that mine will have the same 
luck. China — Canton — bless us — how it 
strains the imagination and makes it ache ! 
I write under another uncertainty, whether 
it can go to-morrow by a ship which I have 
just learned is going off direct to your part 
of the world, or whether the despatches may 
not be sealed up and this have to wait, for if 
it is detained here, it will grow staler in a 
fortnight than in a five months' voyage 



coming to you. It will be a point of con- 
science to send you none but bran-new news 
(the latest edition), which will but grow the 
better, like oranges, for a sea voyage. Oh 
that you should be so many hemispheres off 
— if I speak incorrectly you can correct me 
— why the simplest death or marriage that 
takes place here must be important to you 
as news in the old Bastile. There's your 
friend Tuthill has got away from France — 
you remember France ? and Tuthill ? — ten- 
to-one but he writes by this post, if he don't 
get my note in time, apprising him of the 
vessel sailing. Know then that he has found 
means to obtain leave from Bonaparte, 
without making use of any incredible romantic 
pretences as some have done, who never meant 
to fulfil them, to come home, and I have seen 
him here and at Holcroft's. An't you glad 
about Tuthill ? Now then be sorry for 
Holcroft, whose new play, called ' The 
Vindictive Man,' was damned about a fort- 
night since. It died in part of its own weak- 
ness,- and in part for being choked up with 
bad actors. The two principal parts were 
destined to Mrs. Jordan and Mr. Bannister, 
but Mrs. J. has not come to terms with the 
managers, they have had some squabble, and 
Bannister shot some of his fingers off by the 
going off of a gun. So Miss Duncan had her 
part, and Mr. De Camp took his. His part, 
the principal comic hope of the play, was 
most unluckily Goldfinch, taken out of the 
' Eoad to Buin,' not only the same character, 
but the identical Goldfinch — the same as 
Falstaff is in two plays of Shakspeare. As 
the devil of ill-luck would have it, half the 
audience did not know that H. had written 
it, but were displeased at his stealing from 
the ' Boad to Buin ; ' and those who might 
have borne a gentlemanly coxcomb with his 
' That's your sort,' ' Go it ' — such as Lewis is 
— did not relish the intolerable vulgarity and 
inanity of the idea stript of his manner. De 
Camp was hooted, more than hist, hooted and 
bellowed off the stage before the second act 
was finished, so that the remainder of his part 
was forced to be, with some violence to the 
play, omitted. In addition to this, a woman 
; of the town was another principal character 
i — a most unfortunate choice in this moral 
I day. The audience were as scandalised as if 
you were to introduce such a personage to 
' their private tea-tables. Besides, her action 



82 



LETTERS TO MANNING. 



in the play was gross — wheedling an old man 
into marriage. But the mortal blunder of 
the play was that which, oddly enough, H. 
took pride in, and exultingly told me of the 
night before it came out, that there were no 
less than eleven principal characters in it, 
and I believe he meant of the men only, for 
the playbill exprest as much, not reckoning 
one woman — and true it was, for Mr. Powell, 
Mr. Eaymond, Mr. Bartlett, Mr. H. Siddons, 
Mr. Barrymore, &c. &c, — to the number of 
eleven, had all parts equally prominent, and 
there was as much of them in quantity and 
rank as of the hero and heroine — and most 
of them gentlemen who seldom appear but 
as the hero's friend in a farce — for a minute 
or two — and here they all had their ten- 
minute speeches, and one of them gave the 
audience a serious account how he was now 
a lawyer but had been a poet, and then a 
long enumeration of the inconveniences of 
authorship, rascally booksellers, reviewers, 
&c. ; which first set the audience a gaping ; 
but I have said enough. You will be so 
sorry, that you will not think the best of me 
for my detail ; but news is news at Canton. 
Poor H. I fear will feel the disappointment 
very seriously in a pecuniary light. From 
what I can learn he has saved nothing. You 
and I were hoping one day that he had, but 
I fear he has nothing but his pictures and 
books, and a no very flourishing business, and 
to be obliged to part with his long-necked 
Guido that hangs opposite as you enter, and 
the game-piece that hangs in the back draw- 
ing-room, and all those Vandykes, &c. God 
should temper the wind to the shorn connois - 
seur. I hope I need not say to you, that I 
feel for the weather-beaten author, and for 
all his household. I assure you his fate has 
soured a good deal the pleasure I should 
have otherwise taken in my own little farce 
being accepted, and I hope about to be acted 
— it is in rehearsal actually, and I expect it 
to come out next week. It is kept a sort of 
secret, and the rehearsals have gone on 
privately, lest by many folks knowing it, the 
story should come out, which would infallibly 
damn it. You remember I had sent it before 
you went. Wroughton read it, and was much 
pleased with it. I speedily got an answer. 
I took it to make alterations, and. lazily kept 
it some months, then took courage and 
furbished it up in a day or two and took it. 



In less than a fortnight I heard the principal 
part was given to Elliston, who liked it and 
only wanted a prologue, which I have since 
done and sent, and I had a note the day before 
yesterday from the manager, Wroughton 
(bless his fat face — he is not a bad actor in 
some things), to say that I should be 
summoned to the rehearsal after the next, 
which next was to be yesterday. I had no 
idea it was so forward. I have had no 
trouble, attended no reading or rehearsal, 
made no interest ; what a contrast to the 
usual parade of authors ! But it is peculiar 
to modesty to do all things without noise or 
pomp ! I have some suspicion it will appear 
in public on Wednesday next, for W. says in 
his note, it is so forward that if wanted it 
may come out next week, and a new melo- 
drame is announced for every day till then ; 
and ' a new farce is in rehearsal,' is put up 
in the bills. Now you'd like to know the 
subject. The title is ' Mr. H.,' no more ; how 
simple, how taking ! A great H. sprawling 
over the play-bill and attracting eyes at every 
corner. The story is a coxcomb appearing 
at Bath, vastly rich — all the ladies dying for 
him — all bursting to know who he is — but 
he goes by no other name than Mr. H. — a 
curiosity like that of the dames of Strasburg 
about the man with the great nose. But I 
won't tell you any more about it. Yes, I 
will : but I can't give you an idea how I 
have done it. I'll just tell you that after 
much vehement admiration, when his true 
name comes out, l Hogsflesh,' all the women 
shun him, avoid him, and not one can be 
found to change their name for him — that's 
the idea — how flat it is here — but how 
whimsical in the farce ! and only think how 
hard upon me it is that the ship is despatched 
to-morrow, and my triumph cannot be ascer- 
tained till the Wednesday after — but all 
China will ring of it by and by. N.B. (But 
this is a secret.) The Professor has got a 
tragedy coming out with the young Eoscius 
in it in January next, as we say — January 
last it will be with you — and though it is a 
profound secret now, as all his affairs are, it 
cannot be much of one by the time you read 
this. However, don't let it go any further. 
I understand there are dramatic exhibitions 
in China. One would not like to be fore- 
stalled. Do you find in all this stuff I have 
written anything like those feelings which 



letters' to manning. 



83 



one should send my old adventuring friend, 
that is gone to wander among Tartars and 
may never come again 1 I don't — but your 
going away, and all about you, is a thread- 
bare topic. I have worn it out with thinking 
— it has come to me when I have been dull 
with anything, till my sadness has seemed 
more to have come from it than to have 
introduced it. I want you, you don't know 
how much — but if I had you here in my 
European garret, we should but talk over 
such stuff as I have written — so — Those 
1 Tales from Shakspeare ' are near coming 
out, and Mary has begun a new work. Mr. 
Dawe is turned author, he has been in such 
a way lately — Dawe, the painter, I mean — he 
sits and stands about at Holcroft's and says 
nothing — then sighs and leans his head on his 
hand. I took him to be in love — but it 
seems he was only meditating a work, — 
' The Life of Morland,' — the young man is 
not used to composition. Hickman and 
Captain Burney are well ; they assemble at 
my house pretty regularly of a Wednesday 
— a new institution. Like other great men 
I have a public day, cribbage and pipes, with 

Phillips and noisy . 

" Good Heaven ! what a bit only I 've got 
left ! How shall I squeeze all I know into 
this morsel ! Coleridge is come home, and is 
going to turn lecturer on taste at the Royal 
Institution. I shall get 200?. from the theatre 
if ' Mr. H.' has a good run, and I hope 100?. 
for the copyright. Nothing if it fails ; and 
there never was a more ticklish thing. The 
whole depends on the manner in which the 
name is brought out, which I value myself 
on, as a chef-d'oeuvre. How the paper grows 
less and less ! In less than two minutes I 
shall cease to talk to you, and you may rave 
to the great Wall of China. N.B. Is there 
such a wall ! Is it as big as Old London 
Wall, by Bedlam 1 Have you met with a 
friend of mine, named Ball, at Canton ? — if 
you are acquainted, remember me kindly to 
him. N.B. If my little thing don't succeed, 
I shall easily survive, having, as it were, 
compared to H.'s venture, but a sixteenth 
in the lottery. Mary and I are to sit next 
the orchestra in the pit, next the tweedle- 
dees. She remembers you. You are more 
to us than five hundred farces, clappings, 
&c. 

" Come back one day. C. Lamb." 



Wednesday, 10th December, 1806, was the 
wished-for evening which decided the fate of 
" Mr. H." on the boards of Drury. Gre at 
curiosity was excited by the announcement ; 
the house was crowded to the ceiling ; and 
the audience impatiently awaited the con- 
clusion of the long, dull, intolerable opera of 
" The Travellers," by which it was preceded. 
At length, Mr. Elliston, the hero of the farce, 
entered, gaily dressed, and in happiest spirits, 
— enough, but not too much, elated, — and 
delivered the prologue with great vivacity 
and success. The farce began ; at first it was 
much applauded ; but the wit seemed wire- 
drawn ; and when the curtain fell on the 
first act, the friends of the author began to 
fear. The second act dragged heavily on, as 
second acts of farces will do ; a rout at Bath, 
peopled with ill-dressed and over- dressed 
actors and actresses, increased the disposition 
to yawn ; and when the moment of disclosure 
came, and nothing worse than the name 
Hogsflesh was heard, the audience resented 
the long play on their curiosity, and would 
hear no more. Lamb, with his sister, sat, as 
he anticipated, in the front of the pit, and 
having joined in encoring the epilogue, the 
brilliancy of which injured the farce, he 
gave way with equal pliancy to the common 
feeling, and hissed and hooted as loudly as 
any of his neighbours. The next morning's 
play-bill contained a veracious announcement, 
that " the new farce of Mr. H., performed for 
the first time last night, was received by an 
overflowing audience with universal applause, 
and will be repeated for the second time to- 
morrow ; " but the stage lamps never that 
morrow saw ! Elliston would have tried it 
again ; but Lamb saw at once that the case 
was hopeless, and consoled his friends with 
a century of puns for the wreck of his 
dramatic hopes. 



CHAPTER IX. 

[1807 to 1814.] 

LETTERS TO MANNING, MONTAGUE, "WORDSWORTH, AND 
COLERIDGE. 

From this period, the letters of Lamb which 
have been preserved are comparatively few, 
with reference to the years through which 
they are scattered. He began to write in 



g 2 



84 



LETTERS TO MANNING. 



earnest for the press, and the time thus 
occupied was withdrawn from his correspon- 
dents, while his thoughts and feelings were 
developed by a different excitement, and 
expressed in other forms. In the year 1807 
the series of stories founded on the plays of 
Shakspeare, referred to in his last letter to 
Manning, was published ; in which the 
outlines of his plots are happily brought 
within the apprehension of children, and his 
language preserved wherever it was possible 
to retain it ; a fit counterpoise to those works 
addressed to the young understanding, to 
which Lamb still cherished the strong distaste 
which broke out in one of his previous 
letters. Of these tales, King Lear, Macbeth, 
Timon of Athens, Eomeo and Juliet, Hamlet, 
and Othello, are by Charles, and the others 
by Mary Lamb ; hers being, as Lamb always 
insisted, the most felicitous, but all well 
adapted to infuse some sense of the nobleness 
of the poet's thoughts into the hearts of their 
little readers. Of two other works preparing 
for the press, he thus speaks in a letter 
which bears date 26th February, 1808, 
addressed to Manning at Canton, in reply to 
a letter received thence, in which Manning 
informed Lamb, that he had consigned a 
parcel of silk to a Mr. Knox for him. 

TO MR. MANNING. 

" Dear Missionary, — Your letters from the 
farthest ends of the world have arrived safe. 
Mary is very thankful for your remembrance 
of her ; and with the less suspicion of mer- 
cenariness, as the silk, the symbolum materiale 
of your friendship, has not yet appeared. I 
think Horace says somewhere, nox longa. 
I would not impute negligence or unhand- 
some delays to a person whom you have 
honoured with* your confidence, but I have 
not heard of the silk, or of Mr. Knox, save 
by your letter. Maybe he expects the first 
advances ! or it may be that he has not 
succeeded in getting the article on shore, for 
it is among the res prohibitce et non nisi 
smuggle-ationis vid fruendce. But so it is, in 
the friendships between wicked men, the very 
expressions of their good-will cannot but be 
sinful. I suppose you know my farce was 
damned. The noise still rings in my ears. 
Was you ever in the pillory 1 — being damned 
is something like that. A treaty of marriage 
is on foot between William Hazlitt and Miss 



Stoddart. Something about settlements only 
retards it. Little Fenwick (you don't see the 
connexion of ideas here, how the devil should 
you ?) is in the rules of the Fleet. Cruel 
creditors ! operation of iniquitous laws ; is 
Magna Charta then a mockery ? Why, in 
general (here I suppose you to ask a question) 
my spirits are pretty good, but I have 
my depressions, black as a smith's beard, 
Vulcanic, Stygian. At such times I have 
recourse to a pipe, which is like not being at 
home to a dun ; he comes again with tenfold 
bitterness the next day. — (Mind, I am not in 
debt, I only borrow a similitude from others ; 
it shows imagination.) I have done two 
books since the failure of my farce ; they will 
both be out this summer. The one is a 
juvenile book — c The Adventures of Ulysses,' 
intended to be an introduction to the reading 
of Telemachus ! it is done out of the 
Odyssey, not from the Greek. I would not 
mislead you : nor yet from Pope's Odyssey, 
but from an older translation of one Chapman. 
The ' Shakspeare Tales ' suggested the doing 
it. Godwin is in both those cases my book- 
seller. The other is done for Longman, and 
is ' Specimens of English Dramatic Poets 
contemporary with Shakspeare.' Specimens 
are becoming fashionable. We have—; 
' Specimens of Ancient English Poets ' — 
' Specimens of Modern English Poets' — 
'Specimens of Ancient English Prose 
Writers,' without end. They used to be 
called ' Beauties.' You have seen ' Beauties 
of Shakspeare 1 ' so have many people 
that never saw any beauties in Shakspeare. 
Longman is to print it, and be at all the 
expense and risk, and I am to share the 
profits after all deductions, i. e. a year or two 
hence I must pocket what they please to tell 
me is due to me. But the book is such as I 
am glad there should be. It is done out of 
old plays at the Museum, and out of Dodsley's 
collection, &c. It is to have notes. So I go 
creeping on since I was lamed with that 
cursed fall from off the top of Drury-lane 
Theatre into the pit, something more than a 
year ago. However, I have been free of the 
house ever since, and the house was pretty 
free with me upon that occasion. Hang 'em 
how they hissed ! it was not a hiss neither, 
but a sort of a frantic yell, like a congregation 
of mad geese, with roaring something like 
bears, mows and mops like apes, sometimes 



LETTERS TO MANNING. 



85 



snakes, that hiss'd me into madness. 'Twas 
like St. Anthony's temptations. Mercy on 
us, that God should give his favourite 
children, men, moutlia to speak with, to 
discourse rationally, to promise smoothly, to 
flatter agreeably, to encourage warmly, to 
counsel wisely, to sing with, to drink with, 
and to kiss with, and that they should turn 
them into mouths of adders, bears, wolves, 
hyenas, and whistle like tempests, and emit 
breath through them like distillations of 
aspic poison, to asperse and vilify the innocent 
labours of their fellow-creatures who are 
desirous to please them ! Heaven be pleased 
to make the teeth rot out of them all, there- 
fore ! Make them a reproach, and all that 
pass by them to loll out their tongue at them ! 
Blind mouths ! as Milton somewhere calls 
them. Do you like Braham's singing 1 The 
little Jew has bewitched me. I follow him 
like as the boys follow Tom the Piper. I 
was insensible to music till he gave me a new 
sense. Oh that you could go to the new opera 
of Kais to-night ! 'Tis all about Eastern 
manners ; it would just suit you. It describes 
the wild Arabs, wandering Egyptians, lying 
dervises, and all that sort of people, to a hair. 
You needn't ha' gone so far to see what you 
see, if you saw it as I do every night at Drury- 
lane Theatre. Braham's singing, when it is 
impassioned, is finer than Mrs. Siddons', or 
Mr. Kemble's acting ; and when it is not 
impassioned, it is as good as hearing a person 
of fine sense talking. The brave little Jew ! 
I made a pun the other day, and palmed it 
upon Holcroft, who grinned like a Cheshire 
cat. (Why do cats grin in Cheshire ? — 
Because it was once a county palatine, and 
the cats cannot help laughing whenever they 
think of it, though I see no great joke in it.) 
I said that Holcroft said, being asked who 
were the best dramatic writers of the day, 
'Hook and I.' Mr. Hook is author of 
several pieces, Tekeli, &c. You know what 
hooks and eyes are, don't you ? Your letter 
had many things in it hard to be understood : 
the puns were ready and Swift-like ; but 
don't you begin to be melancholy in the 
midst of Eastern customs ! ' The mind does 
not easily conform to foreign usages, even in 
trifles : it requires something that it has 
been familiar with.' That begins one of 
Dr. Hawkesworth's papers in the Adventurer, 
and is, I think, as sensible a remark as ever 



fell from the Doctor's mouth. White is at 
Christ's Hospital, a wit of the first magni- 
tude, but had rather be thought a gentleman, 
like Congreve. You know Congreve's repulse 
which he gave to Voltaire, when he came to 
visit him as a literary man, that he wished 
to be considered only in the light of a private 
gentleman. I think the impertinent French- 
man was properly answered. I should just 
serve any member of the French institute in 
the same manner, that wished to be intro- 
duced to me. 

"Does any one read at Canton? Lord 
Moira is President of the Westminster 
Library. I suppose you might have interest 
with Sir Joseph Banks to get to be president 
of any similar institution that should be set 
up at Canton. I think public reading-rooms 
the best mode of educating young men. 
Solitary reading is apt to give the headache. 
Besides, who knows that you do read 1 There 
are ten thousand institutions similar to the 
Eoyal Institution which have sprung up 
from it. There is the London Institution, 
the South wark Institution, the Russell- 
square Eooms Institution, &c. — College quasi 
Con-lege, a place where people read together. 
Wordsworth, the great poet, is coming to 
town ; he is to have apartments in the 
Mansion-House. Well, my dear Manning, 
talking cannot be infinite ; I have said all I 
have to say ; the rest is but remembrances, 
which we shall bear in our heads of you 
while we have heads. Here is a packet of 
trifles nothing worth ; but it is a trifling 
part of the world where I live ; emptiness 
abounds. But in fulness of affection, we 
remain yours, " C L." 

The two books referred to in this letter 
were shortly after published. " The Adven- 
tures of Ulysses" had some tinge of the 
quaintness of Chapman ; it gives the plot of 
the earliest and one of the most charming of 
romances, without spoiling its interest. The 
" Specimens of English Dramatic Poets who 
lived about the time of Shakspeare," were 
received with more favour than Lamb's 
previous works, though it was only by slow 
and imperceptible degrees that they won 
their way to th<B apprehensions of the most 
influential minds, and wrought out the genial 
purpose of the editor in renewing a taste for 
the great contemporaries of Shakspeare. 



86 



LETTERS TO MANNING. 



"The Monthly Review" vouchsafed a notice* 
in its large print, upon the whole favourable, 
according to the existing fashion of criticism, 
but still " craftily qualified." It will scarcely 
be credited, without reference to the article 
itself, that on the notes the critic pronounces 
this judgment : " The notes before us indeed 
have nothing very remarkable, except the 
style, which is formally abrupt and elabo- 
rately quaint. Some of the most studied 
attempts to display excessive feeling we had 
noted for animadversion, but the task is 
unnecessary," &c. 

It is easy to conceive of readers strongly 
dissenting from some of the passionate eulo- 
gies of these notes, and even taking offence 
at the boldness of the allusions ; but that any 
one should read these essences of criticism, 
suggesting the profoundest thoughts, and 
replete throughout with fine imagery, and 
find in them "nothing remarkable," is a 
mystery which puzzles us. But when the 
same critic speaks of the heroine of the 
"Broken Heart" as "the light-heeled Ca- 
lantha," it is easy to appreciate his fitness 
for sitting in judgment on the old English 
drama and the congenial expositor of its 
grandeurs ! 

In this year Miss Lamb published her 
charming work, entitled "Mrs. Leicester's 
School," to which Lamb contributed three of 
the tales. The best, however, are his sister's, 
as he delighted to insist ; and no tales more 
happily adapted to nurture all sweet and 
childlike feelings in children were ever 
written. Another joint-publication, "Poetry 
for Children," followed, which also is worthy 
of its title. 

Early in 1809, Lamb removed from Mitre- 
court Buildings to Southampton Buildings, 
but only for a few months, and preparatory 
to a settlement (which he meant to be final) 
in the Temple. The next ietter to Manning, 
(still in China,) of 28th March, 1809, is from 
Southampton Buildings. 

TO MR. MANNING. 

" Dear Manning, — I sent you a long letter 
by the ships which sailed the begimiing of 
last month, accompanied with books, &c. 

Since I last wrote is dead. So there is 

one of your friends whom you will never see 

* April, 1809. 



again ! Perhaps the next fleet may bring 
you a letter from Martin Burney, to say that 
he writes by desire of Miss Lamb, who is 
not well enough to write herself, to inform 
you that her brother died on Thursday last, 
14th June, &c. But I hope not. I should 
be sorry to give occasion to open a corres- 
pondence betwen Martin and you. This 
letter must be short, for I have driven it off 
to the very moment of doing up the packets ; 
and besides, that which I refer to above is a 
very long one ; and if you have received my 
books, you will have enough to do to read 
them. While I think on it, let me tell you, 
we are moved. Don't come any more to 
Mitre-court Buildings. We are at 34, 
Southampton Buildings, Chancery-lane, and 
shall be here till about the end of May, then 
we remove to No. 4, Inner Temple-lane, 
where I mean to live and die ; for I have 
such horror of moving, that I would not 
take a benefice from the King, if I was not 
indulged with non-residence. What a dis- 
location of comfort is comprised in that word 
moving ! Such a heap of little nasty things, 
after you think all is got into the cart : old 
dredging-boxes, worn-out brushes, gallipots, 
vials, things that it is impossible the most 
necessitous person can ever want, but which 
the women, who preside on these occasions, 
will not leave behind if it was to save your 
soul; they'd keep the cart ten minutes to 
stow in dirty pipes and broken matches, to 
show their economy. Then you can find 
nothing you want for many days after you 
get into your new lodgings. You must comb 
your hair with your fingers, wash your hands 
without soap, go about in dirty gaiters. Was 
I Diogenes, I would not move out of a 
kilderkin into a hogshead, though the first 
had had nothing but small beer in it, and 
the second reeked claret. Our place of final 
destination, — I don't mean the grave, but 
No. 4, Inner Temple-lane, — looks out upon a 
gloomy churchyard-like court, called Hare- 
court, with three trees and a pump in it. Do 
you know it ? I was born near it, and 
used to drink at that pump when I was a 
Rechabite of six years old. If you see news- 
papers you will read about Mrs. Clarke. The 
sensation in London about this nonsensical 
business is marvellous. I remember nothing 
in my life like it. Thousands of ballads, 
caricatures, lives of Mrs. Clarke, in every 



LETTERS TO MANNING. 



87 



blind alley. Yet in the midst of this stir, 
a sublime abstracted dancing-master, who 
attends a family we know at Kensington, 
being asked a question about the progress of 
the examinations in the House, inquired who 
Mrs. Clarke was 1 He had heard nothing 
of it. He had evaded this omnipresence by 
utter insignificancy ! The Duke should 
make that man his confidential valet. I 
proposed locking him up, barring him the 
use of his fiddle and red pumps, until he had 
minutely perused and committed to memory, 
the whole body of the examinations, which 
employed the House of Commons a fortnight, 
to teach him to be more attentive to what 
concerns the public. I think I told you of 
Godwin's little book, and of Coleridge's pro- 
spectus, in my last ; if I did not, remind me 
of it, and I will send you them, or an account 
of them, next fleet. I have no conveniency 

of doing it by this. Mrs. grows every 

day in disfavour with me. I will be buried 
with this inscription over me : — ' Here lies 
C. L., the woman-hater :' I mean that hated 
one woman : for the rest, God bless them ! 
How do you like the Mandarinesses ? Are 
you on some little footing with any of them ? 
This is Wednesday. On Wednesdays is my 
levee. The Captain, Martin, Phillips, (not 
the Sheriff,) Bickman, and some more, are 
constant attendants, besides stray visitors. 
We play at whist, eat cold meat and hot 
potatoes, and any gentleman that chooses 
smokes. Why do you never drop in ? You'll 
come some day, won't you ? 

"C.Lamb,&c." 

His next is after his removal to the 
Temple : — 

TO MR. MANNING. 

"Jan. 2nd, 1810. 
" Dear Manning, — When I last wrote you 
I was in lodgings. I am now in chambers, 
No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, where I should 
be happy to see you any evening. Bring 
any of your friends, the Mandarins, with 
you. I have two sitting-rooms : I call them 
so par excellence, for you may stand, or loll, 
or lean, or try any posture in them, but they 
are best for sitting ; not squatting down 
Japanese fashion, but the more decorous 
mode which European usage has consecrated. 
I have two of these rooms on the third floor, 
and five sleeping, cooking, &c. rooms, on the 



fourth floor. In my best room is a choice 
collection of the works of Hogarth, an English 
painter, of some humour. In my next best 
are shelves containing a small, but well- 
chosen library. My best room commands a 
court, in which there are trees and a pump, 
the water of which is excellent cold, with 
brandy, and not very insipid without. Here 
I hope to set up my rest, and not quit till 
Mr. Powell, the undertaker, gives me notice 
that I may have possession of my last lodging. 
He lets lodgings for single gentlemen. I 
sent you a parcel of books by my last, to 
give you some idea of the state of European 
literature. There comes with this two 
volumes, done up as letters, of minor poetry, 
a sequel to ' Mrs. Leicester ;' the best you 
may suppose mine ; the next best are my 
coadjutor's ; you may amuse yourself in 
guessing them out ; but I must tell you mine 
are but one-third in quantity of the whole. 
So much for a very delicate subject. It is 
hard to speak of one's self, &c. Holcroft had 
finished his life when I wrote to you, and 
Hazlitt has since finished his life ; I do not 
mean his own life, but he has finished a life 
of Holcroft, which is going to press. Tuthill 
is Dr. Tuthill. I continue Mr. Lamb. I 
have published a little book for children on 
titles of honour : and to give them some idea 
of the difference of rank and gradual rising, 
I have made a little scale, supposing myself 
to receive the following various accessions 
of dignity from the king, who is the fountain 
of honour — As at first, 1, Mr. C. Lamb ; 2, 
C. Lamb, Esq. ; 3, Sir C. Lamb, Bart. ; 4, 
Baron Lamb of Stamford ; * 5, Viscount 
Lamb ; 6, Earl Lamb ; 7, Marquis Lamb ; 8, 
Duke Lamb. It would look like quibbling 
to carry it on further, and especially as it is 
not necessary for children to go beyond the 
ordinary titles of sub-regal dignity in our 
own country, otherwise I have sometimes in 
my dreams imagined myself still advancing, 
as 9th, King Lamb ; 10th, Emperor Lamb ; 
11th, Pope Innocent, higher than which is 
nothing. Puns I have not made many, (nor 
punch much), since the date of my last ; one 
I cannot help relating. A constable in 
Salisbury Cathedral was telling me that 
eight people dined at the top of the spire 
of the cathedral, upon which I remarked, 

* " Where my family came from. I have chosen that, 
if ever I should have my choice." 



bS 



LETTER TO MONTAGUE. 



that they must be very sharp set. But in 
general I cultivate the reasoning part of my 
mind more than the imaginative. I am 
stuffed out so with eating turkey for dinner, 
and another turkey for supper yesterday 
(Turkey in Europe and Turkey in Asia), 
that I can't jog on. It is New-year here. 
That is, it was New-year half a-year back, 
when I was writing this. Nothing puzzles 
me more than time and space, and yet nothing 
puzzles me less, for I never think about them. 
The Persian ambassador is the principal 
thing talked of now. I sent some people to 
see him worship the sun on Primrose Hill, 
at half past six in the morning, 28th No- 
vember ; but he did not come, which makes 
me think the old fire-worshippers are a 
sect almost extinct in Persia. The Persian 
ambassador's name is Shaw Ali Mirza. The 
common people call him Shaw nonsense. 
While I think of it, I have put three letters 
besides my own three into the India post for 
you, from your brother, sister, and some gen- 
tleman whose name I forget. Will they, have 
they, did they come safe ? The distance you 
are at, cuts up tenses by the root. I think you 
said you did not know Kate *********, 
I express her by nine stars, though she is 
but one. You must have seen her at her 
father's. Try and remember her. Coleridge 
is bringing out a paper in weekly numbers, 
called the ' Friend,' which I would send, if 
I could ; but the difficulty I had in getting 
the packets of books out to you before deters 
me ; and you'll want something new to read 
when you come home. Except Kate, I have 
had no vision of excellence this year, and she 
passed by like the queen on her coronation 
day ; you don't know whether you saw her 
or not. Kate is fifteen : I go about moping, 
and sing the old pathetic ballad I used to 
like in my youth — 

* She's sweet fifteen, 
I'm one year more.'' 

" Mrs. Bland sung it in boy's clothes the 
first time I heard it. I sometimes think the 
lower notes in my voice are like Mrs. Bland's. 
That glorious singer, Braham, one of my 
lights, is fled. He was for a season. He 
was a rare composition of the Jew, the gentle- 
man, and the angel, yet all these elements 
mixed up so kindly in him, that you could 
not tell which preponderated ; but he is gone, 



and one Phillips is engaged instead. Kate 

is vanished, but Miss B is always to be 

met with ! 

' Queens drop away, while blue-legged Maukin thrives ; 
And courtly Mildred dies while country Madge survives.' 

That is not my poetry, but Quarles's ; but 
haven't you observed that the rarest things 
are the least obvious ? Don't show anybody 
the names in this letter. I write confidentially, 
and wish this letter to be considered && private. 
Hazlitt has written a grammar for Godwin ; 
Godwin sells it bound up with a treatise of 
his own on language, but the grey mare is the 

better horse. I don't allude to Mrs. , 

but to the word grammar, which comes near 
to grey mare, if you observe, in sound. That 
figure is called paranomasia in Greek. I 
am sometimes happy in it. An old woman 
begged of me for charity. 'Ah! sir,'' said 
she, ' I have seen better days ;' ' So have I, 
good woman,' I replied ; but I meant lite- 
rally, days not so rainy and overcast as that 
on which she begged : she meant more 
prosperous days. Mr. Dawe is made asso- 
ciate of the Eoyal Academy. By what law 
of association I can't guess. Mrs. Holcroft, 
Miss Holcroft, Mr. and Mrs. Godwin, Mr. 
and Mrs. Hazlitt, Mrs. Martin and Louisa, 
Mrs. Lum, Capt. Burney, Mrs. Burney, 
Martin Burney, Mr. Bickman, Mrs. Bickman, 
Dr. Stoddart, William Dollin, Mr. Thompson, 
Mr. and Mrs. Norris, Mr. Fenwick, Mrs. 
Fenwick, Miss Fenwick, a man that saw you 
at our house one day, and a lady that heard 
me speak of you ; Mrs. Buffam that heard 
Hazlitt mention you,Dr.Tuthill,Mrs. Tuthill, 
Colonel Harwood, Mrs.Harwood, Mr. Collier, 
Mrs. Collier, Mr. Sutton, Nurse, Mr. Fell, 
Mrs. Fell, Mr. Marshall, are very well, and 
occasionally inquire after you. 

" I remain yours ever, 

"Ch.Lamb." 



In the summer of 1810, Lamb and his sister 
spent their holidays with Hazlitt, who, having 
married Miss Stoddart, was living in a house 
belonging to his wife's family at Winterslow, 
on the border of Salisbury Plain. The 
following letter of 12th July, in this year, 
was addressed to Mr. Montague, who had 
urged him to employ a part of his leisure in 
a compilation. 



ESTABLISHMENT OF THE "REFLECTOR." 



89 



TO MR. MONTAGUE. 

"Sarum, July 12th, 1810. 

"Dear Montague, — I have turned and 
twisted the MSS. in my head, and can make 
nothing of them. I knew when I took them 
that I could not, but I do not like to do an 
act of ungracious necessity at once ; so I am 
ever committing myself by half engagements, 
and total failures. I cannot make anybody 
understand why I can't do such things ; it is 
a defect in my occiput. I cannot put other 
people's thoughts together ; I forget every 
paragraph as fast as I read it ; and my 
head has received such a shock by an all- 
night journey on the top of the coach, that 
I shall have enough to do to nurse it into 
its natural pace before I go home. I must 
devote myself to imbecility; I must be 
gloriously useless while I stay here. How 
is Mrs. M. ? will she pardon my inefficiency ? 
The city of Salisbury is full of weeping and 
wailing. The bank has stopped payment ; 
and everybody in the town kept money at it, 
or has got some of its notes. Some have 
lost all they had in the world. It is the next 
thing to seeing a city with a plague within 
its walls. The Wilton people are all undone ; 
all the manufacturers there kept cash at the 
Salisbury bank ; and I do suppose it to be 
the unhappiest county in England this, where 
I am making holiday. "We propose setting 
out for Oxford Tuesday fortnight, and coming 
thereby home. But no more night travelling. 
My head is sore (understand it of the inside) 
with that deduction from my natural rest 
which I suffered coming down. Neither 
Mary nor I can spare a morsel of our rest : 
it is incumbent on us to be misers of it. 
Travelling is not good for us, we travel so 
seldom. If the sun be hell, it is not for the 
fire, but for the sempiternal motion of that 
miserable body of light. How much more 
dignified leisure hath a mussel glued to his 
unpassable rocky limit, two inch square ! He 
hears the tide roll over him, backwards and 
forwards twice a-day (as the Salisbury long 
coach goes and returns in eight -and-forty 
hours), but knows better than to take an 
outside night -place a top on't. He is the 
owl of the sea— Minerva's fish— the fish of 
wisdom. 

" Our kindest remembrances to Mrs. M. 
"Yours truly, C. Lamb." 



The following is Lamb's postscript to a 
letter of Miss Lamb to Miss Wordsworth, 
after their return to London : 

"Mary has left a little space for me to 
fill up with nonsense, as the geographers 
used to cram monsters in the voids of the 
maps, and call it Terra Incognita. She has 
told you how she has taken to water like a 
hungry otter. I too limp after her in lame 
imitation, but it goes against me a little at 
first. I have been acquaintance with it now 
for full four days, and it seems a moon. I am 
full of cramps, and rheumatisms, and cold 
internally, so that fire won't warm me ; yet 
I bear all for virtue's sake. Must I then 
leave you, gin, rum, brandy, aqua-vitse, 
pleasant jolly fellows 1 Hang temperance 
and he that first invented it ! — some Anti- 

Noahite. C has powdered his head, 

and looks like Bacchus, Bacchus ever sleek 
and young. He is going to turn sober, but 
his clock has not struck yet ; meantime he 
pours down goblet after goblet, the second 
to see where the first is gone, the third to 
see no harm happens to the second, a fourth 
to say there is another coming, and a fifth to 
say he is not sure he is the last." 

In the autumn of this year, the establish- 
ment of a Quarterly Magazine, entitled the 
" Eeflector," opened a new sphere for Lamb's 
powers as a humourist and critic. Its 
editor, Mr. Leigh Hunt, having been educated 
in the same school, enjoyed many associations 
and friendships in common with him, and 
was thus able to excite in Lamb the greatest 
motive for exertion in the zeal of kindness. 
In this Magazine appeared some of Lamb's 
noblest effusions ; his essay " On Garrick and 
Acting," which contains the character of 
Lear, perhaps the noblest criticism ever 
written, and on the noblest human subject ; 
his delightful "Essays on Hogarth;" his 
" Farewell to Tobacco," and several of the 
choicest of his gayer pieces. 

The number of the Quarterly Keview, for 
December, 1811, contained an attack upon 
Lamb, which it would be difficult, as well as 
painful, to characterise as it deserves. Mr. 
Weber, in his edition of "Ford," had 
extracted Lamb's note on the catastrophe 
of "The Broken Heart," in which Lamb, 



90 



TRIUMPH OF THE WHALE. 



speaking of that which he regarded as the 
highest exhibition of tragic suffering which 
human genius had depicted, dared an allusion 
which was perhaps too bold for those who 
did not understand the peculiar feeling by 
which it was suggested, but which no unpre- 
judiced mind could mistake for the breathing 
of other than a pious spirit. In reviewing 
Mr. Weber, the critic, who was also the 
editor of the Eeview, thus complains of the 
quotation. — " We have a more serious charge 
to bring against the editor than the omission 
of points, or the misapprehension of words. 
He has polluted his pages with the blas- 
phemies of a poor maniac, who, it seems, 
once published some detached scenes of the 
' Broken Heart.' For this unfortunate 
creature, every feeling mind will find an 
apology in his calamitous situation ; but for 
Mr. Weber, we know not where the warmest 
of his friends will find palliation or excuse." 
It would be unjust to attribute this paragraph 
to the accidental association of Lamb in 
literary undertakings with persons like 
Mr. Hunt, strongly opposed to the political 
opinions of Mr. Gifford. It seems rather 
the peculiar expression of the distaste of a 
small though acute mind for an original 
power which it could not appreciate, and 
which disturbed the conventional associations 
of which it was master, aggravated by bodily 
weakness and disease. Notwithstanding this 
attack, Lamb was prompted by his admiration 
for Wordsworth's " Excursion " to contribute 
a review of that work, on its appearance, to 
the Quarterly, and he anticipated great 
pleasure in the poet's approval of his criti- 
cism ; but when the review appeared, the 
article was so mercilessly mangled by the 
editor, that Lamb entreated Wordsworth 
not to read it. For these grievances Lamb 
at length took a very gentle revenge in the 
following 

SONNET. 

SAINT CEISriN TO MR. GIFFORD. 

All unadvised and in an evil hour, 

Lured by aspiring thoughts, my son, you daft 

The lowly labours of the " Gentle Craft " 

For learned toils, which blood and spirits sour. 

All things, dear pledge, are not in all men's power ; 

The wiser sort of shrub affects the ground ; 

And sweet content of mind is oftener found 

In cobbler's parlour than in critic's bower. 

The sorest work is what doth cross the grain ; 

And better to this hour you had been plying 

The obsequious awl, with well-waxed finger flying, 



Than ceaseless thus to till a thankless vein : 
Still teasing muses, which are still denying ; 
Making a stretching-leather of your brain. 

St. Crispin's Eve. 

Lamb, as we have seen, cared nothing for 
politics ; yet his desire to serve his friends 
sometimes induced him to adopt for a short 
time their view of public affairs, and assist 
them with a harmless pleasantry. The 
following epigram, on the disappointment of 
the Whig associates of the Eegent appeared 
in the " Examiner." 

Ye politicians, tell me, pray, 
Why thus with woe and care rent ? 
This is the worst that you can say, 
Some wind has blown the Wig away 
And left the Hair Apparent. 

The following, also published in the same 
paper would probably have only caused a 
smile if read by the Eegent himself, and may 
now be republished without offence to any 
one. At the time when he wrote it, Lamb 
used to stop any passionate attacks upon the 
prince, with the smiling remark, " / love my 
Eegent." 

THE TRIUMPH OF THE WHALE. 

Io ! Paean ! Io ! sing, 
To the finny people's king. 
Not a mightier whale than this 
In the vast Atlantic is, 
Not a fatter fish than he 
Flounders round the Polar sea. 
See his blubber — at his gills 
What a world of drink he swills ! 
From his trunk, as from a spout, 
Which next moment he pours out. 

Such his person. — Next declare, 
Muse, who his companions are : — 
Every fish of generous kind 
Scuds aside, or slinks behind ; 
But about his presence keep 
All the monsters of the deep ; 
Mermaids, with their tails and singing 
His delighted fancy stinging ; 
Crooked dolphins, they surround him ; 
Dog-like seals, they fawn around him ; 
Following hard, the progress mark 
Of the intolerant salt sea shark ; 
For his solace and relief, 
Flat-fish are his courtiers chief; 
Last, and lowest in his train, 
Ink-fish (libellers of the main) 
Their black liquor shed in spite : 
(Such on earth the things that rvrite.) 
In his stomach, some do say, 
No good thing can ever stay : 
Had it been the fortune of it 
To have swallow'd that old prophet, 
Three days there he'd not have dwell'd, 
But in one have been expell'd. 
Hapless mariners are they, 
Who beguiled (as seamen say) 
Deeming him some rock or island, 
Footing sure, safe spot, and dry land, 



LETTER TO WORDSWORTH. 



01 



Anchor in his scaly rind — 
Soon the difference they find ; 
Sudden, plumb ! he sinks beneath them, 
Does to ruthless seas bequeath them. 

Name or title what has he? 
Is he Regent of the Sea ? 
From this difficulty free us, 
Buffon, Banks, or sage Linnaeus. 
With his wondrous attributes 
Say what appellation suits ? 
By his bulk, and by his size, 
By his oily qualities, 
This (or else my eyesight fails), 
This should be the Prince of W/tales. 

The devastation of the Parks in the summer 
of 1814, by reason of the rejoicings on the 
visit of the Allied Sovereigns, produced the 
following letter from Lamb to Wordsworth. 



TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 

"Aug. 9th, 1814. 

" Save for a late excursion to Harrow, and 
a day or two on the banks of the Thames 
this summer, rural images were fast fading 
from my mind, and by the wise provision of 
the Eegent all that was countryfied in the 
parks is all but obliterated. The very colour 
of green is vanished, the whole surface of 
Hyde Park is dry crumbling sand (Arabia 
Arenosa), not a vestige or hint of grass ever 
having grown there ; booths and drinking- 
places go all round it, for a mile and a half I 
am confident — I might say two miles, in 
circuit — the stench of liquors, bad tobacco, 
dirty people and provisions, conquers the air, 
and we are all stifled and suffocated in Hyde 
Park. Order after order has been issued by 
Lord Sidmouth in the name of the Eegent 
(acting in behalf of his Eoyal father) for the 
dispersion of the varlets, but in vain. The 
vis unita of all the publicans in London, 
Westminster, Marylebone, and miles round, 
is too powerful a force to put down. The 
Eegent has raised a phantom which he 
cannot lay. There they'll stay probably for 
ever. The whole beauty of the place is gone 
: — that lake-look of the Serpentine — it has 
got foolish ships upon it — but something 
whispers to have confidence in nature and 
its revival- — 

At the coming of the milder day, 

These monuments shall all be overgrown. 

Meantime I confess to have smoked one 
delicious pipe in one of the cleanliest and 
goodliest of the booths ; a tent rather — 

' Oh call it not a booth ! ' 



erected by the public spirit of Watson, who 
keeps the Adam and Eve at Pancras, (the 
ale-houses have all emigrated, with their 
train of bottles, mugs, cork-screws, waiters, 
into Hyde Park — whole ale-houses, with all 
their ale !) in company with some of the 
Guards that had been in France, and a fine 
French girl, habited like a princess of ban- 
ditti, which one of the dogs had transported 
from the Garonne to the Serpentine. The 
unusual scene in Hyde Park, by candle- 
light, in open air, — good tobacco, bottled 
stout, — made it look like an interval in a 
campaign, a repose after battle. I almost 
fancied scars smarting, and was ready to 
club a story with my comrades, of some of 
my lying deeds. After all, the fireworks 
were splendid ; the rockets in clusters, in 
trees and all shapes, spreading about like 
young stars in the making, floundering about 
in space (like unbroke horses,) till some of 
Newton's calculations should fix them ; but 
then they went out. Any one who could 
see 'em, and the still finer showers of gloomy 
rain-fire that fell sulkily and angrily from 
'em, and could go to bed without dreaming 
of the last day, must be as hardened an 
atheist as . 

" Again let me thank you for your present, 
and assure you that fireworks and triumphs 
have not distracted me from receiving a calm 
and noble enjoyment from it, (which I trust 
I shall often,) and I sincerely congratulate 
you on its appearance. 

" With kindest remembrances to you and 
household, we remain, yours sincerely, 

" C. Lamb and Sister." 

The following are fragments of letters to 
Coleridge in the same month. The first is 
in answer to a solicitation of Coleridge for a 
supply of German books. 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

" 13th Aug. 1814. 

"Dear Eesuscitate, — There comes to you 
by the vehicle from Lad-lane this day a 
volume of German ; what it is I cannot 
justly say, the characters of those northern 
nations having been always singularly harsh 
and unpleasant to me. It is a contribution 

of Dr. towards your wants, and you 

would have had it sooner but for an odd 
accident. I wrote for it three days ago, and 



92 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



the Doctor, as lie thought, sent it me. A 
book of like exterior he did send, but being 
disclosed, how far unlike ! It was the ' Well- 
bred Scholar,' — a book with which it seems 
the Doctor laudably fills up those hours 
which he can steal from his medical avoca- 
tions. Chesterfield, Blair, Beattie, portions 
from 'The Life of Savage,' make up a 
prettyish system of morality and the belles- 
lettres, which Mr. Mylne, a schoolmaster, 
has properly brought together, and calls the 
collection by the denomination above men- 
tioned. The Doctor had no sooner discovered 
his error, than he dispatched man and horse 
to rectify the mistake, and with a pretty 
kind of ingenuous modesty in his note, 
seemeth to deny any knowledge of the 
' Well-bred Scholar ; ' false modesty surely, 
and a blush misplaced ; for, what more 
pleasing than the consideration of profes- 
sional austerity thus relaxing, thus im- 
proving ! But so, when a child I remember 
blushing, being caught on my knees to my 
Maker, or doing otherwise some pious and 
praiseworthy action ; now I rather love such 
things to be seen. Henry Crabb Bobinson 
is out upon his circuit, and his books are 
inaccessible without his leave and key. He 
is attending the Norfolk Circuit, — a short 
term, but to him, as to many young lawyers, 
a long vacation, sufficiently dreary.* I 
thought I could do no better than transmit 
to him, not extracts, but your very letter 
itself, than which I think I never read any 
thing more moving, more pathetic, or more 
conducive to the purpose of persuasion. The 
Crab is a sour Crab if it does not sweeten 
him. I think it would draw another third 
volume of Dodsley out of me ; but you say 
you don't want any English books ? Per- 
haps after all, that's as well ; one's romantic 
credulity is for ever misleading one into 
misplaced acts of foolery. Crab might have 
answered by this time : his juices take a 
long time supplying, but they'll run at last, 
— I know they will, — pure golden pippin. 
A fearful rumour has since reached me that 
the Crab is on the eve of setting out for 
France. If he is in England your letter will 
reach him, and I flatter myself a touch of 

* A mistake of Lamb's at which the excellent person 
referred to may smile, now that he has retired from 
his profession, and has no business but the offices of 
kindness. 



the persuasive of my own, which accompanies 
it, will not be thrown away ; if it be, he is a 
sloe, and no true-hearted crab, and there's 
an end. For that life of the German con- 
juror which you speak of, ' Colerus de Vita 
Doctoris vix-Intelligibilis,' I perfectly re- 
member the last evening we spent with 
Mrs. Morgan and Miss Brent, in London- 
street, — (by that token we had raw rabbits 
for supper, and Miss B. prevailed upon me 
to take a glass of brandy and water after 
supper, which is not my habit,) — I perfectly 
remember reading portions of that life in 
their parlour, and I think it must be among 
their packages. It was the very last evening 
we were at that house. What is gone of 
that frank-hearted circle, Morgan, and his 
cos-lettuces ? He ate walnuts better than 
any man I ever knew. Friendships in these 
parts stagnate. 

" I am going to eat turbot, turtle, venison, 
marrow pudding, — cold punch, claret, Ma- 
deira, — at our annual feast, at half-past four 
this day. They keep bothering me, (I'm at 
office,) and my ideas are confused. Let me 
know if I can be of any service as to books. 
God forbid the Architectonican should be 
sacrificed to a foolish scruple of some book- 
proprietor, as if books did not belong with 
the highest propriety to those that under- 
stand 'em best. " C. Lamb." 



TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

"26th August, 1814. 

" Let the hungry soul rejoice, there is corn 
in Egypt. Whatever thou hast been told to 
the contrary by designing friends, who per- 
haps inquired carelessly, or did not inquire 
at all, in hope of saving their money, there 
is a stock of ' Remorse ' on hand, enough, as 
Pople conjectures, for seven years' consump- 
tion ; judging from experience of the last 
two years. Methinks it makes for the benefit 
of sound literature, that the best books do 
not always go off best. Inquire in seven 
years' time for the 'Rokebys' and the 
' Laras,' and where shall they be found 1 — 
fluttering fragmentally in some thread-paper 
— whereas thy ' Wallenstein,' and thy ' Re- 
morse,' are safe on Longman's or Pople's 
shelves, as in some Bodleian ; there they 
shall remain ; no need of a chain to hold 
them fast — perhaps for ages — tall copies — 
and people shan't run about hunting for 



1 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



93 



them as in old Ezra's shrievalty they did for 
a Bible, almost without effect till the great- 
great-grand-niece (by the mother's side) of 
Jeremiah or Ezekiel (which was it ?) re- 
membered something of a book, with odd 
reading in it, that used to lie in the green 
closet in her aunt Judith's bedchamber. 

"Thy caterer, Price, was at Hamburgh 
when last Pople heard of him, laying up for 
thee like some miserly old father for his 
generous hearted son to squander. 

"Mr. Charles Aders, whose books also 
pant for that free circulation which thy cus- 
tody is sure to give them, is to be heard of 
at his kinsmen, Messrs. Jameson and Aders, 
No. 7, Laurence Pountney-lane, London, 
according to the information which Crabius 
with his parting breath left me. Crabius is 
gone to Paris. I prophesy he and the 
Parisians will part with mutual contempt. 
His head has a twist Allemagne, like thine, 
dear mystic. 

" I have been reading Madame Stael on 
Germany. An impudent clever woman. 
But if 'Faust' be no better than in her 
abstract of it, I counsel thee to let it alone. 
How canst thou translate the language of 
cat-monkeys ? Fie on such fantasies ! But 
I will not forget to look for Proclus. It is a 
kind of book when one meets with it one 
shuts the lid faster than one opened it. Yet 
I have some bastard kind of recollection that 
some where, some time ago, upon some stall 
or other, I saw it. It was either that or 
Plotinus, or Saint Augustine's ' City of God.' 
So little do some folks value, what to others, 
sc. to you, ' well used,' had been the ' Pledge 
of Immortality.' Bishop Bruno I never 
touched upon. Stuffing too good for the 
brains of such ' a Hare ' as thou describest. 
May it burst his pericranium, as the gobbets 
of fat and turpentine (a nasty thought of the 
seer) did that old dragon in the Apocrypha ! 
May he go mad in trying to understand his 
author ! May he lend the third volume of 
him before he has quite translated the second, 
to a friend who shall lose it, and so spoil the 
publication, and may his friend find it and 
send it him just as thou or some such less 
dilatory spirit shall have announced the 
whole for the press ; lastly, may he be hunted 
by Reviewers, and the devil jug him. Canst 
think of any other queries in the solution of 
which I can give thee satisfaction ? Do you 



want any books that I can procure for you ? 
Old Jimmy Boyer is dead at last. Trollope 
has got his living, worth 1000£. a-year net. 
See, thou sluggard, thou heretic-sluggard, 
what mightest thou not have arrived at. 
Lay thy animosity against Jimmy in the 
grave. Do not entail it on thy posterity. 

"Charles Lamb." 



CHAPTER X. 

[1815 to 1817.] 

LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH, SOTJTHEY, AND MANNING. 

It was at the beginning of the year 1815 
that I had first the happiness of a personal 
acquaintance with Mr. Lamb. With his 
scattered essays and poems I had become 
familiar a few weeks before, through the 
instrumentality of Mr. Baron Field, now 
Chief Justice of Gibraltar, who had been 
brought into close intimacy with Lamb by 
the association of his own family with 
Christ's Hospital, of which his father was 
the surgeon, and by his own participation in 
the " Reflector." Living then in chambers in 
Inner Temple-lane, and attending those of 
Mr. Chitty, the special pleader, which were 
on the next staircase to Mr. Lamb's, I had 
been possessed some time by a desire to 
become acquainted with the writings of my 
gifted neighbour, which my friend was able 
only partially to gratify. " John Woodvil," 
and the number of the " Reflector " enriched 
with Lamb's article, he indeed lent me, but 
he had no copy of " Rosamund Gray," which 
I was most anxious to read, and which, after 
earnest search through all the bookstalls 
within the scope of my walks, I found, ex- 
hibiting proper marks of due appreciation, 
in the store of a little circulating library 
near Holborn. There was something in this 
little romance so entirely new, yet breathing 
the air of old acquaintance ; a sense of 
beauty so delicate and so intense ; and a 
morality so benignant and so profound, that, 
as I read it, my curiosity to see its author 
rose almost to the height of pain. The 
commencement of the new year brought 
me that gratification ; I was invited to meet 
Lamb at dinner, at the house of Mr. William 



9-1 



INTRODUCTION TO LAMB. 



Evans, a gentleman holding an office in 
the India Honse, who then lived in Wey- 
mouth-street, and who was a proprietor of 
the "Pamphleteer," to which I had con- 
tributed some idle scribblings. My duties 
at the office did not allow me to avail myself 
of this invitation to dinner, but I went up at 
ten o'clock, through a deep snow, palpably 
congealing into ice, and was amply repaid 
when I reached the hospitable abode of my 
friend. There was Lamb, preparing to de- 
part, but he staid half an hour in kindness 
to me, and then accompanied me to our 
common home — the Temple. 

Methinks I see him before me now, as he 
appeared then, and as he continued, with 
scarcely any perceptible alteration to me, 
during the twenty years of intimacy which 
followed, and were closed by his death. A 
light frame, so fragile that it seemed as if a 
breath would overthrow it, clad in clerk-like 
black, was surmounted by a head of form 
and expression the most noble and sweet. 
His black hair curled crisply about an ex- 
panded forehead ; his eyes, softly brown, 
twinkled with varying expression, though 
the prevalent feeling was sad ; and the nose 
slightly curved, and delicately carved at the 
nostril, with the lower outline of the face 
regularly oval, completed a head which was 
finely placed on the shoulders, and gave 
importance, and even dignity, to a diminutive 
and shadowy stem. "Who shall describe his 
countenance — catch its quivering sweetness 
— and fix it for ever in words 1 There are 
none, alas ! to answer the vain desire of 
friendship. Deep thought, striving with 
humour ; the lines of suffering wreathed into 
cordial mirth ; and a smile of painful sweet- 
ness, present an image to the mind it can as 
little describe as lose. His personal appear- 
ance and manner are not unfitly characterised 
by what he himself says in one of his letters 
to Manning of Bra-ham — " a compound of the 
Jew, the gentleman, and the angel." He 
took my arm, and we walked to the Temple, 
Lamb stammering out fine remarks as we 
walked ; and when we reached his staircase, 
he detained me with an urgency which 
would not be denied, and we mounted to the 
top story, where an old petted servant, called 
Becky, was ready to receive us. We were 
soon seated beside a cheerful fire ; hot water 
and its better adjuncts were before us ; and 



Lamb insisted on my sitting with him while 
he smoked " one pipe " — for, alas ! for poor 
human nature — he had resumed his acquaint- 
ance with his "fair traitress." How often 
the pipe and the glasses were replenished, I 
will not undertake to disclose; but I can 
never forget the conversation : though the 
first, it was more solemn, and in higher 
mood, than any I ever after had with Lamb 
through the whole of our friendship. How 
it took such a turn between two strangers, 
one of them a lad of not quite twenty, I 
cannot tell ; but so it happened. We dis- 
coursed then of life and death, and our anti- 
cipation of a world beyond the grave. Lamb 
spoke of these awful themes with the simplest 
piety, but expressed his own fond cleavings 
to life — to all well-known accustomed things 
— and a shivering (not shuddering) sense of 
that which is to come, which he so finely 
indicated in his "New Year's Eve," years 
afterwards. Tt was two o'clock before we 
parted, when Lamb gave me a hearty invita- 
tion to renew my visit at pleasure ; but two 
or three months elapsed before I saw him 
again. In the meantime, a number of the 
" Pamphleteer " contained an " Essay on the 
Chief Living Poets," among whom on the 
title appeared the name of Lamb, and some 
page or two were expressly devoted to his 
praises. It was a poor tissue of tawdry 
eulogies — a shallow outpouring of young 
enthusiasm in fine words, which it mistakes 
for thoughts ; yet it gave Lamb, who had 
hitherto received scarcely civil notice from 
reviewers, great pleasure to find that any one 
recognised him as having a place among 
poets. The next time I saw him, he came 
almost breathless into the office, and pro- 
posed to give me what I should have chosen 
as the greatest of all possible honours and 
delights — an introduction to Wordsworth, 
who I learned, with a palpitating heart, was 
actually at the next door. I hurried out 
with my kind conductor, and a minute after 
was presented by Lamb to the person whom 
in all the world I venerated most, with this 
preface : — " Wordsworth, give me leave to 
introduce to you my only admirer." 



The following letter was addressed to 
Wordsworth, after his return to Westmore- 
land from this visit : — 



LETTER TO WORDSWORTH. 



TO MR. WORDSWORTII. 

"Aug. 9th, 1815. 

" Dear Wordsworth, — Mary and I felt 
quite queer after your taking leave (you 
W. W.) of us in St. Giles's. We wished we 
had seen more of you, but felt we had scarce 
been sufficiently acknowledging for the share 
we had enjoyed of your company. We felt 
as if we had been not enough expressive of 
our pleasure. But our manners both are a 
little too much on this side of too-much- 
cordiality. We want presence of mind and 
presence of heart. What we feel comes too 
late, like an after-thought impromptu. But 
perhaps you observed nothing of that which 
we have been painfully conscious of, and are 
every day in our intercourse with those we 
stand affected to through all the degrees of 
love. Eobinson is on the circuit. Our pane- 
gyrist I thought had forgotten one of the 
objects of his youthful admiration, but I was 
agreeably removed from that scruple by the 
laundress knocking at my door this morning, 
almost before I was up, with a present of fruit 
from my young friend, &c. There is some- 
thing inexpressibly pleasant to me in these 
presents, be it fruit, or fowl, or brawn, or 
what not. Books are a legitimate cause of 
acceptance. If presents be not the soul of 
friendship, undoubtedly they are the most 
spiritual part of the body of that intercourse. 
There is too much narrowness of thinking in 
this point. The punctilio of acceptance, 
methinks, is too confined and strait-laced. I 
could be content to receive money, or clothes, 
or a joint of meat from a friend. Why should 
he not send me a dinner as well as a dessert ? 
I would taste him in the beasts of the field, 
and through all creation. Therefore did the 
basket of fruit of the juvenile Talfourd not 
displease me ; not that I have any thoughts 
of bartering or reciprocating these things. 
To send him anything in return, would be to 
reflect suspicion of mercenariness upon what 
I know he meant a free-will offering. Let 
him overcome me in bounty. In this strife 
a generous nature loves to be overcome. You 
wish me some of your leisure. I have a 
glimmering aspect, a chink-light of liberty 
before me, which I pray God prove not 
fallacious. My remonstrances have stirred 
up others to remonstrate, and, altogether, 
there is a plan for separating certain parts of 



business from our department ; which, if it 
take place, will produce me more time, i. e. 
my evenings free. It may be a means of 
placing me in a more conspicuous situation, 
which will knock at my nerves another way, 
but I wait the issue in submission. If I can 
but begin my own day at four o'clock in the 
afternoon, I shall think myself to have Eden 
days of peace and liberty to what I have had. 
As you say, how a man can fill three volumes 
up with an essay on the drama, is wonderful ; 
I am sure a very few sheets would hold all I 
had to say on the subject. 

" Did you ever read ' Charon on Wisdom 1 ' 
or ' Patrick's Pilgrim ? ' If neither, you have 
two great pleasures to come. I mean some 
day to attack Caryl on Job, six folios. What 
any man can write, surely I may read. If I 
do but get rid of auditing warehousekeepers' 
accounts and get no worse-harassing task in 
the place of it, what a lord of liberty I shall be ! 
I shall dance, and skip, and make mouths at 
the invisible event, and pick the thorns out 
of my pillow, and throw 'em at rich men's 
night-caps, and talk blank verse, hoity, toity, 
and sing — 'A clerk I was in London gay,' 
' Ban, ban, Ca-Caliban,' like the emancipated 
monster, and go where I like, up this street 
or down that alley. Adieu, and pray that it 
may be my luck. 

" Good bye to you all. C. Lamb." 



The following letter was inclosed in the 
same parcel with the last. 



TO MR. SOUTHET. 

" Aug. 9th, 1815. 

"Dear Southey, — Eobinson is not on the 
circuit, as I erroneously stated in a letter to 
W. W., which travels with this, but is gone 
to Brussels, Ostend, Ghent, &c. But his 
friends, the Colliers, whom I consulted 
respecting your friend's fate, remember to 
have heard him say, that Father Pardo had 
effected his escape (the cunning greasy rogue), 
and to the best of their belief is at present in 
Paris. To my thinking, it is a small matter 
whether there be one fat friar more or less 
in the world. I have rather a taste for 
clerical executions, imbibed from early recol- 
lections o*f the fate of the excellent Dodd. I 
hear Bonaparte has sued his habeas corpus, 



96 



LETTERS TO SOUTHEY. 



and the twelve judges are now sitting upon 
it at the Eolls. 

" Your boute-feu (bonfire) must be excellent 
of its kind. Poet Settle presided at the last 
great thing of the kind in London, when the 
pope was burnt in form. Do you provide 
any verses on this occasion 1 Your fear for 
Hartley's intellectuals is just and rational. 
Could not the Chancellor be petitioned to 
remove him ? His lordship took Mr. Betty 
from under the paternal wing. I think at 
least he should go through a course of 
matter-of-fact with some sober man after 
the mysteries. Could not he spend a week 
at Poole's before he goes back to Oxford ? 
Tobin is dead. But there is a man in my 
office, a Mr. H., who proses it away from 
morning to night, and never gets beyond 
corporal and material verities. He'd get 
these crack-brain metaphysics out of the 
young gentleman's head as soon as any one 
I know. When I can't sleep o' nights, I 
imagine a dialogue with Mr. H., upon any 
given subject, and go prosing on in fancy 
with him, till I either laugh or fall asleep. 
I have literally found it answer. I am going 
to stand godfather ; I don't like the business ; 
I cannot muster up decorum for these occa- 
sions ; I shall certainly disgrace the font. I 
was at Hazlitt's marriage, and had like to 
have been turned out several times during 
the ceremony. Any thing awful makes me 
laugh. I misbehaved once at a funeral. Yet 
I can read about these ceremonies with pious 
and proper feelings. The realities of life 
only seem the mockeries. I fear I must get 
cured along with Hartley, if not too invete- 
rate. Don't you think Louis the Desirable 
is in a sort of quandary ? 

" After all, Bonaparte is a fine fellow, as 
my barber says-, and I should not mind 
standing bareheaded at his table to do him 
service in his fall. They should have given 
him Hampton Court or Kensington, with a 
tether extending forty miles round London. 
Qu. "Would not the people have ejected the 
Brunswicks some day in his favour 1 "Well, 
we shall see. C. Lamb." 



The following was addressed to Southey in 
acknowledgment of his " Roderick," the most 
sustained and noble of his poems. 



TO MR. SOUTHEY. 

"May 6th, 1815. 
"Dear Southey, — I have received from 
Longman a copy of ' Roderick,' with the 
author's compliments, for which I much 
thank you. I don't know where I shall put 
all the noble presents I have lately received 
in that way ; the ' Excursion,' Wordsworth's 
two last vols., and now f Roderick,' have come 
pouring in upon me like some irruption from 
Helicon. The story of the brave Maccabee 
was already, you may be sure, familiar to me 
in all its parts. I have, since the receipt of 
your present, read it quite through again, 
and with no diminished pleasure. I don't 
know whether I ought to say that it has 
given me more pleasure than any of your 
long poems. 'Kehama' is doubtless more 
powerful, but I don't feel that firm footing 
in it that I do in ' Roderick ;' my imagination 
goes sinking and floundering in the vast 
spaces of unopened-before systems and faiths ; 
I am put out of the pale of my old sympathies ; 
my moral sense is almost outraged ; I can't 
believe, or, with horror am made to believe, 
such desperate chances against omnipotences, 
such disturbances of faith to the centre ; the 
more potent the more painful the spell. 
Jove, and his brotherhood of gods, tottering 
with the giant assailings, I can bear, for the 
soul's hopes are not struck at in such con- 
tests ; but your Oriental almighties are too 
much types of the intangible prototype to be 
meddled with without shuddering. One never 
connects what are called the attributes with 
Jupiter. I mention only what diminishes my 
delight at the wonder-workings of ' Kehama,' 
not what impeaches its power, which I con- 
fess with trembling ; but ' Roderick ' is a 
comfortable poem. It reminds me of the 
delight I took in the first reading of the 
' Joan of Arc' It is maturer and better 
than that, though not better to me now than 
that was then. It suits me better than Madoc. 
I am at home in Spain and Christendom. I 
have a timid imagination, I am afraid. I do 
not willingly admit of strange beliefs, or out- 
of-the-way creeds or places. I never read 
books of travels, at least not farther than 
Paris, or Rome. I can just endure Moors, 
because of their connection as foes with 
Christians ; but Abyssinians, Ethiops, Esqui- 
maux, Dervises, and all that tribe, I hate. 



LETTER TO WORDSWORTH. 



I believe I fear them in some manner. A 
Mahometan turban on the stage, though 
enveloping some well known face (Mr. Cook 
or Mr. Maddox, whom I see another day 
good Christian and English waiters, inn- 
keepers, &c.), does not give me pleasure 
unalloyed. I am a Christian, Englishman, 
Londoner, Templar. God help me when I 
come to put off these snug relations, and to 
get abroad into the world to come ! I 
shall be like the crow on the sand, as Words- 
worth has it ; but I won't think on it ; no 
need I hope yet. 

" The parts I have been most pleased with, 
both on first and second readings, perhaps, 
are Florinda's palliation of Roderick's crime, 
confessed to him in his disguise — the retreat 
of the Palayos family first discovered, — his 
being made king — ' For acclamation one form 
must serve, more solemn for the breach of old 
observances.'' Roderick's vow is extremely 
fine, and his blessing on the vow of Alphonso : 

' Towards the troop he spread his arms, 
As if the expanded soul diffused itself, 
And carried to all spirits with the act 
Its affluent inspiration.' 

" It struck me forcibly that the feeling of 
these last lines might have been suggested to 
you by the Cartoon of Paul at Athens. 
Certain it is that a better motto or guide to 
that famous attitude can no where be found. 
I shall adopt it as explanatory of that violent, 
but dignified motion. I must read again 
Landor's ' Julian.' I have not read it some 
time. I think he must have failed in Roderick, 
for I remember nothing of him, nor of any 
distinct character as a character — only fine 
sounding passages. I remember thinking 
also he had chosen a point of time after the 
event, as it were, for Roderick survives to 
no use ; but my memory is weak, and I will 
not wrong a fine poem by trusting to it. The 
notes to your poem I have not read again ; 
but it will be a take-downable book on my 
shelf, and they will serve sometimes at break- 
fast, or times too light for the text to be duly 
appreciated. Though some of 'em, one of the 
serpent penance, is serious enough, now I 
think on't. Of Coleridge I hear nothing, 
nor of the Morgans. I hope to have him like 
a re-appearing star, standing up before me 
some time when least expected in London, as 
has been the case whylear. 



" I am doing nothing (as the phrase is) 
but reading presents, and walk away what 
of the day-hours I can get from hard occu- 
pation. Pray accept once more my hearty 
thanks, and expression of pleasure for your 
remembrance of me. My sister desires her 
kind respects to Mrs. S. and to all at Keswick. 
" Yours truly, C. Lamb." 

" The next present I look for is the ' White 
Doe.' Have you seen Mat. Betham's ' Lay 
of Marie V I think it very delicately pretty 
as to sentiment, &c." 

The following is an extract of a letter, 
addressed shortly afterwards, 

TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 

" Since I saw you I have had a treat in 
the reading way, which comes not every day ; 
the Latin poems of Vincent Bourne, which 
were quite new to me. What a heart that 
man had, all laid out upon town scenes, a 
proper counterpart to some people's extrava- 
gances. — Why I mention him is, that your 
' Power of Music ' reminded me of his poem 
of the ballad-singer in the Seven Dials. Do 
you remember his epigram on the old woman 
who taught Newton the A, B, C, which, after 
all, he says, he hesitates not to call Newton's 
Principia ? 

" I was lately fatiguing myself with going 
over a volume of fine words by , excel- 
lent words ; and if the heart could live by 
words alone, it could desire no better regale ; 
but what an aching vacuum of matter ! I 
don't stick at the madness of it, for that is 
only a consequence of shutting his eyes, 
and thinking he is in the age of the old 
Elizabeth poets. From thence I turned to 
V. Bourne; what a sweet, unpretending, 
pretty-manner'd, matterful creature ! sucking 
from every flower, making a flower of every- 
thing. His diction all Latin, and his thoughts 
all English. Bless him ! Latin wasn't good 
enough for him. Why wasn't he content 
with the language which Gay and Prior 
wrote in ?•' 

The associations of Christmas increased 
the fervour of Lamb's wishes for Manning's 
return, which he now really hoped for. On 
Christmas-day he addressed a letter to him 
at Canton, and the next day another to meet 



US 



LETTERS TO MANNING. 



him half-way home, at St. Helena, &c. 
There seems the distance of half a globe 
between these letters. The first, in which 
Lamb pictures their dearest common friends 
as in a melancholy future, and makes it 
present — lying-like dismal truths — yet with 
a relieving consciousness of a power to dispel 
the sad enchantments he has woven, has 
perhaps more of what was peculiar in Lamb's 
cast of thought, than anything of the same 
length which he has left us. 

TO MR. MANNING. 

"Dec. 25th, 1815. 

" Dear old friend and absentee, — This is 
Christmas- day 1815 with us ; what it may 
be with you I don't know, the 12th of June 
next year perhaps ; and if it should be the 
consecrated season with you, I don't see how 
you can keep it. You have no turkeys ; you 
would not desecrate the festival by offering 
up a withered Chinese bantam, instead of 
the savoury grand Norfolcian holocaust, that 
smokes all around my nostrils at this moment, 
from a thousand fire-sides. Then what 
puddings have you ? Where will you get 
holly to stick in your churches, or churches 
to stick your dried tea-leaves (that must be 
the substitute) in ? What memorials you 
can have of the holy time, I see not. A 
chopped missionary or two may keep up the 
thin idea of Lent and the wilderness ; but 
what standing evidence have you of the 
Nativity? — 'tis our rosy-cheeked, homestalled 
divines, whose faces shine to the tune of 
unto us a child was born ; faces fragrant 
with the mince-pies of half a century, that 
alone can authenticate the cheerful mystery 
— I feel, I feel my bowels refreshed with 
the holy tide — my zeal is great against the 
unedified heathen. Down with the Pagodas 
— down with the idols — Ching-chong-fo — 
and his foolish priesthood ! Come out of 
Babylon, O my friend ! for her time is come, 
and the child that is native, and the Proselyte 
of her gates, shall kindle and smoke together ! 
And in sober sense what makes you so long 
from among us, Manning 1 You must not 
expect to see the same England again which 
you left. 

" Empires have been overturned, crowns 
trodden into dust, the face of the western 
world quite changed : your friends have all 
got old — those you left blooming — myself 



(who am one of the few that remember you) 
those golden hairs which you recollect my 
taking a pride in, turned to silvery and grey. 
Mary has been dead and buried many years 
— she desired to be buried in the silk gown 
you sent her. Eickman, that you remember 
active and strong, now walks out supported 
by a servant-maid and a stick. Martin 
Burney is a very old man. The other day 
an aged woman knocked at my door, and 
pretended to my acquaintance ; it was long 
before I had the most distant cognition of 
her ; but at last together we made her out 
to be Louisa, the daughter of Mrs. Topham, 
formerly Mrs. Morton, who had been Mrs. 
Reynolds, formerly Mrs. Kenney, whose first 
husband was Holcroft, the dramatic writer 
of the last century. St. Paul's church is a 
heap of ruins ; the Monument isn't half so 
high as you knew it, divers parts being 
successively taken down which the ravages 
of time had rendered dangerous ; the horse 
at Charing Cross is gone, no one knows 
whither, — and all this has taken place while 
you have been settling whether Ho-hing-tong 

should be spelt with a , or a . For 

aught I see you had almost as well remain 
where you are, and not come like a Struld- 
brug into a world where few were born 
when you went away. Scarce here and 
there one will be able to make out your 
face ; all your opinions will be out of date, 
your jokes obsolete, your puns rejected with 
fastidiousness as wit of the last age. Your 
way of mathematics has already given way 
to a new method, which after all is I believe 
the old doctrine of Maclaurin, new-vamped 
up with what he borrowed of the negative 
quantity of fluxions from Euler. 

" Poor Godwin ! I was passing his tomb 
the other day in Cripplegate churchyard. 
There are some verses upon it written by 

Miss , which if I thought good enough I 

would send you. He was one of those who 
would have hailed your return, not with 
boisterous shouts and clamours, but with the 
complacent gratulations of a philosopher 
anxious to promote knowledge as leading to 
happiness — but his systems and his theories 
are ten feet deep in Cripplegate mould. 
Coleridge is just dead, having lived just long 
enough to close the eyes of Wordsworth, 
who paid the debt to nature but a week or 
two before — poor Col., but two days before 



LETTERS TO MANNING. 



09 



he died, he wrote to a bookseller proposing 
an epic poem on the ' Wanderings of Cain/ 
in twenty-four books. It is said he has 
left behind him more than forty thousand 
treatises in criticism, metaphysics, and divi- 
nity, but few of them in a state of comple- 
tion. They are now destined, perhaps, to 
wrap up spices. You see what mutations the 
busy hand of Time has produced, while you 
have consumed in foolish voluntary exile that 
time which might have gladdened your 
friends — benefited your country ; but re- 
proaches are useless. Gather up the wretched 
reliques, my friend, as fast as you can, and 
come to your old home. I will rub my eyes 
and try to recognise you. We will shake 
withered hands together, and talk of old 
things — of St. Mary's church and the barber's 
opposite, where the young students in 
mathematics used to assemble. Poor Crips, 
that kept it afterwards, set up a fruiterer's 
shop in Trumpington -street, and for aught I 
know resides there still, for I saw the name 
up in the last journey I took there with my 
sister just before she died. I suppose you 
heard that I had left the India House, and 
gone into the Fishmongers' Almshouses over 
the bridge. I have a little cabin there, 
small and homely, but you shall be welcome 
to it. You like oysters, and to open them 
yourself ; I'll get you some if you come in 
oyster time. Marshall, Godwin's old friend, 
is still alive, and talks of the faces you used 
to make. 

" Come as soon as you can. C. Lamb." 

Here is the next day's reverse of the 
picture. 

TO MR. MANNING. 

"Dec. 26th, 1815. 
"Dear Manning, — Following your brother's 
example, I have just ventured one letter to 
Canton, and am now hazarding another (not 
exactly a duplicate) to St. Helena. The first 
was full of unprobable romantic fictions, 
fitting the remoteness of the mission it goes 
upon ; in the present I mean to confine 
myself nearer to truth as you come nearer 
home. A correspondence with the utter- 
most parts of the earth necessarily involves 
in it some heat of fancy, it sets the brain 
agoing, but I can think on the half-way 
house tranquilly. Your friends then are not 
all dead or grown forgetful of you through 



old age, as that lying letter asserted, antici- 
pating rather what must happen if you kept 
tarrying on for ever on the skirts of creation, 
as there seemed a danger of your doing — but 
they are all tolerably well and in full and 
perfect comprehension of what is meant by 

Manning's coming home again. Mrs. 

never lets her tongue run riot more than in 
remembrances of you. Fanny expends her- 
self in phrases that can only be justified by 
her romantic nature. Mary reserves a por- 
tion of your silk, not to be buried in (as the 
false nuncio asserts), but to make up spick 
and span into a bran-new gown to wear when 
you come. I am the same as when you 
knew me, almost to a surfeiting identity. 
This very night I am going to leave off 
tobacco! Surely there must be some other 
world in which this unconquerable purpose 
shall be realised. The soul hath not her 
generous aspirings implanted in her in vain. 
One that you knew, and I think the only one 
of those friends we knew much of in common, 
has died in earnest. Poor Priscilla ! Her 
brother Robert is also dead, and several of 
the grown up brothers and sisters, in the 
compass of a very few years. Death has not 
otherwise meddled much in families that I 
know. Not but he has his horrid eye upon 
us, and is whetting his infernal feathered 
dart every instant, as you see him truly 
pictured in that impressive moral picture, 
'The good man at the hour of death.' I 
have in trust to put in the post four letters 
from Diss, and one from Lynn, to St. Helena, 
which I hope will accompany this safe, and 
one from Lynn, and the one before spoken of 
from me, to Canton. But we all hope that 
these letters may be waste paper. I don't 
know why I have forborne writing so long. 
But it is such a forlorn hope to send a scrap 
of paper straggling over wide oceans. And 
yet I know when you come home, I shall 
have you sitting before me at our fire-side just 
as if you had never been away. In such an 
instant does the return of a person dissipate 
all the weight of imaginary perplexity from 
distance of time and space ! I'll promise 
you good oysters. Cory is dead that kept 
the shop opposite St. Dunstan's, but the 
tougher materials of the shop survive the 
perishing frame of its keeper. Oysters con- 
tinue to flourish there under as good auspices. 
Poor Cory ! But if you will absent yourself 



100 



COLERIDGE'S DISCOURSE. 



twenty years together, you must not expect 
numerically the same population to congratu- 
late your return which wetted the sea- 
beach with their tears when you went away. 
Have you recovered the breathless stone- 
staring astonishment into which you must 
have been thrown upon learning at landing 
that an Emperor of France was living in 
St. Helena 1 What an event in the solitude 
of the seas ! like finding a fish's bone at the 
top of Plinlimmon ; but these things are 
nothing in our western world. Novelties 
cease to affect. Come and try what your 
presence can. 

" God bless you. — Your old friend, 

"C.Lamb." 

The years which Lamb passed in his 
chambers in Inner Temple Lane were, per- 
haps, the happiest of his life. His salary was 
considerably augmented, his fame as an 
author was rapidly extending; he resided 
near the spot which he best loved ; and was 
surrounded by a motley group of attached 
friends, some of them men of rarest parts, 
and all strongly attached to him and to his 
sister. Here the glory of his Wednesday 
nights shone forth in its greatest lustre. If 
you did not meet there the favourites of 
fortune ; authors whose works bore the 
highest price in Paternoster Eow, and who 
glittered in the circles of fashion ; you might 
find those who had thought most deeply ; 
felt most keenly ; and were destined to pro- 
duce the most lasting influences on the lite- 
rature and manners of the age. There 
Hazlitt, sometimes kindling into fierce pas- 
sion at any mention of the great reverses of 
his idol Napoleon, at other times bashfully 
enunciated the finest criticism on art ; or 
dwelt with genial iteration on a passage in 
Chaucer; or, fresh from the theatre, ex- 
patiated on some new instance of energy in 
Kean, or reluctantly conceded a greatness to 
Kemble ; or detected some popular fallacy 
with the fairest and the subtlest reasoning. 
There Godwin, as he played his quiet rubber, 
or benignantly joined in the gossip of the 
day, sat an object of curiosity and wonder to 
the stranger, who had been at one time 
shocked or charmed with his high specula- 
tion, and at another awe-struck by the force 
and graphic power of his novels. There 
Coleridge sometimes, though rarely, took his 



seat ; and then the genial hubbub of voices 
was still; critics, philosophers, and poets, 
were contented to listen ; and toil-worn 
lawyers, clerks from the India House, and 
members of the Stock Exchange, grew ro- 
mantic while he spoke. Lamb used to say 
that he was inferior then to what he had 
been in his youth ; but I can scarcely believe 
it ; at least there is nothing in his early 
writing which gives any idea of the richness 
of his mind so lavishly poured out at this 
time in his happiest moods. Although he 
looked much older than he was, his hair 
being silvered all over, and his person tending 
to corpulency, there was about him no trace 
of bodily sickness or mental decay, but rather 
an air of voluptuous repose. His benignity 
of manner placed his auditors entirely at 
their ease ; and inclined them to listen de- 
lighted to the sweet, low tone in which he 
began to discourse on some high theme. 
Whether he had won for his greedy listener 
only some raw lad, or charmed a circle of 
beauty, rank, and wit, who hung breathless 
on his words, he talked with equal eloquence ; 
for his subject, not his audience, inspired 
him. At first his tones were conversational ; 
he seemed to dally with, the shadows of the 
subject and with fantastic images which bor- 
dered it ; but gradually the thought grew 
deeper, and the voice deepened with the 
thought; the stream gathering strength, 
seemed to bear along with it all things which 
opposed its progress, and blended them with 
its current ; and stretching away among 
regions tinted with ethereal colours, was lost 
at airy distance in the horizon of fancy. His 
hearers were unable to grasp his theories, 
which were indeed too vast to be exhibited 
in the longest conversation ; but they per- 
ceived noble images, generous suggestions, 
affecting pictures of virtue, which enriched 
their minds and nurtured their best affec- 
tions. Coleridge was sometimes induced to 
recite portions of " Christabel," then en- 
shrined in manuscript from eyes profane, 
and gave a bewitching effect to its wizard 
lines. But more peculiar in its beauty than 
this, was his recitation of Kubla Khan. As 
he repeated the passage — 

A damsel with a dulcimer 
In a vision once I saw : 

It was an Abyssinian maid, 
And on her dulcimer she played, 
Singing of Mont Abora ! 



EPISTLE TO AYRTON. 



101 



his voice seemed to mount, and melt into air, 
as the images grew more visionary, and the 
suggested associations more remote. He 
usually met opposition by conceding the point 
to the objector, and then went on with his 
high argument as if it had never been raised : 
thus satisfying his antagonist, himself, and 
all who heard him ; none of whom de- 
sired to hear his discourse frittered into 
points, or displaced by the near encounter 
even of the most brilliant wits. The first 
time I met him, which was on one of those 
Wednesday evenings, we quitted the party 
together between one and two in the morn- 
ing ; Coleridge took my arm and led me 
nothing loath, at a very gentle pace, to his 
lodgings, at the Gloucester Coffee-house, 
pouring into my ear the whole way an 
argument by which he sought to reconcile 
the doctrines of Necessity and Free-will, 
winding on through a golden maze of ex- 
quisite illustration ; but finding no end, 
except with the termination of that (to me) 
enchanted walk. He was only then on the 
threshold of the Temple of Truth, into which 
his genius darted its quivering and uncertain 
rays, but which he promised shortly to light 
up with unbroken lustre. " I understood a 
beauty in the words, but not the words : " 

" And when the stream of sound, 
Which overflowed the soul, had passed away, 
A consciousness survived that it had left, 
Deposited upon the silent shore 
Of memory, images and gentle thoughts, 
Which cannot die, and will not be destroyed." 

Men of " great mark and likelihood " — 
attended those delightful suppers, where the 
utmost freedom prevailed — including politi- 
cians of every grade, from Godwin up to the 
editor of the "New Times." 

Hazlitt has alluded con amove to these 
meetings in his Essay " On the Conversation 
of Authors," and has reported one of the 
most remarkable discussions which graced 
them in his Essay " On Persons one would 
wish to have seen," published by his son, 
in the two volumes of his remains, which 
with so affectionate a care he has given to the 
world. In this was a fine touch of Lamb's 
pious feeling, breaking through his fancies 
and his humours, which Hazlitt has recorded, 
but which cannot be duly appreciated, 
except by those who can recall to memory 
the suffused eye and quivering lip with which 



he stammered out a reference to the name 
which he would not utter. " There is only 
one other person I can ever think of after 
this," said he. " If Shakspeare was to come 
into the room, we should all rise to meet 
him ; but if That Person were to come into 
it, we should all fall down and kiss the hem 
of his garment." 

Among the frequent guests in Inner-Temple 
Lane was Mr. Ayrton, the director of the 
music at the Italian Opera. To him Lamb 
addressed the following rhymed epistle on 
17th May, 1817. 

TO WILLIAM AYRTON, ESQ. 

My dear friend, 
Before I end, 
Have you any 
More orders for Don Giovanni, 
To give 
Him that doth live 
Your faithful Zany ? 

Without raillery, 
I mean Gallery 
Ones : 
For I am a person that shuns 
All ostentation, 
And being at the top of the fashion ; 
And seldom go to operas 
But in forma pauperis ! 

I go to the play 
In a very economical sort of a way, 
Rather to see 
Than be seen ; 
Though I'm no ill sight 
Neither, 
By candle-light 
And in some kinds of weather. 
You might pit me 

For height 
Against Kean ; 
But in a grand tragic scene 
I'm nothing : 
It would create a kind of loathing 
To see me act Hamlet ; 
There'd be many a damn let 

Fly 
At my presumption, 

If I should try, 
Being a fellow of no gumption. 

By the way, tell me candidly how you relish 
This, which they call 
The lapidary style 1 

Opinions vary. 
The late Mr. Mellish 
Could never abide it ; 

He thought it vile, 

And coxcombical. 
My friend the poet laureat, 
Who is a great lawyer at 

Anything comical, 

Was the first who tried it ; 

But Mellish could never abide it ; 

But it signifies very little what Mellish said, 

Because he is dead. 



102 



LETTER TO FIELD. 



For who can confute 
A body that's mute 1 
Or who would fight 
"With a senseless sprite ? 

Or think of troubling 
An impenetrable old goblin, 
That's dead and gone, 
And stiff as stone, 
To convince him with arguments pro and con, 
As if some live logician, 
Bred up at Merton, 
Or Mr. Hazlitt, the metaphysician, — 
Hey, Mr. Ayrton ! 
With all your rare tone.* 

For tell me how should an apparition 
List to your call, 
Though you talk'd for ever, 

Ever so clever : 
"When his ear itself, 
By which he must hear, or not hear at all, 
Is laid on the shelf ? 
Or put the case 
(For more grace), 
It were a female spectre — 
How could you expect her 
To take much gust 
In long speeches, 
With her tongue as dry as dust, 
In a sandy place, 
Where no peaches, 
Nor lemons, nor limes, nor oranges hang, 
To drop on the drought of an arid harangue, 
Or quench, 
With their sweet drench, 
The fiery pangs which the worms inflict, 
With their endless nibblings, 
Like quibblings, 
Which the corpse may dislike, but can ne'er contradict — 
Hey, Mr. Ayrton 1 
With all your rare tone. 

I am, 

C. LAMB. 

One of Lamb's most intimate friends and 
warmest admirers, Barron Field, disappeared 
from the circle on being appointed to a 
judicial situation in New South Wales. In 
the following letter to him, Lamb renewed 
the feeling with which he had addressed 
Manning at the distance of a hemisphere. 

TO MR. FIELD. 

"Aug. 31st, 1817. 

"My dear Barron, — The bearer of this 
letter so far across the seas is Mr. 
Lawrey, who comes out to you as a mis- 
sionary, and whom I have been strongly 
importuned to recommend to you as a most 
worthy creature by Mr. Fenwick, a very old, 
honest friend of mine; of whom, if my 

* From this it may at first appear, that the author 
meant to ascribe vocal talents to his friend, the Director 
of the Italian Opera ; but it is merely a " line for 
rhyme." For, though the public were indebted to 
Mr. A. for many fine foreign singers, we believe that he 
never claimed to be himself a singer. 



memory does not deceive me, you have had 
some knowledge heretofore as editor of ' The 
Statesman,' a man of talent, and patriotic. 
If you can show him any facilities in his 
arduous undertaking, you will oblige us 
much. Well, and how does the land of 
thieves use you ? and how do you pass your 
time, in your extra-j udicial intervals ? Going 
about the streets with a lantern, like 
Diogenes, looking for an honest man ? You 
may look long enough, I fancy. Do give me 
some notion of the manners of the inhabit- 
ants where you are. They don't thieve all 
day long do they? No human property 
could stand such continuous battery. And 
what do they do when they an't stealing ? 

" Have you got a theatre 1 What pieces 
are performed ? Shakspeare's, I suppose ; 
not so much for the poetry, as for his having 
once been in danger of leaving his country 
on account of certain ' small deer.' 

" Have you poets among you ? Cursed 
plagiarists, I fancy, if you have any. I 
would not trust an idea, or a pocket-handker- 
chief of mine, among 'em. You are almost 
competent to answer Lord Bacon's problem, 
whether a nation of atheists can subsist 
together. You are practically in one : 

' So thievish 'tis, that the eighth commandment itself 
Scarce seemeth there to be.' 

Our old honest world goes on with little 
perceptible variation. Of course you have 
heard of poor Mitchell's death, and that 
G. Dyer is one of Lord Stanhope's residuaries. 
I am afraid he has not touched much of the 
residue yet. He is positively as lean as 
Cassius. Barnes is going to Demerara, or 
Essequibo, I am not quite certain which. 

A is turned actor. He came out in 

genteel comedy at Cheltenham this season, 
and has hopes of a London engagement. 

"For my own history, I am just in the 
same spot, doing the same thing, (videlicet, 
little or nothing,) as when you left me ; only 
I have positive hopes that I shall be able to 
conquer that inveterate habit of smoking 
which you may remember I indulged in. I 
think of making a beginning this evening, 
viz., Sunday, 31st Aug., 1817, not Wednesday, 
2nd Feb., 1818, as it will be perhaps when you 
read this for the first time. There is the 
difficulty of writing from one end of the 
globe (hemispheres I call 'em) to another 1 



LETTER TO MISS WORDSWORTH. 



103 



Why, half the truths I have sent you in this 
letter will become lies before they reach you, 
and some of the lies (which I have mixed 
for variety's sake, and to exercise your 
judgment in the finding of them out) may 
be turned into sad realities before you shall 
be called upon to detect them. Such are the 
defects of going by different chronologies. 
Your now is not my now ; and again, your 
then is not my then ; but my now may be 
your then, and vice versa. Whose head is 
competent to these things ? 

"How does Mrs. Field get on in her 
geography '? Does she know where she is by 
this time? I am not sure sometimes you 
are not in another planet ; but then I don't 
like to ask Capt. Burney, or any of those 
that know anything about it, for fear of 
exposing my ignorance. 

" Our kindest remembrances, however, to 
Mrs. F., if she will accept of reminiscences 
from another planet, or at least another 
hemisphere. C. L." 

Lamb's intention of spending the rest of 
his days in the Middle Temple was not to be 
realised. The inconveniences of being in 
chambers began to be felt as he and 
his sister grew older, and in the autumn 
of this year they removed to lodgings in 
Eussell-street, Covent Garden, the corner- 
house, delightfully situated between the two 
great theatres. In November, 1817, Miss 
Lamb announced the removal to Miss Words- 
worth in a letter, to which Lamb added the 
following : — 

TO MISS WORDSWORTH. 

"Nov. 21st, 1817. 

" Dear Miss Wordsworth, — Here we are, 
transplanted from our native soil. I thought 
we never could have been torn up from the 
Temple. Indeed it was an ugly wrench, but 
like a tooth, now 'tis out, and I am easy. 
We never can strike root so deep in any other 
ground. This, where we are, is a light bit of 
gardener's mould, and if they take us up 
from it, it will cost no blood and groans, 
like man-drakes pulled up. We are in the 
individual spot I like best, in all this great 
city. The theatres, with all their noises. 
Covent Garden, dearer to me than any 
gardens of Alcinous, where we are morally 
sure of the earliest peas and 'sparagus. 



Bow-street, where the thieves are examined, 
within a few yards of us. Mary had not 
been here four-and-twenty hours before she 
saw a thief. She sits at the window working ; 
and casually throwing out her eyes, she sees 
a concourse of people coming this way, with 
a constable to conduct the solemnity. These 
little incidents agreeably diversify a female 
life. 

" Mary has brought her part of this letter 
to an orthodox and loving conclusion, which 
is very well, for I have no room for pansies 
and remembrances. What a nice holyday I 
got on Wednesday by favour of a princess 
dying ! C. L." 



CHAPTER XL 

[1818 to 1820.] 

LETTERS TO -WORDSWORTH, SOTJTHEY, MANNING, AND 
COLERIDGE. 

Lamb, now in the immediate neighbour- 
hood of the theatres, renewed the dramatic 
associations of his youth, which the failure of 
one experiment had not chilled. Although he 
rather loved to dwell on the recollections of 
the actors who had passed from the stage, 
than to mingle with the happy crowds who 
hailed the successive triumphs of Mr. Kean, 
he formed some new and steady theatrical 
attachments. His chief favourites of this 
time were Miss Kelly, Miss Burrell of the 
Olympic, and Munden. The first, then the 
sole support of the English Opera, became a 
frequent guest in Great Eussell-street, and 
charmed the circle there by the heartiness 
of her manners, the delicacy and gentleness 
of her remarks, and her unaffected sensibility, 
as much as she had done on the stage. Miss 
Burrell, a lady of more limited powers, but 
with a frank and noble style, was discovered 
by Lamb on one of the visits which he paid, 
on the invitation of his old friend Elliston 
to the Olympic, where the lady performed 
the hero of that happy parody of Moncrieff's 
Giovanni in London. To her Lamb devoted 
a little article, which he sent to the Exa- 
miner, in which he thus addresses her : — 
"But Giovanni, free, fine, frank-spirited 
single-hearted creature, turning all the mis- 
chief into fun as harmless as toys, or 
children's make believe, what praise can we 



104 



LETTER TO MRS. WORDSWORTH. 



repay to you adequate to the pleasure which 
you have given us ? We had better be silent, 
for you have no name, and our mention will 
but be thought fantastical. You have taken 
out the sting from the evil thing, by what 
magic we know not, for there are actresses 
of greater merit and likelihood than you. 
With you and your Giovanni our spirits will 
hold communion, whenever sorrow or suffer- 
ing shall be our lot. We have seen you 
triumph over the infernal powers ; and pain 
and Erebus, and the powers of darkness, 
are shapes of a dream." Miss Burrell soon 
married a person named Gold, and disap- 
peared from the stage. To Munden in prose, 
and Miss Kelly in verse, Lamb has done 
ample justice. 

Lamb's increasing celebrity, and universal 
kindness, rapidly increased the number of 
his visitors. He thus complained, in way- 
ward mood, of them to Mrs. Wordsworth : — 

TO MRS. WORDSWORTH. 

" East-India House, 18th Feb., 1818. 
"My dear Mrs. Wordsworth, — I have 
repeatedly taken pen in hand to answer your 
kind letter. My sister should more properly 
have done it, but she having failed, I consider 
myself answerable for her debts. I am now 
trying to do it in the midst of commercial 
noises, and with a quill which seems more 
ready to glide into arithmetical figures and 
names of gourds, cassia, cardemoms, aloes, 
ginger, or tea, than into kindly responses and 
friendly recollections. The reason why I can- 
not write letters at home, is, that I am never 
alone. Plato's — (I write to W. W. now) — 
Plato's double-animal parted never longed 
more to be reciprocally re-united in the 
system of its first creation, than I sometimes 
do to be but for a moment single and separate. 
Except my morning's walk to the office, 
which is like treading on sands of gold for 
that reason, I am never so. I cannot walk 
home from office, but some officious friend 
offers his unwelcome courtesies to accompany 
me. All the morning I am pestered. I could 
sit and gravely cast up sums in great books, 
or compare sum with sum, and write ' paid ' 
against this, and ' unpaid ' against t'other, 
and yet reserve in some corner of my mind, 
' some darling thoughts all my own ' — faint 
memory of some passage in a book, or the 
tone of an absent friend's voice — a snatch of 



Miss Burrell's singing, or a gleam of Fanny 
Kelly's divine plain face. The two opera- 
tions might be going on at the same time 
without thwarting, as the sun's two motions 
(earth's I mean), or, as I sometimes turn 
round till I am giddy, in my back parlour, 
while my sister is walking longitudinally in 
the front ; or, as the shoulder of veal twists 
round with the spit, while the smoke wreathes 
up the chimney. But there are a set of 
amateurs of the Belles Lettres — the gay 
science — who come to me as a sort of ren- 
dezvous, putting questions of criticism, of 
British Institutions, Lalla Rookhs, &c. — what 
Coleridge said at the lecture last night — who 
have the form of reading men, but, for any 
possible use reading can be to them, but to 
talk of, might as well have been Ante- 
Cadmeans born, or have lain sucking out the 
sense of an Egyptian hieroglyph as long as 
the pyramids will last, before they should 
find it. These pests worrit me at business, 
and in all its intervals, perplexing my 
accounts, poisoning my little salutary warm- 
ing-time at the fire, puzzling my paragraphs 
if I take a newspaper, cramming in between 
my own free thoughts and a column of 
figures, which had come to an amicable 
compromise but for them. Their noise 
ended, one of them, as I said, accompanies 
me home, lest I should be solitary for a 
moment ; he at length takes his welcome 
leave at the door ; up I go, mutton on table, 
hungry as hunter, hope to forget my cares, 
and bury them in the agreeable abstraction 
of mastication ; knock at the door, in comes 

Mr. , or M , or Demi-gorgon, or my 

brother, or somebody, to prevent my eating 
alone — a process absolutely necessary to my 
poor wretched digestion. O, the pleasure of 
eating alone! — eating my dinner alone ! let 
me think of it. But in they come, and make 
it absolutely necessary that I should open a 
bottle of orange — for my meat turns into 
stone when any one dines with me, if I have 
not wine. Wine can mollify stones ; then 
that wine turns into acidity, acerbity, misan- 
thropy, a hatred of my interrupters — (God 
bless 'em ! I love some of 'em dearly), and 
with the hatred, a still greater aversion to 
their going away. Bad is the dead sea they 
bring upon me, choking and deadening, but 
worse is the deader dry sand they leave me 
on, if they go before bed-time. Come never, 



LETTER TO MRS. WORDSWORTH. 



105 



I would say to these spoilers of my dinner ; 
but if you come, never go ! The fact is, 
this interruption does not happen very often, 
but every time it comes by surprise, that 
present bane of my life, orange wine, with 
all its dreary stifling consequences, follows. 
Evening company I should always like had I 
any mornings, but I am saturated with 
human faces {divine forsooth !) and voices, 
all the golden morning ; and five evenings in 
a week, would be as much as I should covet 
to be in company, but I assure you that is a 
wonderful week in which I can get two, or 
one to myself. I am never C. L., but always 
C. L. & Co. He, who thought it not good 
for man to be alone, preserve me from the 
more prodigious monstrosity of being never 
by myself ! I forget bed-time, but even there 
these sociable frogs clamber up to annoy 
me. Once a week, generally some singular 
evening that being alone, I go to bed at the 
hour I ought always to be a-bed ; just close 
to my bed-room window is the club-room of 
a public-house, where a set of singers, I 
take them to be chorus singers of the two 
theatres (it must be both of them), begin their 
orgies. They are a set of fellows (as I con- 
ceive) who, being limited by their talents to 
the burthen of the song at the play-houses, 
in revenge have got the common popular 
airs by Bishop, or some cheap composer, 
arranged for choruses, that is, to be sung all 
in chorus. At least I never can catch any 
of the text of the plain song, nothing but the 
Babylonish choral howl at the tail on't. 
' That fury being quenched '—the howl I mean 
— a burden succeeds of shouts and clapping, 
and knocking of the table. At length over- 
tasked nature drops under it, and escapes 
for a few hours into the society of the sweet 
silent creatures of dreams, which go away 
with mocks and mows at cockcrow. And 
then I think of the words Christabel's father 
used (bless me, I have dipt in the wrong 
ink) to say every morning by way of variety 
when he awoke : 

' Every knell, the Baron saith, 
Wakes us up to a world of death ' — 

or something like it. All I mean by this 
senseless interrupted tale, is, that by my 
central situation I am a little over-companied. 
Not that I have any animosity against the 
good creatures that are so anxious to drive 



away the harpy solitude from me. I like 
'em, and cards, and a cheerful glass ; but I 
mean merely to give you an idea between 
office confinement and after-office society, 
how little time I can call my own. I mean 
only to draw a picture not to make an 
inference. I would not that I know of have 
it otherwise. I only wish sometimes I could 
exchange some of my faces and voices for 
the faces and voices which a late visitation 
brought most welcome, and carried away, 
leaving regret but more pleasure, even a 
kind of gratitude, at being so often favoured 
with that kind northern visitation. My 
London faces and noises don't hear me — I 
mean no disrespect, or I should explain 
myself, that instead of their return 220 times 
a year, and the return of W. W., &c, seven 
times in 104 weeks, some more equal distri- 
bution might be found. I have scarce room 
to put in Mary's kind love, and my poor 
name, C. Lamb." 

" S. T. C. is lecturing with success. I mean 
to hear some of the course, but lectures are 
not much to my taste, whatever the lecturer 
may be. If read, they are dismal flat, and 
you can't think why you are brought toge- 
ther to hear a man read his works, which 
you could read so much better at leisure 
yourself ; if delivered extempore, I am always 
in pain, lest the gift of utterance should sud- 
denly fail the orator in the middle, as it did 
me at the dinner given in honour of me at 
the London Tavern. ' Gentlemen,' said I, 
and there I stopped ; the rest my feelings 
were under the necessity of supplying. Mrs. 
Wordsworth will go on, kindly haunting us 
with visions of seeing the lakes once more, 
which never can be realised. Between us 
there is a great gulf, not of inexplicable 
moral antipathies and distances, I hope, as 
there seemed to be between me and that 
gentleman concerned in the stamp-office, 
that I so strangely recoiled from at Haydon's. 
I think I had an instinct that he was the 
head of an office. I hate all such people — 
accountants' deputy accountants. The dear 
abstract notion of the East India Company, 
as long as she is unseen, is pretty, rather 
poetical ; but as she makes herself manifest 
by the persons of such beasts, 1 loathe and 
detest her as the scarlet what-do-you-call-her 
of Babylon. I thought, after abridging us 



106 



LETTERS TO SOUTHEY AND COLERIDGE. 



of all our red-letter days, they had done 
their worst, but I was deceived in the length 
to which heads of offices, those true liberty- 
haters, can go. They are the tyrants, not 
Ferdinand, nor Nero — by a decree passed 
this week, they have abridged us of the 
hnmemorially-observed custom of going at 
one o'clock of a Saturday, the little shadow 
of a holiday left us. Dear W. W. be thank- 
ful for liberty." 

Among Lamb's new acquaintances was 
Mr. Charles Oilier, a young bookseller of 
considerable literary talent, which he has 
since exhibited in the original and beautiful 
tale of " Inesilla," who proposed to him the 
publication of his scattered writings in a 
collected form. Lamb acceded ; and nearly 
all he had then written in prose and verse, 
were published this year by Mr. Oilier and 
his brother, in two small and elegant volumes. 
Early copies were despatched to Southey and 
Wordsworth ; the acknowledgments of the 
former of whom produced a reply, from 
which the following is an extract : — 

TO MR. SOUTHEY. 

"Monday, Oct. 26th, 1818. 
" Dear Southey, — I am pleased with your 
friendly remembrances of my little things. 
I do not know whether T have done a silly 
thing or a wise one, but it is of no great 
consequence. I run no risk, and care for no 
censures. My bread and cheese is stable as 
the foundations of Leadenhall-street, and if 
it hold out as long as the ' foundations of 
our empire in the East,' I shall do pretty 
well. You and W. W. should have had 
your presentation copies more ceremoniously 
sent, but I had no copies when I was leaving 
town for my holidays, and rather than delay, 
commissioned my bookseller to send them 
thus nakedly. By not hearing from W. W. 
or you, I began to be afraid Murray had not 
sent them. I do not see S. T. C. so often as 
I could wish. I am better than I deserve to 
be. The hot weather has been such a treat ! 
Mary joins in this little corner in kindest 
remembrances to you all. C. L." 

Lamb's interest was strongly excited for 
Mr. Kenney, on the production of his comedy 
entitled " A Word to the Ladies."" Lamb had 
engaged to contribute the prologue ; but the 



promise pressed hard upon him, and he pro- 
cured the requisite quantity of verse from 
a very inferior hand. Kenney, who had 
married Holcroft's widow, had more than 
succeeded to him in Lamb's regards. Holcroft 
had considerable dramatic skill ; great force 
and earnestness of style, and noble sincerity 
and uprightness of disposition ; but he was 
an austere observer of morals and manners ; 
and even his grotesque characters were hardly 
and painfully sculptured ; while Kenney, 
with as fine a perception of the ludicrous 
and the peculiar, was more airy, more indul- 
gent, more graceful, and exhibited more 
frequent glimpses of " the gayest, happiest 
attitude of things." The comedy met with 
less success than the reputation of the author 
and brilliant experience of the past had 
rendered probable, and Lamb had to perform 
the office of comforter, as he had done on 
the more unlucky event to Godwin. To this 
play Lamb refers in the following note to 
Coleridge, who was contemplating a course 
of lectures on Shakspeare, and who sent 
Lamb a ticket, with sad forebodings that the 
course would be his last. 



TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

"Dec. 24th, 1818. 

"My dear Coleridge, — I have been in a 
state of incessant hurry ever since the receipt 
of your ticket. It found me incapable of 
attending you, it being the night of Kenney's 
new comedy. You know my local aptitudes 
at such a time ; I have been a thorough 
rendezvous for all consultations ; my head 
begins to clear up a little, but it has had 
bells in it. Thank you kindly for your 
ticket, though the mournful prognostic which 
accompanies it certainly renders its perma- 
nent pretensions less marketable ; but I trust 
to hear many a course yet. You excepted 
Christmas week, by which I understood next 
week; I thought Christmas week was that 
which Christmas Sunday ushered in. We 
are sorry it never lies in your way to come 
to us ; but, dear Mahomet, we will come to 
you. Will it be convenient to all the good 
people at Highgate, if we take a stage up, not 
next Sunday, but the following, viz., 3rd 
January, 1819 — shall we be too late to catch 
a skirt of the old out-goer 1— how the years 
crumble from under us ! We shall hope to 
see you before then ; but, if not, let us know 



LETTER TO WORDSWORTH. 



107 



if then will be convenient. Can we secure a 
coach home ? 

" Believe me ever yours, 

" C. Lamb." 

" 1 have but one holiday, which is Christ- 
mas-day itself nakedly : no pretty garnish 
and fringes of St. John's-day, Holy Inno- 
cents, &c, that used to bestud it all around 
in the calendar. Improbe labor! I write 
six hours every day in this candle-light fog- 
den at Leadenhall." 

In the next year [1819] Lamb was greatly 
pleased by the dedication to him of Words- 
worth's poem of "The Waggoner," which 
Wordsworth had read to him in MS. thirteen 
years before. On receipt of the little volume, 
Lamb acknowledged it as follows : — 

TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 

"June 7th, 1819. 

"My dear Wordsworth, — You cannot 
imagine how proud we are here of the 
dedication. We read it twice for once that 
we do the poem. I mean all through ; yet 
' Benjamin ' is no common favourite ; there 
is a spirit of beautiful tolerance in it ; it is 
as good as it was in 1806 ; and it will be as 
good in 1829, if our dim eyes shall be awake 
to peruse it. Methinks there is a kind of 
shadowing affinity between the subject of 
the narrative and the subject of the dedica- 
tion ; — but I will not enter into personal 
themes, else, substituting *********** 
for Ben, and the Honourable United Com- 
pany of Merchants trading to the East Indies, 
for the master of the misused team, it might 
seem, by no far-fetched analogy, to point its 
dim warnings hitherward ; but I reject the 
omen, especially as its import seems to have 
been diverted to another victim. 

" I will never write another letter with 
alternate inks. You cannot imagine how it 
cramps the flow of the style. I can conceive, 
Pindar (I do not mean to compare myself to 
him), by the command of Hiero, the Sicilian 
tyrant (was not he the tyrant of some place 1 
fie on my neglect of history) ; I can conceive 
him by command of Hiero or Perillus set 
down to pen an Isthmian or Nemean pane- 
gyric in lines, alternate red and black. I 
maintain he couldn't have done it ; it would 
have been a strait-laced torture to his muse ; 



he would have call'd for the bull for a relief. 
Neither could Lycidas, or the Chorics (how 
do you like the word l) of Samson Agonistes, 
have been written with two inks. Your 
couplets with points, epilogues to Mr. H.'s, 
&c, might be even benefited by the twy- 
fount, where one line (the second) is for 
point, and the first for rhyme. I think the 
alternation would assist, like a mould. I 
maintain it, you could not have written your 
stanzas on pre-existence with two inks. Try 
another ; and Eogers, with his silver standish, 
having one ink only, I will bet my ' Ode on 
Tobacco,' against the ' Pleasures of Memory,' 
— and ' Hope,' too, shall put more fervour of 
enthusiasm into the same subject than you 
can with your two ; he shall do it stans pede 
in uno, as it were. 

"The 'Waggoner' is very ill put up in 
boards, at least it seems to me always to open 
at the dedication ; but that is a mechanical 
fault. I re-read the 'White Doe of Eyl- 
stone ; ' the title should be always written 

at length, as Mary Sabilla N , a very 

nice woman of our acquaintance, always 
signs hers at the bottom of the shortest note. 
Mary told her, if her name had been Mary 

Ann, she would have signed M. A. N , or 

M. only, dropping the A. ; which makes me 
think, with some other trifles, that she un- 
derstands something of human nature. My 
pen goes galloping on most rhapsodically, 
glad to have escaped the bondage of two 
inks. 

"Manning has just sent it home, and it 
came as fresh to me as the immortal creature 
it speaks of. M. sent it home with a note, 
having this passage in it: 'I cannot help 
writing to you while I am reading Words- 
worth's poem. I am got into the third canto, 
and say that it raises my opinion of him very 
much indeed.* 'Tis broad, noble, poetical, 
with a masterly scanning of human actions, 
absolutely above common readers. What a 
manly (implied) interpretation of (bad) party- 
actions, as trampling the Bible, &c.,' and so 
he goes on. 

" I do not know which I like best, — the 
prologue (the latter part especially) to P. 
Bell, or the epilogue to Benjamin. Yes, I 
tell stories ; I do know I like the last best ; 

* "N.B. — M., from his peregrinations, is twelve or 
fourteen years behind in his knowledge of who has or 
has not written good verse of late." 



103 



LETTER TO MANNING. 



and the ' Waggoner' altogether is a pleasanter 
remembrance to me than the ' Itinerant.' If 
it were not, the page before the first page 
would and ought to make it so. 

" If, as you say, the ■ Waggoner,' in some 
sort, came at my call, oh for a potent voice to 
call forth the ' Eecluse ' from his profound 
dormitory, where he sleeps forgetful of his 
foolish charge — the world. 

" Had I three inks, I would invoke him ! 
Talfourd has written a most kind review of 
J. Woodvil, &c, in the ' Champion.' He is 
your most zealous admirer, in solitude and 
in crowds. H. Crabb Robinson gives me 
any dear prints that I happen to admire, and 
I love him for it and for other things. 
Alsager shall have his copy, but at present I 
have lent it for a day only, not choosing to 
part with my own. Mary's love. How do 
you all do, amanuenses both — marital and 
sororal ? C. Lamb." 

The next letter which remains is addressed 
to Manning (returned to England, and domi- 
ciled in Hertfordshire), in the spring of 1819. 

TO MR. MANNING. 

" My dear M., — I want to know how your 
brother is, if you have heard lately. I want 
to know about you. I wish you were nearer. 
How are my cousins, the Gladmans of 
Wheathamstead, and farmer Bruton ? Mrs. 
Bruton is a glorious woman. 

' Hail, Mackery End ' — 
This is a fragment of a blank verse poem 
which I once meditated, but got no further.* 
The E. I. H. has been thrown into a quan- 
dary by the strange phenomenon of poor 

, whom I have known man and 

mad-man twenty-seven years, he being elder 
here than myself by nine years and more. 
He was always a pleasant, gossiping, half- 
headed, muzzy, dozing, dreaming, walk-about, 
inoffensive chap ; a little too fond of the 

creature ; who isn't at times ? but had 

not brains to work off an over-night's surfeit 
by ten o'clock next morning, and unfortu- 
nately, in he wandered the other morning 
drunk with last night, and with a super- 
fcetation of drink taken in since he set out 

» See "Mackery End, in Hertfordshire,"— Essays of 
Elia, p. 100, — for a charming account of a visit to their 
cousin in the country with Mr. Barron Field. 



from bed. He came staggering under his 
double burthen, like trees in Java, bearing at 
once blossom, fruit, and falling fruit, as I 
have heard you or some other traveller tell, 
with his face literally as blue as the bluest 
firmament ; some wretched calico that he 
had mopped his poor oozy front with had 
rendered up its native dye, and the devil a 
bit would he consent to wash it, but swore it 
was characteristic, for he was going to the 
sale of indigo, and set up a laugh which I did 
not think the lungs of mortal man were 
competent to. It was like a thousand people 
laughing, or the Goblin Page. He imagined 
afterwards that the whole office had been 
laughing at him, so strange did his own 
sounds strike upon his wemsensorium. But 

has laughed his last laugh, and awoke 

the next day to find himself reduced from 
an abused income of 6001. per annum to one- 
sixth of the sum, after thirty-six years' 
tolerably good service. The quality of mercy 
was not strained in his behalf; the gentle 
dews dropt not on him from heaven. It just 
came across me that I was writing to Canton. 
Will you drop in to-morrow night ? Fanny 
Kelly is coming, if she does not cheat us. 
Mrs. Gold is well, but proves ' uncoined,' as 
the lovers about Wheathamstead would say. 

" I have not had such a quiet half hour to 
sit down to a quiet letter for many years. I 
have not been interrupted above four times. 
I wrote a letter the other day, in alternate 
lines, black ink and red, and you cannot 
think how it chilled the flow of ideas. Next 
Monday is Whit-Monday. What a reflection ! 
Twelve years ago, and I should have kept 
that and the following holiday in the fields 
a Maying. All of those pretty pastoral 
delights are over. This dead, everlasting 
dead desk, — how it weighs the spirit of a 
gentleman down ! This dead wood of the 
desk, instead of your living trees ! But then 
again, I hate the Joskins, a name for Hert- 
fordshire bumpkins. Each state of life has 
its inconvenience ; but then again, mine has 
more than one. Not that I repine, or 
grudge, or murmur at my destiny. I have 
meat and drink, and decent apparel ; I shall, 
at least, when I get a new hat. 

"A red-haired man just interrupted me. 
He has broke the current of my thoughts. 
I haven't a word to add. I don't know why 
I send this letter, but I have had a hankering 



LETTER TO MISS WORDSWORTH. 



109 



to hear about you some days. Perhaps it 
will go off before your reply comes. If it 
don't, I assure you no letter was ever wel- 
comer from you, from Paris or Macao. 

" C. Lamb." 

The following letter, dated 25th November, 
1819, is addressed to Miss Wordsworth, on 
Wordsworth's youngest son visiting Lamb 
in London. 

TO MISS WORDSWORTH. 

" Dear Miss Wordsworth, — You will think 
me negligent : but I wanted to see more of 
Willy before I ventured to express a pre- 
diction. Till yesterday I had barely seen 
him — Virgilium tantum vidi, — but yesterday 
he gave us his small company to a bullock's 
heart, and I can pronounce him a lad of 
promise. He is no pedant, nor bookworm ; 
! so far I can answer. Perhaps he has hitherto 
i paid too little attention to other men's inven- 
tions, preferring, like Lord Poppington, the 
'natural sprouts of his own.' But he has 
observation, and seems thoroughly awake. 
I am ill at remembering other people's bon 
mots, but the following are a few : — Being 
taken over Waterloo Bridge, he remarked, 
that if we had no mountains, we had a fine 
river at least ; which was a touch of the 
comparative : but then he added, in a strain 
which augured less for his future abilities as 
a political economist, that he supposed they 
must take at least a pound a week toll. 
Like a curious naturalist, he inquired if the 
tide did not come up a little salty. This 
being satisfactorily answered, he put another 
question, as to the flux and reflux ; which 
being rather cunningly evaded than artfully 
solved by that she-Aristotle, Mary, — who 
muttered something about its getting up an 
hour sooner and sooner every day, — he 
sagely replied, ' Then it must come to the 
same thing at last ; ' which was a speech 
worthy of an infant Halley ! The lion in 
the 'Change by no means came up to his 
ideal standard ; so impossible is it for 
Nature, in any of her works, to come up to 
the standard of a child's imagination ! The 
whelps (lionets) he was sorry to find were 
dead; and, on particular inquiry, his old 
friend the ourang outang had gone the way 
of all flesh also. The grand tiger was also 
sick, and expected in no short time to 



exchange this transitory world for another, 
or none. But again, there was a golden 
eagle (I do not mean that of Charing) which 
did much arride and console him. William's 
genius, I take it, leans a little to the figura- 
tive ; for, being at play at tricktrack (a kind 
of minor billiard-table which we keep for 
smaller wights, and sometimes refresh our 
own mature fatigues with taking a hand at), 
not being able to hit a ball he had iterate 
aimed at, he cried out, ' I cannot hit that 
beast.' Now the balls are usually called 
men, but he felicitously hit upon a middle 
term ; a term of approximation and imagina- 
tive reconciliation ; a something where the 
two ends of the brute matter (ivory), and 
their human and rather violent personifica- 
tion into men, might meet, as I take it : 
illustrative of that excellent remark, in a 
certain preface about imagination, explaining 
' Like a sea-beast that had crawled forth to 
sun himself ! ' Not that I accuse William 
Minor of hereditary plagiary, or conceive the 
image to have come ex traduce. Bather he 
seemeth to keep aloof from any source of 
imitation, and purposely to remain ignorant 
of what mighty poets have done in this kind 
before him ; for, being asked if his father 
had ever been on Westminster Bridge, he 
answered that he did not know ! 

" It is hard to discern the oak in the acorn, 
or a temple like St. Paul's in the first stone 
which is laid ; nor can I quite prefigure what 
destination the genius of William Minor hath 
to take. Some few hints I have set down, 
to guide my future observations. He hath 
the power of calculation, in no ordinary 
degree for a chit. He combineth figures, 
after the first boggle, rapidly; as in the 
tricktrack board, where the hits are figured, 
at first he did not perceive that 15 and 7 
made 22, but by a little use he could com- 
bine 8 with 25, and 33 again with 16, which 
approacheth something in kind (far let me 
be from flattering him by saying in degree) 
to that of the famous American boy. I am 
sometimes inclined to think I perceive the 
future satirist in him, for he hath a sub- 
sardonic smile which bursteth out upon occa- 
sion ; as when he was asked if London were 
as big as Ambleside ; and indeed no other 
answer was given, or proper to be given, to 
so ensnaring and provoking a question. In 
the contour of skull, certainly I discern 



110 



BARRY CORNWALL.—" LONDON MAGAZINE. 



something paternal. But whether in all 
respects the future man shall transcend his 
father's fame, Time, the trier of Geniuses, 
must decide. Be it pronounced peremptorily 
at present, that Willy is a well-mannered 
child, and though no great student, hath yet 
a lively eye for things that lie before him. 

" Given in haste from my desk at Leaden- 
hall. 

" Yours, and yours most sincerely, 

"C.Lamb." 



CHAPTEE XII. 



[1820 to 1823.] 

LETTERS TO "WORDSWORTH, COLERIDGE, FIELD, WILSON, 
AND BARTON. 

The widening circle of Lamb's literary 
friends now embraced additional authors and 
actors, — famous, or just bursting into fame. 
He welcomed in the author of the " Dramatic 
Scenes," who chose to appear in print as 
Barry Cornwall, a spirit most congenial with 
his own in its serious moods, — one whose 
genius he had assisted to impel towards its 
kindred models, the great dramatists of 
Elizabeth's time, and in whose success he 
received the first and best reward of the 
efforts he had made to inspire a taste for 
these old masters of humanity. Mr.Macready, 
who had just emancipated himself from the 
drudgery of representing the villains of tra- 
gedy, by his splendid performance of Richard, 
was introduced to him by his old friend 
Charles Lloyd, who had visited London for 
change of scene, under great depression of 
spirits. Lloyd owed a debt of gratitude to 
Macready which exemplified the true uses of 
the acted drama with a force which it would 
take many sermons of its stoutest opponents 
to reason away. A deep gloom had gradually 
overcast his mind, and threatened wholly to 
encircle it, when he was induced to look in 
at Covent-Garden Theatre and witness the 
performance of Rob Roy. The picture which 
he then beheld of the generous outlaw, — the 
frank, gallant, noble bearing, — the air and 
movements, as of one " free of mountain 
solitudes," — the touches of manly pathos and 
irresistible cordiality, delighted and melted 
him, won him from his painful introspections, 
and brought to him the unwonted relief of 



tears. He went home " a gayer and a wiser 
man ; " returned again to the theatre, when- 
ever the healing enjoyments could be renewed 
there ; and sought the acquaintance of the 
actor who had broken the melancholy spell 
in which he was enthralled, and had restored 
the pulses of his nature to their healthful 
beatings. The year 1820 gave Lamb an 
interest in Macready beyond that which he 
had derived from the introduction of Lloyd, 
arising from the power with which he ani- 
mated the first production of one of his oldest 
friends — " Yirginius." Knowles had been a 
friend and disciple of Hazlitt from a boy ; 
and Lamb had liked and esteemed him as a 
hearty companion ; but he had not guessed 
at the extraordinary dramatic power which 
lay ready for kindling in his brain, and still 
less at the delicacy of tact with which he had 
unveiled the sources of the most profound 
affections. Lamb had almost lost his taste 
for acted tragedy, as the sad realities of life 
had pressed more nearly on him ; yet he 
made an exception in favour of the first and 
happiest part of " Virginius," those paternal 
scenes, which stand alone in the modern 
drama, and which Macready informed with 
the fulness of a father's affection. 

The establishment of the " London Maga- 
zine," under the auspices of Mr. John Scott, 
occasioned Lamb's introduction to the public 
by the name, under colour of which he 
acquired his most brilliant reputation — 
" Elia." The adoption of this signature was 
purely accidental. His first contribution to 
the magazine was a description of the Old 
South-Sea House, where Lamb had passed a 
few months' noviciate as a clerk, thirty years 
before, and of its inmates who had long 
passed away ; and remembering the name of 
a gay, light-hearted foreigner, who fluttered 
there at that time, he subscribed his name to 
the essay. It was afterwards affixed to sub- 
sequent contributions ; and Lamb used it 
until, in his " Last Essays of Elia," he bade 
it a sad farewell. 

The perpetual influx of visitors whom he 
could not repel ; whom indeed he was always 
glad to welcome, but whose visits unstrung 
him, induced him to take lodgings at Dalston, 
to which he occasionally retired when he 
wished for repose. The deaths of some who 
were dear to him cast a melancholy tinge on 
his mind, as may be seen in the following : — 



LETTER TO WORDSWORTH. 



Ill 



TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 

"March 20th, 1822. 

"My dear Wordsworth, — A letter from 
you is very grateful ; I have not seen a 
Kendal postmark so long ! We are pretty 
well, save colds and rheumatics, and a certain 
deadness to everything, which I think I may 
date from- poor John's loss, and another 
accident or two at the same time, that has 
made me almost bury myself at Dalston, 
where yet I see more faces than I could wish. 
Deaths overset one, and put one out long 
after the recent grief. Two or three have 
died within this last two twelvemonths, and 
so many parts of me have been numbed. 
One sees a picture, reads an anecdote, starts 
a casual fancy, and thinks to tell of it to this 
person in preference to every other : the 
person is gone whom it would have peculiarly 
suited. It won't do for another. Every 
departure destroys a class of sympathies. 
There's Capt. Burney gone ! What fun has 
whist now ? what matters it what you lead, 
if you can no longer fancy him looking over 
you? One never hears anything, but the 
image of the particular person occurs with 
whom alone almost you would care to share 
the intelligence — thus one distributes oneself 
about — and now for so many parts of me I 
have lost the market. Common natures do 
not suffice me. Good people, as they are 
called, won't serve. I want individuals. I 
am made up of queer points, and I want so 
many answering needles. Th*e going away 
of friends does not make the remainder more 
precious. It takes so much from them as 
there was a common link. A. B. and C. 
make a party. A. dies. B. not only loses 
A. ; but all A.'s part in C. C. loses A.'s part 
in B., and so the alphabet sickens by subtrac- 
tion of interchangeables/' I express myself 
muddily, capite dolente. I have a dulling cold. 
My theory is to enjoy life, but my practice 
is against it. I grow ominously tired of 
official confinement. Thirty years have I 
served the Philistines, and my neck is not 
subdued to the yoke. You don't know how 
wearisome it is to breathe the air of four 
pent walls, without relief, day after day, all 
the golden hours of the day between ten and 
four, without ease or interposition. Tcedet me 
harum qvMidianarum formarum, these pesti- 
lential clerk-faces always in one's dish. Oh 



for a few years between the grave and the 
desk : they are the same, save that at the 
latter you are the outside machine. The 

foul enchanter , ' letters four do form his 

name ' — Busirare is his name in hell — that 
has curtailed you of some domestic comforts, 
hath laid a heavier hand on me, not in 
present infliction, but in the taking away the 
hope of enfranchisement. I dare not whisper 
to myself a pension on this side of absolute 
incapacitation and infirmity, till years have 
sucked me dry ; — Otium cum indignitate. I 
had thought in a green old age (Oh green 
thought !) to have retired to Ponder's End, 
emblematic name, how beautiful ! in the 
Ware Eoad, there to have made up my 
accounts with Heaven and the company, 
toddling about between it and Cheshunt, 
anon stretching, on some fine Isaac Walton 
morning, to Hoddesdon or Amwell, careless 
as a beggar ; but walking, walking ever till 
I fairly walked myself off my legs, dying 
walking ! The hope is gone. I sit like 
Philomel all day (but not singing), with my 
breast against this thorn of a desk, with the 
only hope that some pulmonary affliction 
may relieve me. Vide Lord Palmerston's 
report of the clerks in the War -office, 
(Debates this morning's ' Times,') by which 
it appears, in twenty years as many clerks 
have been coughed and catarrhed out of it 
into their freer graves. Thank you for 
asking about the pictures. Milton hangs 
over my fire- side in Covent Garden, (when 
I am there,) the rest have been sold for an 
old song, wanting the eloquent tongue that 
should have set them off ! You have gratified 
me with liking my meeting with Dodd.* For 
the Malvolio story — the thing is become in 
verity a sad task, and I eke it out with any- 
thing. If I could slip out of it I should be 
happy, but our chief-reputed assistants have 
forsaken us. The Opium-Eater crossed us 
once with a dazzling path, and hath as 
suddenly left us darkling ; and, in short, I 
shall go on from dull to worse, because I 
cannot resist the booksellers' importunity — 
the old plea you know of authors, but I 
believe on my part sincere. Hartley I do 
not so often see ; but I never see him in 
unwelcome hour. I thoroughly love and 

* See the account of the meeting between Dodd and 
Jem White, in Elia's Essay, " On some of the Old 
Actors." 



112 



LETTER TO COLERIDGE. 



honour him. I send yon a frozen epistle, 
but it is winter and dead time of the year 
with me. May Heaven keep something like 
spring and summer up with you, strengthen 
your eyes, and make mine a little lighter 
to encounter with them, as I hope they shall 
yet and again, before all are closed. 

" Yours, with every kind remembrance. 

"C.L." 

" I had almost forgot to say, I think you 
thoroughly right about presentation copies. 
I should like to see you print a book I should 
grudge to purchase for its size. Hang me, 
but I would have it though ! " 

The following letter, containing the germ 
of the well-known "Dissertation on Eoast 
Pig," was addressed to Coleridge, who had 
received a pig as a present, and attributed it 
erroneously to Lamb. 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

" Dear C, — It gives me great satisfaction 
to hear that the pig turned out so well — they 
are interesting creatures at a certain age — 
what a pity such buds should blow out into 
the maturity of rank bacon ! You had all 
some of the crackling — and brain sauce — did 
you remember to rub it with butter, and 
gently dredge it a little, just before the crisis? 
Did the eyes come away kindly with no 
(Edipean avulsion ? "Was the crackling the 
colour of the ripe pomegranate ? Had you 
no cursed complement of boiled neck of mut- 
ton before it, to blunt the edge of delicate 
desire ? Did you flesh maiden teeth in it ? 
Not that I sent the pig, or can form the 

remotest guess what part could play 

in the business. I never knew him give 
anything away in my life. He would not 
begin with strangers. I suspect the pig, 
after all, was meant for me ; but at the 
unlucky juncture of time being absent, the 
present somehow went round to Highgate. 
To confess an honest truth, a pig is one of 
those things I could never think of sending 
away. Teals, wigeons, snipes, barn-door 
fowl, ducks, geese — your tame villatic things 
— Welsh mutton, collars of brawn, sturgeon, 
fresh or pickled, your potted char, Swiss 
cheeses, French pies, early grapes, musca- 
dines, I impart as freely unto my friends as 
to myself. They are but self-extended ; but 



pardon me if I stop somewhere — where the 
fine feeling of benevolence giveth a higher 
smack than the sensual rarity, there my 
friends (or any good man) may command 
me ; but pigs are pigs, and I myself therein 
am nearest to myself. Nay, I should think 
it an affront, an undervaluing done to Nature 
who bestowed such a boon upon me, if in a 
churlish mood I parted with the precious 
gift. One of the bitterest pangs I ever felt 
of remorse was when a child — my kind old 
aunt had strained her pocket-strings to 
bestow a sixpenny whole plum-cake upon 
me. In my way home through the Borough, 
I met a venerable old man, not a mendicant, 
— but thereabouts ; a look-beggar, not a 
verbal petitionist ; and in the coxcombiy of 
taught-charity, I gave away the cake to him. 
I walked on a little in all the pride of an 
Evangelical peacock, when of a sudden my 
old aunt's kindness crossed me ; the sum it 
was to her ; the pleasure she had a right to 
expect that I — not the old impostor — shoidd 
take in eating her cake ; the cursed ingrati- 
tude by which, under the colour of a Chris- 
tian virtue, I had frustrated her cherished 
purpose. I sobbed, wept, and took it to heart 
so grievously, that I think I never suffered 
the like — and I was right. It was a piece of 
unfeeling hypocrisy, and proved a lesson to 
me ever after. The cake has long been 
masticated, consigned to dunghill with the 
ashes of that unseasonable pauper. 

" But when Providence, who is better to 
us all than our aunts, gives me a pig, 
remembering my temptation and my fall, I 
shall endeavour to act towards it more in 
the spirit of the donor's purpose. 

" Yours (short of pig) to command in 
everything. C. L." 

In the summer of 1822 Lamb and his sister 
visited Paris. The following is a hasty letter 
addressed to Field on his return. 

TO MR. BARRON FIELD. 

" My dear F., — I scribble hastily at office. 
Frank wants my letter presently. 1 and 
sister are just returned from Paris ! ! We 
have eaten frogs. It has been such a treat I 
You know our monotonous tenor. Frogs 
are the nicest' little delicate things — rabbity- 
flavoured. Imagine a Lilliputian rabbit ! 
They fricassee them ; but in my mind, drest, 



LETTERS TO BARTON. 



113 



seethed, plain, with parsley and butter, would 
have been the decision of Apicius. Paris is 
a glorious picturesque old city. London 
looks mean and new to it, as the town of 
Washington would, seen after it. But they 
have no St. Paul's, or Westminster Abbey. 
The Seine, so much despised by Cockneys, is 
exactly the size to run through a magnificent 
street ; palaces a mile long on one side, lofty 
Edinbro' stone (O the glorious antiques !) 
houses on the other. The Thames disunites 
London and Southwark. I had Talma to 
supper with me. He has picked up, as I 
believe, an authentic portrait of Shakspeare. 
He paid a broker about 401. English for it. 
It is painted on the one half of a pair of 
bellows — a lovely picture, corresponding 
with the folio head. The bellows has old 
carved wings round it, and round the visnomy 
is inscribed, as near as I remember, not 
divided into rhyme — I found out the rhyme — 

Whom have we here 

Stuck on this bellows, 

But the Prince of good fellows, 

Willy Shakspeare ? 

At top — 

base and coward luck ! 
To be here stuck. — Poins. 

At bottom — 

Nay ! rather a glorious lot is to him assign'd, 
Who, like the Almighty, rides upon the wind. 

Pistol. 

" This is all in old carved wooden letters. 
The countenance smiling, sweet, and intel- 
lectual beyond measure, even as he was 
immeasurable. It may be a forgery. They 
laugh at me and tell me, Ireland is in Paris, 
and has been putting off a portrait of the 
Black Prince. How far old wood may be 
imitated I cannot say. Ireland was not 
found out by his parchments, but by his 
poetry. I am confident no painter on either 
side the Channel could have painted any 
thing near like the face I saw. Again, would 
such a painter .and forger have taken 401. for 
a thing, if authentic, worth 4000Z. ? Talma 
is not in the secret, for he had not even 
found out the rhymes in the first inscription. 
He is coming over with it, and, my life to 
Southey's Thalaba, it will gain universal 
faith. 

" The letter is wanted, and I am wanted. 
Imagine the blank filled up with all kind 
things. 



" Our joint hearty remembrances to both 
of you. Yours, as ever, C. Lamb." 

Soon after Lamb's return from Paris he 
became acquainted with the poet of the 
Quakers, Bernard Barton, who, like himself, 
was engaged in the drudgery of figures. The 
pure and gentle tone of the poems of his new 
acquaintance was welcome to Lamb, who 
had more sympathy with the truth of nature 
in modest guise than in the affected fury of 
Lord Byron, or the dreamy extravagancies 
of Shelley. Lamb had written in " Elia " of 
the Society of Friends with the freedom of 
one, who, with great respect for the principles 
of the founders of their faith, had little in 
common with a sect who shunned the 
pleasures while they mingled' in the business 
of the world ; and a friendly expostulation 
on the part of Mr. Barton led to such cordial 
excuses as completely won the heart of the 
Quaker bard. Some expression which Lamb 
let fall at their meeting in London, from 
which Mr. Barton had supposed that Lamb 
objected to a Quaker's writing poetry as 
inconsistent with his creed, induced Mr. 
Barton to write to Lamb on his return to 
Woodbridge, who replied as follows : — 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

"India House, 11th Sept. 1822. 

" Dear Sir, — You have misapprehended me 
sadly, if you suppose that I meant to impute 
any inconsistency in your writing poetry with 
your religious profession. I do not remember 
what I said, but it was spoken sportively, I 
am sure — one of my levities, which you are 
not so used to as my older friends. I 
probably was thinking of the light in which 
your so indulging yourself would appear to 
Quakers, and put their objection in my own 
foolish mouth. I would eat my words 
(provided they should be written on not very 
coarse paper) rather than I would throw 
cold water upon your, and my once, harmless 
occupation. 

" I have read Napoleon and the rest with 
delight. I like them for what they are, and 
for what they are not. I have sickened on 
the modern rhodomontade and Byronism, 
and your plain Quakerish beauty has capti- 
vated me. It is all wholesome cates, ay, and 
toothsome too, and withal Quakerish. If I 
were George Fox, and George Fox licenser 



114 



LETTERS TO BARTON. 



of the press, tliey should have my absolute 
imprimatur. I hope I have removed the 
impression. 

" I am, like you, a prisoner to the desk. I 
have been chained to that galley thirty years, 
a long shot. I have almost grown to the 
wood. If no imaginative poet, I am sure I 
am a figurative one. Do 'Friends' allow 
puns 1 verbal equivocations ? — they are un- 
justly accused of it, and I did my little best 
in the ' Imperfect Sympathies ' to vindicate 
them. I am very tired of clerking it, but 
have no remedy. Did you see a Sonnet to 
this purpose in the Examiner 1 — 

' Who first invented work, and bound the free 
And holy-day rejoicing spirit down 
To the ever-haunting importunity 
Of business, in the green fields and the town, 
To plough, loom, anvil, spade ; and oh, most sad, 
To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood ? 
"Who but the being unblest, alien from good, 
Sabbathless Satan ! he who his unglad 
Task ever plies, 'mid rotatory burnings, 
That round and round incalculably reel ; 
For wrath Divine hath made him like a wheel 
In that red realm from which are no returnings ; 
"Where, toiling and turmoiling, ever and aye, 
He and his thoughts keep pensive working-day.' 

" I fancy the sentiment exprest above will 
be nearly your own. The expression of it 
probably would not so well suit with a 
follower of John "Woolman. But I do not 
know whether diabolism is a part of your 
creed, or where, indeed, to find an exposition 
of your creed at all. In feelings and matters 
not dogmatical, I hope I am half a Quaker. 
Believe me, with great respect, yours, 

" C. Lamb." 

" I shall always be happy to see or hear 
from you." 

Encouraged by Lamb's kindness, Mr. 
Barton continued the correspondence, which 
became the most frequent in which Lamb 
had engaged for many years. The following 
letter is in acknowledgment of a publication 
of Mr. Barton's chiefly directed to oppose the 
theories and tastes of Lord Byron and his 
friends : — 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

" East-India House, 9th Oct. 1822. 

" Dear Sir, — I am ashamed not sooner to 
have acknowledged your letter and poem. I 
think the latter very temperate, very serious, 
and very seasonable. I do not think it will 
convert the club at Pisa, neither do I think 



it will satisfy the bigots on our side the 
water. Something like a parody on the song 
of Ariel would please them better : — 

' Full fathom five the Atheist lies, 
Of his bones are hell-dice made.' 

" I want time, or fancy, to fill up the rest. 
I sincerely sympathise with you on your 
doleful confinement. Of time, health, and 
riches, the first in order is not last in excel- 
lence. Riches are chiefly good, because they 
give us Time. What a weight of wearisome 
prison hours have I to look back and forward 
to, as quite cut out of life ! and the sting of 
the thing is, that for six hours every day I 
have no business which I could not contract 
into two, if they would let me work task- 
work. I shall be glad to hear that your 
grievance is mitigated. 

" I am returning a poor letter. I was 
formerly a great scribbler in that way, but 
my hand is out of order. If I said my head 
too, I should not be very much out, but I 
will tell no tales of myself ; I will therefore 
end (after my best thanks, with a hope to see 
you again some time in London), begging you 
to accept this letteret for a letter — a leveret 
makes a better present than a grown hare, 
and short troubles (as the old excuse goes) 
are best. 

" I remain, dear sir, yours truly, 

" C. Lamb." 

The next letter will speak for itself. 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

"Dec. 23rd, 1822. 

" Dear Sir, — I have been so distracted with 
business and one thing or other, I have not 
had a quiet quarter of an hour for epistolary 
purposes. Christmas, too, is come, which 
always puts a rattle into my morning skull. 
It is a visiting, unquiet, unquakerish season. 
I get more and more in love with solitude, 
and proportionately hampered with company. 
I hope you have some holidays at this period. 
I have one day — Christmas-day ; alas ! too 
few to commemorate the season. All work 
and no play dulls me. Company is not play, 
but many times hard work. To play, is for 
a man to do what he pleases, or to do nothing 
— to go about soothing his particular fancies. 
I have lived to a time of life to have outlived 
the good hours, the nine o'clock suppers, with 
a bright hour or two to clear up in after- 



LETTER TO WILSON. 



115 



wards. Now you cannot get tea before that 
hour, and then sit gaping, music-bothered 
perhaps, till half-past twelve brings up the 
tray ; and what you steal of convivial enjoy- 
ment after, is heavily paid for in the disquiet 
of to-morrow's head. 

"I am pleased with your liking 'John 
Woodvil,' and amused with your knowledge 
of our drama being confined to Shakspeare 
and Miss Baillie. What a world of fine ter- 
ritory between Land's End and Johnny 
Groat's have you missed traversing ! I could 
almost envy you to have so much to read. I 
feel as if I had read all the books I want to 
read. Oh to forget Fielding, Steele, &c, and 
read 'em new ! 

" Can you tell me a likely place where I 
could pick up, cheap, Fox's Journal ? There 
are no Quaker circulating libraries 1 Elwood, 
too, I must have. I rather grudge that 

S y has taken up the history of your 

people : I am afraid he will put in some 
levity. I am afraid I am not quite exempt 
from that fault in certain magazine articles, 
where I have introduced mention of them. 
Were they to do again, I would reform them. 
Why should not you write a poetical account 
of your old worthies, deducing them from 
Fox to Woolman ? but I remember you did 
talk of something of that kind, as a counter- 
part to the ' Ecclesiastical Sketches.' But 
would not a poem be more consecutive than 
a string of sonnets ? You have no martyrs 
quite to the fire, I think, among you ; but 
plenty of heroic confessors, spirit -martyrs, 
lamb-lions. Think of it ; it would be better 
than a series of sonnets on 'Eminent Bankers.' 
I like a hit at our way of life, though it does 
well for me, better than anything short of all 
one's time to one's self ; for which alone I 
rankle with envy at the rich.., Books are 
good, and pictures are good, and money to 
I buy them therefore good, but to buy time ! 
in other words, life ! 

"The 'compliments of the time' to you, 
should end my letter ; to a Friend, I suppose, 
I must say the ' sincerity of the season ; ' I 
hope they both mean the same. With 
excuses for this hastily-penned note, believe 
me, with great respect, C. Lamb." 

In this winter Mr. Walter Wilson, one of 
the friends of Lamb's youth, applied to him 
for information respecting De Foe, whose 



life he was about to write. The renewal of 
the acquaintance was very pleasant to Lamb ; 
who many years before used to take daily 
walks with Wilson, and to call him "brother." 
The following is Lamb's reply : — 

TO MR. WALTER WILSON. 

" E. I. H., 16th December, 1822. 

" Dear Wilson, — Lightning, I was going to 
call you. You must have thought me negli- 
gent in not answering your letter sooner. 
But I have a habit of never writing letters 
but at the office ; 'tis so much time cribbed 
out of the Company ; and I am but just got 
out of the thick of a tea-sale, in which most 
of the entry of notes, deposits, &c, usually 
falls to my share. 

r" I have nothing of De Foe's but two or 
three novels, and the 'Plague History.' I 
can give you no information about him. As 
a slight general character of what I remem- 
ber of them (for I have not looked into them 
latterly), I would say that in the appearance 
of truth, in all the incidents and conversations 
that occur in them, they exceed any works 
of fiction I am acquainted with. It is perfect 
illusion. The author never appears in these 
self-narratives (for so they ought to be 
called, or rather auto-biographies), but the 
narrator chains us down to an implicit belief 
in everything he says. There is all the 
minute detail of a log-book in it. Dates are 
painfully pressed upon the memory. Facts 
are repeated over and over in varying 
phrases, till you cannot choose but believe 
them. It is like reading evidence given in a 
court of justice. So anxious the story-teller 
seems that the truth should be clearly com- 
prehended, that when he has told us a 
matter-of-fact, or a motive, in a line or two 
farther down he repeats it, with his favourite 
figure of speech, ' I say,' so and so, though he 
had made it abundantly plain before. This 
is in imitation of the common people's way of 
speaking, or rather of the way in which they 
are addressed by a master or mistress, who 
wishes to impress something upon their 
memories, and has a wonderful effect upon 
matter-of-fact readers. Indeed, it is to such 
principally that he writes. His style is 
everywhere beautiful, but plain and homely. 
Bobinson Crusoe is delightful to all ranks 
and classes, but it is easy to see that it is 
written in phraseology peculiarly adapted to 



i 2 



116 



LETTERS TO BARTON. 



the lower conditions of readers ; hence it is 
an especial favourite with seafaring men, 
poor boys, servant-maids, &c. His novels 
are capital kitchen-reading, while they are 
worthy, from their deep interest, to find a 
shelf in the libraries of the wealthiest, and 
the most learned. His passion for matter-of- 
fact narrative sometimes betrayed him into 
a long relatioD of common incidents, which 
might happen to any man, and have no 
interest but the intense appearance of truth 
in them, to recommend them. The whole 
latter half or two-thirds of ' Colonel Jack ' 
is of this description. The beginning of 
' Colonel Jack ' is the most affecting natural 
picture of a young thief that was ever drawn. 
His losing the stolen money in the hollow of 
a tree, and finding it again when he was in 
despair, and then being in equal distress at 
not knowing how to dispose of it, and several 
similar touches in the early history of the 
Colonel, evince a deep knowledge of human 
nature ; and putting out of question the 
superior romantic interest of the latter, 
in my mind very much exceed Crusoe. 
1 Roxana ' (first edition) is the next in inter- 
est, though he left out the best part of it in 
subsequent editions from a foolish hyper- 
criticism of his friend Southerne. But ' Moll 
Flanders,' the ' Account of the Plague,' &c, 
are all of one family, and have the same 
stamp of character. Believe me, with friendly 
recollections, Brother (as I used to call 
you), 



" Yours, 



C. Lamb.' 



How bitterly Lamb felt his East-India 
bondage, has abundantly appeared from his 
letters during many years. Yet there never. 
was wanting a secret consciousness of the 
benefits which it ensured for him, the pre- 
cious independence which he won by his 
hours of toil, and the freedom of his mind, to 
work only "at its own sweet will," which 
his confinement to the desk obtained. This 
sense of the blessings which a fixed income, 
derived from ascertained duties, confers, was 
nobly expressed in reference to a casual 
fancy in one of the letters of his fellow in 
clerkly as well as in poetical labours, Bernard 
Barton — a fancy as alien to the habitual 
thoughts of his friend, as to his own — for no 
one has pursued a steadier course on the 



weary way of duty than the poet whose brief 
dream of literary engrossment incited Lamb 
to make a generous amends to his ledger for 
all his unjust reproaches. The references to 
the booksellers have the colouring of fantas- 
tical exaggeration, by which he delighted to 
give effect to the immediate feeling ; but 
making allowance for this mere play of 
fancy, how just is the following advice — how 
wholesome for every youth who hesitates 
whether he shall abandon the certain reward 
of plodding industry for the splendid miseries 
of authorship ! * 

* It is singular that, some years before, Mr. Barton 
had received similar advice from a very different poet — 
Lord Byron. As the letter has never been published, 
and it may be interesting to compare the expressions of 
two men so different on the same subject, I subjoin it 
here : — 

"TO BERNARD BARTON, ESQ. 

"St. James' Street, June 1, 1812. 
" Sir, — The most satisfactory answer to the concluding 
part of your letter is, that Mr. Murray will republish 
your volume, if you still retain your inclination for the 
experiment, which I trust will be successful. Some 
weeks ago my friend Mr. Rogers showed me some of the 
stanzas in MS., and I then expressed my opinion of their 
merit, which a further perusal of the printed volume 
has given me no reason to revoke. I mention this, as 
it may not be disagreeable to you to learn, that I enter- 
tained a very favourable opinion of your powers before 
I was aware that such sentiments were reciprocal. 
Waving your obliging expressions as to my own produc- 
tions, for which I thank you very sincerely, and assure 
you that I think not lightly of the praise of one whose 
approbation is valuable ; will you allow me to talk to 
you candidly, not critically, on the subject of yours ? 
You will not suspect me of a wish to discourage, since I 
pointed out to the publisher the propriety of complying 
with your wishes. I think more highly of your poetical 
talents than it would perhaps gratify you to hear ex- 
pressed, for I believe, from what I observe of your 
mind, that you are above flattery. To come to the 
point, you deserve success ; but we knew before Addison 
wrote his Cato, that desert does not always command it. 
But suppose it attained, 

* You know what ills the author's life assail, 
Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.' 

Do not renounce writing, but never trust entirely to 
authorship. If you have a profession, retain it ; it will 
be like Prior's fellowship, a last and sure resource. 
Compare Mr. Rogers with other authors of the day ; 
assuredly he is among the first of living poets, but is it 
to that he owes his station in society, and his intimacy 
in the best circles ? — no, it is to his prudence and respect- 
ability. The world (a bad one, I own) courts him be- 
cause he has no oecasion to court it. He is a poet, nor 
is he less so because he is something more. I am not 
sorry to hear that you were not tempted by the vicinity 
of Capel Lofft, Esq., — though, if he had done for you 
what he has for the Bloomfields, I should never have 
laughed at his rage for patronising. But a truly well- 
constituted mind will ever be independent. That you 
may be so is my sincere wish ; and if others think as 
well of your poetry as I do, you will have no cause to 
complain of your readers.. Believe me, 

" Your obliged and obedient servant, 

" Byron." 



LETTERS TO BARTON. 



Ill 



TO BERNARD BARTON. 

"January 9th, 1823. 

"'Throw yourself on the world without 
any rational plan of support, beyond what the 
chance employ of booksellers would afford 
you ! ! ! ' 

" Throw yourself rather, my dear sir, from 
the steep Tarpeian rock, slap-dash headlong 
upon iron spikes. If you had but five con- 
solatory minutes between the desk and the 
bed, make much of them, and live a century 
in them, rather than turn slave to the book- 
sellers. They are Turks and Tartars, when 
they have poor authors at their beck. 
Hitherto you have been at arm's length from 
them. Come not within their grasp. I have 
known many authors want for bread, some 
repining, others envying the blessed security 
of a counting-house, all agreeing they had 
rather have been tailors, weavers — what not 1 
rather than the things they were. I have 
known some starved, some to go mad, one 
dear friend literally dying in a workhouse. 
You know not what a rapacious, dishonest 
set these booksellers are. Ask even Southey, 
who (a single case almost) has made a fortune 
by book-drudgery, what he has found them. 
Oh, you know not, may you never know ! 
the miseries of subsisting by authorship. 
'Tis a pretty appendage to a situation like 
yours or mine ; but a slavery, worse than all 
slavery, to be a bookseller's dependant, to 
drudge your brains for pots of ale, and breasts 
of mutton, to change your free thoughts and 
voluntary numbers for ungracious task- work. 
Those fellows hate us. The reason I take to 
be, that contrary to other trades, in which 
the master gets all the credit, (a jeweller or 
silversmith for instance,) and the journey- 
man, who really does the fine work, is in the 
back-ground : in our work the world gives 
all the credit to us, whom they consider as 
their journeymen, and therefore do they hate 
us, and cheat us, and oppress us, and would 
wring the blood of us out, to put another 
sixpence in their mechanic pouches ! I con- 
tend that a bookseller has a relative honesty 
towards authors, not like his honesty to the 
rest of the world. 

" Keep to your bank, and the bank will 
keep you. Trust not to the public ; you 
may hang, starve, drown yourself, for any- 
thing that worthy personage cares. I bless 



every star, that Providence, not seeing good 
to make me independent, has seen it next 
good to settle me upon the stable foundation 
of Leadenhall. Sit down, good B. B., in the 
banking-office ; what ! is there not from six 
to eleven p.m. six days in the week, and is 
there not all Sunday? Fie, what a super- 
fluity of man's-time, if you could think so ! 
Enough for relaxation, mirth, converse, 
poetry, good thoughts, quiet thoughts. Oh 
the corroding, torturing, tormenting thoughts, 
that disturb the brain of the unlucky wight, 
who must draw upon it for daily sustenance ! 
Henceforth I retract all my fond complaints 
of mercantile employment ; look upon them 
as lovers' quarrels. I was but half in earnest. 
Welcome dead timber of a desk, that makes 
me live. A little grumbling is a wholesome 
medicine for the spleen, but in my inner 
heart do I approve and embrace this our 
close, but unharassing way of life. I am 
quite serious. If you can send me Fox, I 
will not keep it six weeks, and will return it, 
with warm thanks to yourself and friend, 
without blot or dog's-ear. You will much 
oblige me by this kindness. 

" Yours truly, C. Lamb." 

Lamb thus communicated to Mr. Barton 
his prosecution of his researches into Primi- 
tive Quakerism. 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

"February 17th, 1823. 

" My dear Sir, — I have read quite through 
the ponderous folio of George Fox. I think 
Sewell has been judicious in omitting certain 
parts, as for instance where G. F. has revealed 
to him the natures of all the creatures in 
their names, as Adam had. He luckily turns 
aside from that compendious study of natural 
history, which might have superseded Buffon, 
to his proper spiritual pursuits, only just 
hinting what a philosopher he might have 
been. The ominous passage is near the 
beginning of the book. It is clear he means 
a physical knowledge, without trope or figure. 
Also, pretences to miraculous healing, and 
the like, are more frequent than I should 
have suspected from the epitome in Sewell. 
He is nevertheless a great spiritual man, and 
I feel very much obliged by your procuring 
me the loan of it. How I like the Quaker 
phrases, though I think they were hardly 



118 



LETTERS TO BARTON. 



completed till Woolmau. A pretty little 
manual of Quaker language (with an endea- 
vour to explain them) might be gathered out 
of his book. Could not you do it ? I have 
read through G. F. without finding any 
explanation of the term first volume in the 
title-page. It takes in all, both his life and 
his death. Are there more last words of 
him ? Pray how may I return it to Mr. 
Shewell at Ipswich ? I fear to send such a 
treasure by a stage-coach ; not that I am 
afraid of the coachman or the guard reading 
it ; but it might be lost. Can you put me 
in a way of sending it in safety 1 The kind- 
hearted owner trusted it to me for six 
months ; I think I was about as many days 
in getting through it, and I do not think that 
I skipt a word of it. I have quoted G. F. in 
my ' Quakers' Meeting/ as having said he 
was ' lifted up in spirit,' (which I felt at the 
time to be not a Quaker phrase,) ' and the 
judge and jury were as dead men under his 
feet.' I find no such words in his journal, 
and I did not get them from Sewell, and the 
latter sentence I am sure I did not mean to 
invent : I must have put some other Quaker's 
words into his mouth. Is it a fatality in me, 
that everything I touch turns into ' a lie % ' 
I once quoted two lines from a translation of 
Dante, which Hazlitt very greatly admired, 
and quoted in a book as proof of the stupend- 
ous power of that poet, but no such lines 
are to be found in the translation, which has 
been searched for the purpose. I must have 
dreamed them, for I am quite certain I did 
not forge them knowingly. What a mis- 
fortune to have a lying memory ! Your 
description of Mr. Mitford's place makes me 
long for a pippin and some caraways, and a 
cup of sack in his orchard, when the sweets 
of the night come in. 

" Farewell. 

" C. Lamb." 

In the beginning of the year 1823, the 
" Essays of Elia," collected in a volume, were 
published by Messrs. Taylor and Hessey, who 
had become the proprietors of the " London 
Magazine." The book met with a rapid 
sale, while the magazine in which its contents 
had appeared, declined. The anecdote of the 
three Quakers gravely walking out of the 
inn where they had taken tea on the road, 
on an extortionate demand, one after the 



other, without paying anything,* had excited 
some gentle remonstrance on the part of 
Barton's sister, to which Lamb thus replied. 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

"March 11th, 1823. 

" Dear Sir, — The approbation of my little 
book by your sister is very pleasing to me. 
The Quaker incident did not happen to me, 
but to Carlisle the surgeon, from whose mouth 
I have twice heard it, at an interval of ten or 
twelve years, with little or no variation, and 
have given it as exactly as I could remember 
it. The gloss which your sister or you have 
put upon it, does not strike me as correct. 
Carlisle drew no inference from it against the 
honesty of the Quakers, but only in favour 
of their surpassing coolness ; that they should 
be capable of committing a good joke, with 
an utter insensibility to its being any jest at 
all. I have reason to believe in the truth of 
it, because, as I have said, I heard him repeat 
it without variation at such an interval. The 
story loses sadly in print, for Carlisle is the 
best story-teller I ever heard. The idea of 
the discovery of roasting pigs I also borrowed, 
from my friend Manning, and am willing to 
confess both my plagiarisms. Should fate 
ever so order it that you shall ever be in 
town with your sister, mine bids me say, that 
she shall have great pleasure in being intro- 
duced to her. Your endeavour at explaining 
Fox's insight into the natures of animals 
must fail, as I shall transcribe the passage. 
It appears to me that he stopt short in time, 
and was on the brink of falling with his 
friend Naylor, my favourite. The book shall 
be forthcoming whenever your friend can 
make convenient to call for it. 

" They have dragged me again into the 
Magazine, but I feel the spirit of the thing 
in my own mind quite gone. ' Some brains ' 
(I think Ben Jonson says it) ' will endure 
but one skimming.' We are about to have 
an inundation of poetry from the Lakes — > 
Wordsworth and Southey are coming up 
strong from the north. How did you like 
Hartley's sonnets'? The first, at least, is 
vastly fine. I am ashamed of the shabby 
letters I send, but I am by nature anything 
but neat. Therein my mother bore me no 
Quaker. I never could seal a letter without 

* See " Imperfect Sympathies." — Essays of Elia, p. 74. 



LETTERS TO BARTON AND PROCTER. 



119 



dropping the wax on one side, besides scalding 
my fingers. I never had a seal, too, of my 
own. Writing to a great man lately, who is 
moreover very heraldic, I borrowed a seal of 
a friend, who by the female side quarters the 
Protectoral arms of Cromwell. How they 
must have puzzled my correspondent ! My 
letters are generally charged as double at the 
Post-office, from their inveterate clumsiness 
of foldure ; so you must not take it disre- 
spectful to yourself, if I send you such un- 
gainly scraps. I think I lose 1001. a -year at 
the India House, owing solely to my want of 
neatness in making up accounts. How I 
puzzle 'em out at last is the wonder. I have 
to do with millions ! ! 

" It is time to have done my incoherences. 
" Believe me, yours truly, 

" C. Lamb." 

Lamb thus records a meeting with the 
poets. 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

"April 5th, 1823. 
" Dear Sir, — I wished for you yesterday. 
I dined in Parnassus, with Wordsworth, 
Coleridge, Rogers, and Tom Moore, — half the 
poetry of England constellated and clustered 
in Gloucester Place ! It was a delightful 
evening ! Coleridge was in his finest vein of 
talk — had all the talk ; and let 'em talk as 
evilly as they do of the envy of poets, I am 
sure not one there but was content to be 
nothing but a listener. The Muses were 
dumb, while Apollo lectured, on his and 
their fine art. It is a lie that poets are 
envious ; I have known the best of them, 
and can speak to it, that they give each other 
their merits, and are the kindest critics as 
well as best authors. I am scribbling a 
muddy epistle with an aching head, for we 
did not quaff Hippocrene last night ; marry, 
it was hippocrass rather. Pray accept this 
as a letter in the mean time, C. L." 

Here is an apology for a letter, referring 
to a seal used on the letter to which this is 
an answer — the device was a pelican feeding 
her young from her own breast. 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

"May 3rd, 1823. 
" Dear Sir, — I am vexed to be two letters 
in your debt, but I have been quite out of 



the vein lately. A philosophical treatise is 
wanting, of the causes of the backwardness 
with which persons after a certain time of 
life set about writing a letter. I always feel 
as if I had nothing to say, and the perform- 
ance generally justifies the presentiment. 

" I do not exactly see why the goose and 
little goslings should emblematise a Quaker 
poet that has no children. But after all 
perhaps it is a pelican. The ' Mene, Mene, 
Tekel, Upharsin' around it I cannot deci- 
pher. The songster of the night pouring 
out her effusions amid a silent meeting of 
madge-owlets, would be at least intelligible. 
A full pause here comes upon me as if I had 
not a word more left. I will shake my brain, 
Once ! Twice ! — nothing comes up. George 
Fox recommends waiting on these occasions. 
I wait. Nothing comes. G. Fox — that sets 
me off again. I have finished the ' Journal,' 
and 400 more pages of the ' Doctrinals,' 
which I picked up for 7s. 6c?. If I get on at 
this rate, the society will be in danger of 
having two Quaker poets — to patronise. 

" Believe me cordially yours, 

" C. Lamb." 



The following letter was addressed to 
Mr. Procter, in acknowledgment of a minia- 
ture of Pope which he had presented to 
Lamb. 

TO MR. PROCTER. 

"April 13th, 1823. 

" Dear Lad, — 'You must think me a brute 
beast, a rhinoceros, never to have acknow- 
ledged the receipt of your precious present. 
But indeed I am none of those shocking 
things, but have arrived at that indisposition 
to letter-writing, which would make it a hard 
exertion to write three lines to a king to 
spare a friend's life. Whether it is that the 
Magazine paying me so much a page, I am 
loath to throw away composition — how much 
a sheet do you give your correspondents ? 
I have hung up Pope, and a gem it is, in my 
town room ; I hope for your approval. Though 
it accompanies the ' Essay on Man,' I think 
that was not the poem he is here meditating. 
He would have looked up, somehow affectedly, 
if he were just conceiving 'Awake, my St. 
John.' Neither is he in the 'Rape of the 
Lock' mood exactly. I think he has just 



120 



LAMB'S CONTROVERSY WITH SOUTHEY. 



made out the last lines of the 'Epistle to 
Jervis,' between gay and tender, 

* And other beauties envy Worsley's eyes.' 

" I '11 be hanged if that isn't the line. He 
is brooding over it, with a dreamy phantom 
of Lady Mary floating before him. He is 
thinking which is the earliest possible day 
and hour that she will first see it. What a 
miniature piece of gentility it is ! Why did 
you give it me 1 I do not like you enough 
to give you anything so good. 

" I have dined with T. Moore and break- 
fasted with Eogers, since I saw you ; have 
much to say about them when we meet, 
which I trust will be in a week or two. I 
have been over-watched and over-poeted 
since Wordsworth has been in town. I was 
obliged for health sake to wish him gone, 
but now he is gone I feel a great loss. I am 
going to Dalston to recruit, and have serious 
thoughts of — altering my condition, that is, 
of taking to sobriety. What do you advise 
me? 

"Rogers spake very kindly of you, as 
every body does, and none with so much 
reason as your C. L." 



CHAPTER XIII. 



[1823.] 

LAMB'S CONTROVERSY VTITH SOUTHEY. 

In the year 1823, Lamb appeared, for the 
first and only time of his life before the 
public, as an assailant : and the object of his 
attack was one of his oldest and fastest 
friends, Mr. Southey. It might, indeed, have 
been predicted of Lamb, that if ever he did 
enter the arena of personal controversy, it 
would be with one who had obtained a place 
in his affection ; for no motive less powerful 
than the resentment of friendship which 
deemed itself wounded, could place him in 
a situation so abhorrent to his habitual 
thoughts. Lamb had, up to this time, little 
reason to love reviews or reviewers ; and the 
connexion of Southey with " The Quarterly 
Review," while he felt that it raised, and 
softened, and refined the tone of that powerful 
organ of a great party, sometimes vexed him 
for his friend. His indignation also had been 



enlisted on behalf of Hazlitt and Hunt, who 
had been attacked in this work in a manner 
which he regarded as unfair ; for the critics 
had not been content with descanting on the 
peculiarities in the style and taste of the one, 
or reprobating the political or personal 
vehemence of the other, — which were fair 
subjects of controversy, — but spoke of them 
with a contempt which every man of letters 
had a right to resent, as unjust. He had 
been much annoyed by an allusion to himself 
in an article on " Hazlitt's Political Essays," 
which appeared in the Review for November, 
1819, as "one whom we should wish to see 
in more respectable company ;" for he felt a 
compliment paid him at the expense of a 
friend, as a grievance far beyond any direct 
attack on himself. He was also exceedingly 
hurt by a reference made in an article on 
Dr. Reid's work " On Nervous Affections," 
which appeared in July, 1822, to an essay 
which he had contributed some years before 
to a collection of tracts published by his 
friend, Mr. Basil Montague, on the effect of 
spirituous liquors, entitled " The Confessions 
of a Drunkard." The contribution of this 
paper is a striking proof of the prevalence of 
Lamb's personal regards over all selfish 
feelings and tastes ; for no one was less 
disposed than he to Montague's theory or 
practice of abstinence ; yet he was willing to 
gratify his friend by this terrible picture of 
the extreme effects of intemperance, of which 
his own occasional deviations from the right 
line of sobriety had given him hints and 
glimpses. The reviewer of Dr. Reid, ad- 
verting to this essay, speaks of it as "a fearful 
picture of the consequences of intemperance, 
which we happen to know is a true tale." 
How far it was from actual truth the " Essays 
of Elia," the production of a later day, in 
which the maturity of his feeling, humour, 
and reason is exhibited, may sufficiently 
witness. These articles were not written by 
Mr. Southey ; but they prepared Lamb to 
feel acutely any attack from the Review ; 
and a paragraph in an article in the number 
for July, 1823, entitled "Progress of Infi- 
delity," in which he recognised the hand of 
his old friend, gave poignancy to all the 
painful associations which had arisen from 
the same work, and concentrated them in one 
bitter feeling. After recording some of the 
confessions of unbelievers of the wretchedness 



LETTERS TO BARTON. 



121 



which their infidelity brought on them, Mr. 
Southey thus proceeded : — 

" Unbelievers have not always been honest 
enough thus to express their real feelings ; 
but this we know concerning them, that 
when they have renounced their birthright 
of hope, they have not been able to divest 
themselves of fear. From the nature of the 
human mind, this might be presumed, and in 
fact it is so. They may deaden the heart 
and stupify the conscience, but they cannot 
destroy the imaginative faculty. There is a 
remarkable proof of this in ' Elia's Essays,' a 
book which wants only a sounder religious 
feeling, to be as delightful as it is original. 
In that upon * Witches and the other Night 
Fears,' he says, ' It is not book, or picture, 
or the stories of foolish servants, which 
create these terrors in children ; they can at 
most but give them a direction. Dear little 
T. EL, who of all children has been brought 
up with the most scrupulous exclusion of 
every taint of superstition, who was never 
allowed to hear of goblin or apparition, or 
scarcely to be told of bad men, or to hear or 
read of any distressing story, finds all this 
world of fear, from which he has been so 
rigidly excluded ah extra, in his own " thick- 
coming fancies," and from his little midnight 
pillow this nurse child of optimism will start 
at shapes, unborrowed of tradition, in sweats 
to which the reveries of the well-damned 
murderer are tranquillity.' — This poor child, 
instead of being trained up in the way he 
should go, had been bred in the ways of 
modern philosophy ; he had systematically 
been prevented from knowing anything of 
that Saviour who said, ' Suffer little children 
to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of 
such is the kingdom of heaven ;' care had 
been taken that he should not pray to God, 
nor lie down at night in reliance upon his 
good providence ! Nor let it be supposed 
that terrors of imagination belong to child- 
hood alone. The reprobate heart, which has 
discarded all love of God, cannot so easily rid 
itself of the fear of the devil ; and even when 
it succeeds in that also, it will then create a 
hell for itself. We have heard of unbelievers 
who thought it probable that they should be 
awake in their graves ; and this was the 
opinion for which they had exchanged a 
Christian's hope of immortality ! " 



The allusion in this paragraph was really, 
as Lamb was afterwards convinced, intended 
by Mr. Southey to assist the sale of the book. 
In haste, having expunged some word which 
he thought improper, he wrote, "sounder 
religious feeling," not satisfied with the 
epithet, but meaning to correct it in the 
proof, which unfortunately was never sent 
him. Lamb saw it on his return from a 
month's pleasant holidays at Hastings, and 
expressed his first impression respecting it in 
a letter. 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

"July 10th, 1823. 

"Dear Sir, — I have just returned from 
Hastings, where are exquisite views and 
walks, and where I have given up my soul 
to walking, and I am now suffering sedentary 
contrasts. I am a long time reconciling to 
town after one of these excursions. Home 
is become strange, and will remain so yet a 
while ; home is the most unforgiving of 
friends, and always resents absence ; I know 
its old cordial look will return, but they are 
slow in clearing up. That is one of the 
features of this our galley-slavery, that 
peregrination ended makes things worse. I 
felt out of water (with all the sea about me) 
at Hastings ; and just as I had learned to 
domiciliate there, I must come back to find 
a home which is no home. I abused Hastings, 
but learned its value. There are spots, inland 
bays, &c, which realise the notions of Juan 
Fernandez. The best thing I lit upon by 
accident was a small country church, (by 
whom or when built unknown,) standing 
bare and single in the midst of a grove, with 
no house or appearance of habitation within 
a quarter of a mile, only passages diverging 
from it through beautiful woods to so many 
farm-houses. There it stands like the first 
idea of a church, before parishioners were 
thought of, nothing but birds for its congre- 
gation ; or like a hermit's oratory (the hermit 
dead), or a mausoleum j its effect singularly 
impressive, like a church found in a desert 
isle to startle Crusoe with a home image ; 
you must make out a vicar and a congrega- 
tion from fancy, for surely none come there ; 
yet it wants not its pulpit, and its font, 
and all its seemly additaments of our 
worship. 

" Southey has attacked ' Elia ' on the score 



122 



LETTERS TO BARTON. 



of infidelity, in the Quarterly article, ' Pro- 
gress of Infidelity.' I had not, nor have seen 
the Monthly. He might have spared an old 
friend such a construction of a few careless 
flights, that meant no harm to religion. If 
all his unguarded expressions on the subject 
were to be collected — but I love and respect 
Southey, and will not retort. I hate his 
review, and his being a reviewer. The hint 
he has dropped will knock the sale of the 
book on the head, which was almost at a 
stop before. Let it stop, — there is corn in 
Egypt, while there is cash at Leadenhall ! 
You and I are something besides being 
writers, thank God ! 

" Yours truly, C. L." 



This feeling was a little diverted by the 
execution of a scheme, rather suddenly 
adopted, of removing to a neat cottage at 
Islington, where Lamb first found himself 
installed in the dignity of a householder. 
He thus describes his residence : — 



TO BERNARD BARTON. 

" September 2nd, 1823. 

" Dear B. B., — What will you not say for 
my not writing 1 You cannot say, I do not 
write now. "When you come London-ward, 
you will find me no longer in Covent Garden ; 
I have a cottage, in Colebrook Row, Islington ; 
a cottage, for it is detached ; a white house, 
with six good rooms ; the New Biver (rather 
elderly by this time) runs (if a moderate 
walking pace can be so termed) close to 
the foot of the house ; and behind is a 
spacious garden with vines (I assure you), 
pears, strawberries, parsnips, leeks, carrots, 
cabbages, to delight the heart of old Alcinous. 
You enter without passage into a cheerful 
dining-room, all studded over and rough 
with old books ; and above is a lightsome 
drawing-room, three windows, full of choice 
prints. I feel like a great lord, never having 
had a house before. 

"The < London,' I fear, falls off. I linger 
among its creaking rafters, like the last rat ; 
it will topple down if they don't get some 
buttresses. They have pulled down three ; 
Hazlitt, Procter, and their best stay, kind, 
light-hearted Wainwright, their Janus. The 
best is, neither of our fortunes is concerned 
in it. 



" I heard of you from Mr. Pulham this 
morning, and that gave a fillip to my laziness, 
which has been intolerable ; but I am so 
taken up with pruning and gardening, quite 
a new sort of occupation to me. I have 
gathered my jargonels, but my Windsor 
pears are backward. The former were of 
exquisite raciness. I do now sit under my 
own vine, and contemplate the growth of 
vegetable nature. I can now understand in 
what sense they speak of father Adam. I 
recognise the paternity, while I watch my 
tulips. I almost fell with him, for the first 
day I turned a drunken gardener (as he let 
in the serpent) into my Eden, and he laid 
about him, lopping off some choice boughs, 
&c, which hung over from a neighbour's 
garden, and in his blind zeal laid waste a 
shade, which had sheltered their window 
from the gaze of passers-by. The old gentle- 
woman (fury made her not handsome) could 
scarcely be reconciled by all my fine words. 
There was no buttering her parsnips. She 
talked of the law. What a lapse to commit 
on the first day of my happy ' garden-state ! ' 

" I hope you transmitted the Fox-Joumal 
to its owner, with suitable thanks. Mr. Cary, 
the Dante-man, dines with me to-day. He 
is a model of a country parson, lean (as a 
curate ought to be), modest, sensible, no 
obtruder of church dogmas, quite a different 

man from . You would like him. Pray 

accept this for a letter, and believe me, with 
sincere regards, Yours, C. L." 



In the next letter to Barton, Lamb referred 
to an intended letter to Southey in the 
Magazine. 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

"September 17th, 1823. 
" Dear Sir,— I have again been reading 
your ' Stanzas on Bloomfield,' which are the 
most appropriate that can be imagined, — 
sweet with Doric delicacy. I like that, — 

' Our own more chaste Theocritus ' — 

just hinting at the fault of the Grecian. I 
love that stanza ending with, 

1 Words, phrases, fashions, pass away ; 
But truth and nature live through all.' 

But I shall omit in my own copy the one 



ELIA TO SOUTHEY. 



123 



stanza which alludes to Lord B. I suppose. 
It spoils the sweetness and oneness of the 
feeling. Cannot we think of Burns, or Thom- 
son, without sullying the thought with a 
reflection out of place upon Lord Kochester ? 
These verses might have been inscribed upon 
a tomb ; are in fact an epitaph ; satire does 
not look pretty upon a tomb-stone. Besides, 
there is a quotation in it, always bad in 
verse, seldom advisable in prose. I doubt if 
their having been in a paper will not prevent 
T. and H. from insertion, but I shall have a 
thing to send in a day or two, and shall try 
them. Omitting that stanza, a very little 
alteration is wanting in the beginning of the 
next. You see, I use freedom. How happily, 
(I flatter not) you have brought in his 
subjects ; and (I suppose) his favourite 
measure, though I am not acquainted with 
any of his writings but the ' Farmer's Boy.' 
He dined with me once, and his manners 
took me exceedingly. 

" I rejoice that you forgive my long silence. 
I continue to estimate my own-roof comforts 
highly. How could I remain all my life a 
lodger? My garden thrives (I am told), 
though I have yet reaped nothing but some 
tiny salad, and withered carrots. But a 
garden's a garden anywhere, and twice a 
garden in London. 

" Do you go on with your ' Quaker Son- 
nets ? ' have 'em ready with ' Southey's Book 
of the Church.' I meditate a letter to S. in 
the ' London,' which perhaps will meet the 
fate of the Sonnet. 

" Excuse my brevity, for I write painfully 
at office, liable to a hundred callings off; and 
I can never sit down to an epistle elsewhere. 
I read or walk. If you return this letter 
to the Post-office, I think they will return 
fourpence, seeing it is but half a one. Believe 



me, though, 



Entirely yours, C. L.' 



The contemplated expostulation with 
Southey was written, and appeared in the 
" London Magazine for October 1823." Lamb 
did not print it in any subsequent collection 
of his essays ; but I give it now, as I have 
reason to know that its publication will cause 
no painful feelings in the mind of Mr. Southey, 
and as it forms the only ripple on the kindli- 
ness of Lamb's personal and literary life. 



LETTER OF ELIA TO ROBERT SOUTHEY, ESQ. 

" Sir, — You have done me an unfriendly 
office, without perhaps much considering 
what you were doing. You have given an 
ill name to my poor lucubrations. In a recent 
paper on Infidelity, you usher in a conditional 
commendation of them with an exception : 
which, preceding the encomium, and taking 
up nearly the same space with it, must 
impress your readers with the notion, that 
the objectionable parts in them are at least 
equal in quantity to the pardonable. The 
censure is in fact the criticism ; the praise — 
a concession merely. Exceptions usually 
follow, to qualify praise or blame. But there 
stands your reproof, in the very front of your 
notice, in ugly characters, like some bugbear, 
to frighten all good Christians from pur- 
chasing. Through you I become an object of 
suspicion to preceptors of youth, and fathers 
of families. ' A book, which wants only a 
sounder religious feeling to be as delightful as 
it is original.'' With no further explanation, 
what must your readers conjecture, but that 
my little volume is some vehicle for heresy 
or infidelity ? The quotation, which you 
honour me by subjoining, oddly enough, is of 
a character which bespeaks a temperament 
in the writer the very reverse of that your 
reproof goes to insinuate. Had you been 
taxing me with superstition, the passage 
would have been pertinent to the censure. 
Was it worth your while to go so far out of 
your way to affront the feelings of an old 
friend, and commit yourself by an irrelevant 
quotation, for the pleasure of reflecting upon 
a poor child, an exile at Genoa % 

" I am at a loss what particular essay you 
had in view (if my poor ramblings amount 
to that appellation) when you were in such a 
hurry to thrust in your objection, like bad 
news, foremost. — Perhaps the paper on ' Say- 
ing Graces ' was the obnoxious feature. I 
have endeavoured there to rescue a voluntary 
duty — good in place, but never, as I remember, 
literally commanded — from the charge of an 
undecent formality. Eightly taken, sir, that 
paper was not against graces, but want of 
grace ; not against the ceremony, but the 
carelessness and slovenliness so often observed 
in the performance of it. 

" Or was it that on the ' New Year ' — in 
which I have described the feelings of the 



124 



EL1A TO SOUTHEY. 



merely natural man, on a consideration of the 
amazing change, which is supposable to take 
place on our removal from this fleshly scene ? 
If men would honestly confess their mis- 
givings (which few men will) there are times 
when the strongest Christian of us, I believe, 
has reeled under questions of such staggering 
obscurity. I do not accuse you of this weak- 
ness. There are some who tremblingly reach 
out shaking hands to the guidance of Faith 
— others who stoutly venture into the dark 
(their Human Confidence their leader, whom 
they mistake for Faith) ; and, investing 
themselves beforehand with cherubic wings, 
as they fancy, find their new robes as fami- 
liar, and fitting to their supposed growth and 
stature in godliness, as the coat they left off 
yesterday — some whose hope totters upon 
crutches — others who stalk into futurity upon 
stilts. 

" The contemplation of a Spiritual World, 
— which, without the addition of a misgiving 
conscience, is enough to shake some natures 
to their foundation — is smoothly got over by 
others, who shall float over the black billows 
in their little boat of No-Distrust, as uncon- 
cernedly as over a summer sea. The differ- 
ence is chiefly constitutional. 

" One man shall love his friends and his 
friends' faces ; and, under the uncertainty of 
conversing with them again, in the same 
manner and familiar circumstances of sight, 
speech, &c. as upon earth — in a moment of 
no irreverent weakness — for a dream-while — 
no more — would be almost content, for a 
reward of a life of virtue (if he could ascribe 
such acceptance to his lame performances), 
to take up his portion with those he loved, 
and was made to love, in this good world, 
which he knows — which was created so lovely, 
beyond his deservings. Another, embracing 
a more exalted vision — so that he might 
receive indefinite additaments of power, 
knowledge, beauty, glory, &c. — is ready to 
forego the recognition of humbler indivi- 
dualities of earth, and the old familiar faces. 
The shapings of our heavens are the modi- 
fications of our constitution ; and Mr. Feeble 
Mind, or Mr. Great Heart, is born in every 
one of us. 

" Some (and such have been accounted 
the safest divines) have shrunk from pro- 
nouncing upon the final state of any man ; 
nor dare they pronounce the case of Judas 



to be desperate. Others (with stronger 
optics), as plainly as with the eye of flesh, 
shall behold a given king in bliss, and a given 
chamberlain m. torment ; even to the eternising 
of a cast of the eye in the latter, his own 
self-mocked and good-humouredly-borne de- 
formity on earth, but supposed to aggravate 
the uncouth and hideous expression of his 
pangs in the other place. That one man can 
presume so far, and that another would with 
shuddering disclaim such confidences, is, I 
believe, an effect of the nerves purely. 

" If in either of these papers, or elsewhere, 
I have been betrayed into some levities — not 
affronting the sanctuary,but glancing perhaps 
at some of the outskirts and extreme edges, 
the debateable land between the holy and 
profane regions — (for the admixture of man's 
inventions, twisting themselves with the name 
of the religion itself, has artfully made it 
difficult to touch even the alloy, without, in 
some men's estimation, soiling the fine gold) 
— if I have sported within the purlieus of 
serious matter — it was, I dare say, a humour 
— be not startled, sir, — which I have unwit- 
tingly derived from yourself. You have all 
your life been making a jest of the Devil. 
Not of the scriptural meaning of that dark 
essence — personal or allegorical ; for the 
nature is nowhere plainly delivered. I acquit 
you of intentional irreverence. But indeed 
you have made wonderfully free with, and 
been mighty pleasant upon, the popular idea 
and attributes of him. A Noble Lord, your 
brother Visionary, has scarcely taken greater 
liberties with the material keys, and merely 
Catholic notion of St. Peter. — You have 
flattered him in prose : you have chanted 
him in goodly odes. You have been his 
Jester ; volunteer Laureat, and self-elected 
Court Poet to Beelzebub. 

" You have never ridiculed, I believe, what 
you thought to be religion, but you are 
always girding at what some pious, but per- 
haps mistaken folks, think to be so. For 
this reason I am sorry to hear, that you are 
engaged upon a life of George Fox. I know 
you will fall into the error of intermixing 
some comic stuff with your seriousness. The 
Quakers tremble at the subject in your hands. 
The Methodists are shy of you, upon account 
of their founder. But, above all, our Popish 
brethren are most in your debt. The errors 
of that Church have proved a fruitful source 



ELIA TO SOUTHEY, 



125 



to your scoffing vein. Their Legend lias 
been a Golden one to you. And here your 
friends, sir, have noticed a notable incon- 
sistency. To the imposing rites, the solemn 
penances, devout austerities of that commu- 
nion ; the affecting though erring piety of 
their hermits ; the silence and solitude of the 
Chartreux — their crossings, their holy waters 
— their Virgin, and their saints — to these, 
they say, you have been indebted for the best 
feelings, and the richest imagery, of your 
Epic poetry. You have drawn copious drafts 
upon Loretto. We thought at one time you 
were going post to Rome — but that in the 
facetious commentaries, which it is your 
custom to append so plentifully, and (some 
say) injudiciously, to your loftiest perform- 
ances in this kind, you spurn the uplifted 
toe, which you but just now seemed to court ; 
leave his holiness in the lurch ; and show 
him a fair pair of Protestant heels under 
your Romish vestment. "When we think you 
already at the wicket, suddenly a violent 
cross wind blows you transverse 



Ten thousand leagues awry 



Then might we see 

Cowls, hoods, and habits, with their wearers, tost 
And flutter'd into rags ; then reliques, beads, 
Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls, 
The sport of winds.' 

You pick up pence by showing the hallowed 
bones, shrine, and crucifix ; and you take 
money a second time by exposing the trick 
of them afterwards. You carry your verse 
to Castle Angelo for sale in a morning ; and 
swifter than a pedlar can transmute his pack, 
you are at Canterbury with your prose 
ware before night. 

" Sir, is it that I dislike you in this merry 
vein ? The very reverse. No countenance 
becomes an intelligent jest better than your 
own. It is your grave aspect, when you look 
awful upon your poor friends, which I would 
deprecate. 

" In more than one place, if I mistake 
not, you have been pleased to compliment 
me at the expense of my companions. I 
cannot accept your compliment at such a 
price. The upbraiding a man's poverty 
naturally makes him look about him, to see 
whether he be so poor indeed as he is pre- 
sumed to be. You have put me upon counting 
my riches. Really, sir, I did not know I was 
so wealthy in the article of friendships. 



There is , and , whom you never 

heard of, but exemplary characters both, and 
excellent church-goers ; and N., mine and 
my father's friend for nearly half a century ; 
and the enthusiast for Wordsworth's poetry, 

, a little tainted with Socinianism, it is 

to be feared, but constant in his attachments, 
and a capital critic ; and — ; — , a sturdy old 
Athanasian, so that sets all to rights again ; 
and W., the light, and warm-as-light hearted, 
Janus of the London ; and the translator of 
Dante, still a curate, modest and amiable C. ; 
and Allan C, the large-hearted Scot ; and 
P — r, candid and affectionate as his own 
poetry ; and A — p, Coleridge's friend ; and 
G — n, his more than friend ; and Coleridge 
himself, the same to me still, as in those old 
evenings, when we used to sit' and speculate 
(do you remember them, sir V) at our old 
Salutation tavern, upon Pantisocracy and 

golden days to come on earth ; and W th 

(why, sir, I might drop my rent-roll here ; 
such goodly farms and manors have I reck- 
oned up already. In what possession has not 
this last name alone estated me ! — but I will 
go on) — and M., the noble-minded kinsman, 

by wedlock, of W th ; and H. C. R., 

unwearied in the offices of a friend ; and 
Clarkson, almost above the narrowness of 
that relation, yet condescending not seldom 
heretofore from the labours of his world- 
embracing charity to bless my humble roof ; 
and the gall-less and single-minded Dyer ; 
and the high-minded associate of Cook, the 
veteran Colonel, with his lusty heart still 
sending cartels of defiance to old Time ; and, 
not least, W. A., the last and steadiest left 
to me of that little knot of whist-players, 
that used to assemble weekly, for so many 
years, at the Queen's Gate (you remember 
them, sir ?) and called Admiral Burney 
friend. 

"I will come to the point at once. I 
believe you will not make many exceptions 
to my associates so far. But I have purposely 
omitted some intimacies, which I do not yet 
repent of having contracted, with two gentle- 
men, diametrically opposed to yourself in 
principles. You will understand me to 
allude to the authors of ' Rimini ' and of the 
< Table Talk.' And first of the former.— 

" It is an error more particularly incident 
to persons of the correctest principles and 
habits, to seclude themselves from the rest 



126 



ELIA TO SOUTHEY 



of mankind, as from another species, and 
form into knots and clubs. The best people 
herding thus exclusively, are in danger of 
contracting a narrowness. Heat and cold, 
dryness and moisture, in the natural world, 
do not fly asunder, to split the globe into 
sectarian parts and separations ; but mingling, 
as they best may, correct the malignity of 
any single predominance. The analogy 
holds, I suppose, in the moral world. If all 
the good people were to ship themselves off 
to Terra Incognita, what, in humanity's 
name, is to become of the refuse ? If the 
persons, whom I have chiefly in view, have 
not pushed matters to this extremity yet, 
they carry them as far as they can go. Instead 
of mixing with the infidel and the free- 
thinker — in the room of opening a negocia- 
tion, to try at least to find out at which gate 
the error entered — they huddle close together, 
in a weak fear of infection, like that pusil- 
lanimous underling in Spenser — 

1 This is the -wandering wood, this Error's den ; 
A monster vile, whom God and man does hate : 
Therefore, I reed, beware. Fly, fly, quoth then 
The fearful Dwarf.' 

And, if they be writers in orthodox journals 
addressing themselves only to the irritable 
passions of the unbeliever — they proceed in 
a safe system of strengthening the strong 
hands, and confirming the valiant knees ; of 
converting the already converted, and prose- 
lyting their own party. I am the more con- 
vinced of this from a passage in the very 
treatise which occasioned this letter. It is 
where, having recommended to the doubter 
the writings of Michaelis and Lardner, you 
ride triumphant over the necks of all infidels, 
sceptics, and dissenters, from this time to the 
world's end, upon the wheels of two un- 
answerable deductions. I do not hold it 
meet to set down, in a miscellaneous com- 
pilation like this, such religious words as you 
have thought fit to introduce into the pages 
of a petulant literary journal. I therefore 
beg leave to substitute numerals, and refer to 
the 'Quarterly Eeview' (for January) for 
filling of them up. ' Here,' say you, ' as in 
the history of 7, if these books are authentic, 
the events which they relate must be true ; 
if they were written by 8, 9 is 10 and 11.' 
Your first deduction, if it means honestly, 
rests upon two identical propositions ; though 
I suspect an unfairness in one of the terms, 



which this would not be quite the proper 
place for explicating. At all events, you 
have no cause to triumph ; you have not 
been proving the premises, but refer for 
satisfaction therein to very long and laborious 
works, which may well employ the sceptic a 
twelvemonth or two to digest, before he can 
possibly be ripe for your conclusion. When 
he has satisfied himself about the premises, 
he will concede to you the inference, I dare 
say, most readily. — But your latter deduction, 
viz. that because 8 has written a book con- 
cerning 9, therefore 10 and 11 was certainly 
his meaning, is one of the most extraordinary 
conclusions per solium, that I have had the 
good fortune to meet with. As far as 10 is 
verbally asserted in the writings, all sects 
must agree with you ; but you cannot be 
ignorant of the many various ways in which 
the doctrine of the ******* has been under- 
stood, from a low figurative expression (with 
the Unitarians) up to the most mysterious 
actuality ; in which highest sense alone you 
and your church take it. And for 11, that 
there is no other possible conclusion — to hazard 
this in the face of so many thousands of 
Arians and Socinians, &c, who have drawn 
so opposite a one, is such a piece of theological 
hardihood, as, I think, warrants me in con- 
cluding that, when you sit down to pen 
theology, you do not at all consider your 
opponents ; but have in your eye, merely 
and exclusively, readers of the same way of 
thinking with yourself, and therefore have 
no occasion to trouble yourself with the 
quality of the logic to which you treat them. 

" Neither can I think, if you had had the 
welfare of the poor child — over whose hope- 
less condition you whine so lamentably and 
(I must think) unseasonably — seriously at 
heart, that you could have taken the step of 
sticking him up by name — T. H. is as good as 
naming him — to perpetuate an outrage upon 
the parental feelings, as long as the ' Quar- 
terly Eeview ' shall last. Was it necessary 
to specify an individual case, and give to 
Christian compassion the appearance of 
personal attack? Is this the way to con- 
ciliate unbelievers, or not rather to widen the 
breach irreparably ? 

" I own I could never think so considerably 
of myself as to decline the society of an agree- 
able or worthy man upon difference of opinion 
only. The impediments and the facilitations 



ELIA TO SOUTHEY. 



127 



to a sound belief are various and inscrutable 
as the heart of man. Some believe upon 
weak principles. Others cannot feel the 
efficacy of the strongest. One of the most 
candid, most upright, and single-meaning 
men, I ever knew, was the late Thomas 
Holcroft. I believe he never said one thing 
and meant another, in his life ; and, as near 
as I can guess, he never acted otherwise 
than with the most scrupulous attention to 
conscience. Ought we to wish the character 
false, for the sake of a hollow compliment to 
Christianity ? 

" Accident introduced me to the acquaint- 
ance of Mr. L. H. — and the experience of his 
many friendly qualities confirmed a friend- 
ship between us. You, who have been mis- 
represented yourself, I should hope, have not 
lent an idle ear to the calumnies which have 
been spread abroad respecting this gentle- 
man. I was admitted to his household for 
some years, and do most solemnly aver that 
I believe him to be in his domestic relations 
as correct as any man. He chose an ill- 
judged subject for a poem ; the peccant 
humours of which have been visited on him 
tenfold by the artful use, which his adver- 
saries have made, of an equivocal term. The 
subject itself was started by Dante, but 
better because brieflier treated of. But the 
crime of the lovers, in the Italian and the 
English poet, with its aggravated enormity 
of circumstance, is not of a kind (as the 
critics of the latter well knew) with those 
conjunctions, for which Nature herself has 
provided no excuse, because no temptation. 
— It has nothing in common with the black 
horrors, sung by Ford and Massinger. The 
familiarising of it in tale and fable may be 
for that reason incidentally more contagious. 
In spite of Eimini, I must look upon its 
author as a man of taste, and a poet. He is 
better than so ; he is one of the most cordial- 
minded men I ever knew, and matchless as 
a fire- side companion. I mean not to affront 
or wound your feelings when I say that, in 
his more genial moods, he has often reminded 
me of you. There is the same air of mild 
dogmatism — the same condescending to a 
boyish sportiveness — in both your conversa- 
tions. His handwriting is so much the same 
with your own, that I have opened more 
than one letter of his, hoping, nay, not 
doubting, but it was from you, and have 



A 



been disappointed (he will bear with my 
saying so) at the discovery of my error./ 
L. H. is unfortunate in holding some loose 
and not very definite speculations (for at 
times I think he hardly knows whither his 
premises would carry him) on marriage — the 
tenets, I conceive, of the ' Political Justice ' 
carried a little further. For anything I 
could discover in his practice, they have 
reference, like those, to some future possible 
condition of society, and not to the present 
times. But neither for these obliquities of 
thinking (upon which my own conclusions 
are as distant as the poles asunder) — nor for 
his political asperities and petulancies, which 
are wearing out with the heats and vanities 
of youth — did I select him for a friend ; but 
for qualities which fitted him for that rela- 
tion. I do not know whether I flatter 
myself with being the occasion, but certain 
it is, that, touched with some misgivings for 
sundry harsh things which he had written 
aforetime against our friend C, — before he 
left this country he sought a reconciliation 
with that gentleman (himself being his own 
introducer), and found it. 

" L.H. is now in Italy ; on his departure to 
which land with much regret I took my 
leave of him and of his little family — seven 
of them, sir, with their mother — and as kind 
a set of little people (T. H. and all), as affec- 
tionate children as ever blessed a parent. 
Had you seen them, sir, I think you could 
not have looked upon them as so many little 
Jonases — but rather as pledges of the 
vessel's safety, that was to bear such a freight 
of love. 

" I wish you would read Mr. H.'s lines to 
that same T. H. ' six years' old, during a 
sickness : ' — 

' Sleep breaks at last from out thee, 
My little patient boy ' — 

(they are to be found in the 47th page of 
' Foliage ') — and ask yourself how far they 
are out of the spirit of Christianity. I have 
a letter from Italy, received but the other 
day, into which L. H. has put as much heart, 
and as many friendly yearnings after old 
associates, and native country, as, I think, 
paper can well hold. It would do you no 
hurt to give that the perusal also. 

"From the other gentleman I neither 
expect nor desire (as he is well assured) any 



128 



ELIA TO SOUTHEY. 



A 



such concessions as L. H. made to C. What 
hath soured him, and made him to suspect 
his friends of infidelity towards him, when 
there was no such matter, I know not. I 
stood well with him for fifteen years (the 
proudest of my life), and have ever spoken 
my full mind of him to some, to whom his 
panegyric must naturally be least tasteful. 
I never in thought swerved from him, I 
never betrayed him, I never slackened in 
my admiration of him ; I was the same to 
him (neither better nor worse), though he 
could not see it, as in the days when he 
thought fit to trust me. At this instant, he 
may be preparing for me some compliment, 
above my deserts, as he has sprinkled many 
such among his admirable books, for which 
I rest his debtor ; or, for anything I know, 
or can guess to the contrary, he may be 
about to read a lecture on my weaknesses. 
He is welcome to them (as he was to my 
humble hearth), if they can divert a spleen, 
or ventilate a fit of sullenness. I wish he 
would not quarrel with the world at the 
rate he does ; but the reconciliation must be 
effected by himself, and I despair of living 
to see that day. But, protesting against 
much that he has written, and some things 
which he chooses to do ; judging him by his 
conversation which I enjoyed so long, and 
relished so deeply ; or by his books, in those 
laces where no clouding passion intervenes 

I should belie my own conscience, if I said 
less, than that I think W. H. to be, in his 
natural and healthy state, one of the wisest 
and finest spirits breathing. So far from 
being ashamed of that intimacy, which was 
betwixt us, it is my boast that I was able 
for so many years to have preserved it 
entire ; and I think I shall go to my grave 
without finding, or expecting to find, such 
another companion. But I forget my man- 
ners — you will pardon me, sir — I return to 
the correspondence. 

" Sir, you were pleased (you know where) 
to invite me to a compliance with the whole- 
some forms and doctrines of the Church of 
England. I take your advice with as much 
kindness as it was meant. But I must think 
the invitation rather more kind than season- 
able. I am a Dissenter. The last sect, with 
which you can remember me to have made 
common profession, were the Unitarians. 
You would think it not very pertinent, if 



(fearing that all was not well with you), I 
were gravely to invite you (for a remedy) to 
attend with me a course of Mr. Belsham's 
Lectures at Hackney. Perhaps I have 
scruples to some of your forms and doctrines. 
But if I come, am I secure of civil treat- 
ment ? — The last time I was in any of your 
places of worship was on Easter Sunday last. 
I had the satisfaction of listening to a very 
sensible sermon of an argumentative turn, 
delivered with great propriety, by one of 
your bishops. The place was Westminster 
Abbey. As such religion, as I have, has 
always acted on me more by way of senti- 
ment than argumentative process, I was not 
unwilling, after sermon ended, by no un- 
becoming transition, to pass over to some 
serious feelings, impossible to be disconnected 
from the sight of those old tombs, &c. But, 
by whose order I know not, I was debarred 
that privilege even for so short a space as a 
few minutes ; and turned, like a dog or 
some profane person, out into the common 
street ; with feelings, which I could not help, 
but not very congenial to the day or the 
discourse. I do not know that I shall 
ever venture myself again into one of your 
churches. 

" You had your education at Westminster ; 
and, doubtless, among those dim aisles and 
cloisters, you must have gathered much of 
that devotional feeling in those young years, 
on which your purest mind feeds still — and 
may it feed ! The antiquarian spirit, strong 
in you, and gracefully blending ever with 
the religious, may have been sown in you 
among those wrecks of splendid mortality. 
You owe it to the place of your education ; 
you owe it to your learned fondness for the 
architecture of your ancestors ; you owe it 
to the venerableness of your ecclesiastical 
establishment, which is daily lessened and 
called in question through these practices — 
to speak aloud your sense of them ; never to 
desist raising your voice against them, till 
they be totally done away with and abolished ; 
till the doors of Westminster Abbey be no 
longer closed against the decent, though low- 
in-purse, enthusiast, or blameless devotee, 
who must commit an injury against his 
family economy, if he would be indulged 
with a bare admission within its walls. You 
owe it to the decencies, which you wish to 
see maintained in its impressive services, 



ELIA TO SOUTHEY. 



129 



that our Cathedral be no longer an object of 
inspection to the poor at those times only, in 
which they must rob from their attendance 
on the worship every minute which they can 
bestow upon the fabric. In vain the public 
prints have taken up this subject, in vain 
such poor nameless writers as myself express 
their indignation. A word from you, sir — 
a hint, in your journal — would be sufficient 
to fling open the doors of the beautiful temple 
again, as we can remember them when we 
were boys. At that time of life, what would 
the imaginative faculty (such as it is) in 
both of us, have suffered, if the entrance to 
so much reflection had been obstructed by 
the demand of so much silver ! — If we had 
scraped it up to gain an occasional admission 
(as we certainly should have done) would 
the sight of those old tombs have been as 
impressive to us (while we had been weighing 
anxiously prudence against sentiment) as 
when the gates stood open, as those of the 
adjacent Park ; when we could walk in at 
any time, as the mood brought us, for a 
shorter or longer time, as that lasted ? , Is 
the being shown over a place the same as 
silently for ourselves detecting the genius of 
it 1 In no part of our beloved Abbey now 
can a person find entrance (out of service- 
time) under the sum of two shillings. The 
rich and the great will smile at the anti- 
climax, presumed to lie in these two short 
words. But you can tell them, sir, how much 
quiet worth, how much capacity for enlarged 
feeling, how much taste and genius, may co- 
exist, especially in youth, with a purse 
incompetent to this demand. — A respected 
friend of ours, during his late visit to the 
metropolis, presented himself for admission 
to Saint Paul's. At the same time a decently- 
clothed man, with as decent a wife, and 
child, were bargaining for the same indul- 
gence. The price was only two-pence each 
person. The poor but decent man hesitated, 
desirous to go in : but there were three of 
them, and he turned away reluctanljjy. 
Perhaps he wished to have seen the tomb of 
Nelson. Perhaps the interior of the cathe- 
dral was his object. But in the state of his 
finances, even sixpence might reasonably 
seem too much. Tell the aristocracy of the 
country (no man can do it more impres- 
sively) ; instruct them of what value these 
insignificant pieces of money, these minims 



to their sight, may be to their humbler 
brethren. Shame these sellers out of the 
Temple ! Show the poor, that you can 
sometimes think of them in some other light 
than as mutineers and mal-contents. Con- 
ciliate them by such kind methods to their 
superiors, civil and ecclesiastical. Stop the 
mouths of the railers ; and suffer your old 
friends, upon the old terms, again to honour 
and admire you. Stifle not the suggestions 
of your better nature with the stale evasion, 
that an indiscriminate admission would ex- 
pose the tombs to violation. Eemember 
your boy-days. Did you ever see, or hear, 
of a mob in the Abbey, while it was free to 
all ? Do the rabble come there, or trouble 
their heads about such speculations ? It is 
all that you can do to drive them into your 
churches ; they do not voluntarily offer 
themselves. They have, alas ! no passion 
for antiquities ; for tomb of king or prelate, 
sage or poet. If they had, they would no 
longer be the rabble. 

" For forty years that I have known the 
fabric, the only well-attested charge of 
violation adduced, has been — a ridiculous 
dismemberment committed upon the effigy 
of that amiable spy, Major Andre. And is 
it for this — the wanton mischief of some 
school-boy, fired perhaps with raw notions of 
transatlantic freedom — or the remote possi- 
bility of such a mischief occurring again, so 
easily to be prevented by stationing a 
constable within the walls, if the vergers are 
incompetent to the duty — is it iipon such 
wretched pretences, that the people of Eng- 
land are made to pay a new Peter's pence, 
so long abrogated ; or must content them- 
selves with contemplating the ragged exterior 
of their Cathedral ? The mischief was done 
about the time that you were a scholar there. 
Do you know anything about the unfortunate 
relic ? — can you help us in this emergency to 
find the nose 1 — or can you give Chantrey a 
notion, (from memory) of its pristine life and 
vigour ? I am willing for peace' sake to 
subscribe my guinea towards a restoration of 
the lamented feature. 

" I am, sir, your humble servant, 

"Elia." 



The feeling with which this letter was 
received by Southey may be best described 



130 



LETTERS TO SOUTHEY AND BARTON. 



in his own words in a letter to the publisher. 
" On my part there was not even a momentary 
feeling of anger ; I was very much surprised 
and grieved, because I knew how much he 
would condemn himself. And yet no resent- 
ful letter was ever written less offensively : 
his gentle nature may be seen in it through- 
out." Southey was right in his belief in the 
revulsion Lamb's feelings would undergo, 
when the excitement under which he had 
written subsided ; for although he would 
retract nothing he had ever said or written 
in defence of his Mends, he was ready at 
once to surrender every resentment of his 
own. Southey came to London in the fol- 
lowing month, and wrote proposing to call at 
Islington ; and 21st of November Lamb thus 
replied : — 



TO MR. SOUTHEY. 

" E. I. H., 21st November, 1823. 

"Dear Southey, — The kindness of your 
note has melted away the mist which was 
upon me. I have been fighting against a 
shadow. That accursed Q. E. had vexed me 
by a gratuitous speaking, of its own know- 
ledge, that the ' Confessions of a D d ' 

was a genuine description of the state of the 
writer. Little things, that are not ill meant, 
may produce much ill. That might have 
injured me alive and dead. I am in a public 
office, and my life is insured. I was prepared 
for anger, and I thought I saw, in a few 
obnoxious words, a hard case of repetition 
directed against me. I wish both magazine 
and review at the bottom of the sea. I shall 
be ashamed to see you, and my sister (though 
innocent) will be still more so ; for the folly 
was done without her knowledge, and has 
made her uneasy ever since. My guardian 
angel was absent at that time. 

" I will muster up courage to see you, how- 
ever, any day next week (Wednesday ex- 
cepted). We shall hope that you will bring 
Edith with you. That will be a second 
mortification. She will hate to see us, but 
come and heap embers. We deserve it, I 
for what I've done, and she for being my 
sister. 

" Do come early in the day, by sun-light, 
that you may see my Milton. 

"I am at Colebrook-cottage, Colebrook- 
row, Islington. A detached whitish house, 



close to the New River, end of Colebrook 
Terrace, left hand from Sadler's Wells. 
" Will you let me know the day before 1 
" Your penitent, C. Lamb. 

" P.S, — I do not think your hand-writing 
at all like ****' s . I do not think many 
things I did think." 

In the following letter, of the same date, 
Lamb anticipates the meeting. 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

" Dear B. B., — I am ashamed at not 
acknowledging your kind, little poem, which 
I must needs like much ; but I protest I 
thought I had done it at the moment. Is it 
possible a letter has miscarried 1 Did you 
get one in which I sent you an extract from 
the poems of Lord Sterling? I should 
wonder if you did, for I sent you none such. 
There was an incipient lie strangled in the 
birth. Some people's conscience is so tender ! 
But, in plain truth, I thank you very much 
for the verses. I have a very kind letter 
from the Laureat, with a self-invitation to 
come and shake hands with me. This is 
truly handsome and noble. 'Tis worthy of 
my old idea of Southey. Shall not I, think 
you, be covered with a red suffusion % 

" You are too much apprehensive of your 
complaint : I know many that are always 
ailing of it, and live on to a good old age. 
I know a merry fellow (you partly know 
him) who, when his medical adviser told him 
he had drunk away all that part, congratu- 
lated himself (now his liver was gone) that 
he should be the longest liver of the two. 

" The best way in these cases is to keep 
yourself as ignorant as you can, as ignorant 
as the world was before Galen, of the entire 
inner construction of the animal man ; not 
to be conscious of a midriff ; to hold kidneys 
(save a sheep and swine) to be an agreeable 
fiction ; not to know whereabouts the gall 
grows ; to account the circulation of the 
blood an idle whimsey of Harvey's ; to 
acknowledge no mechanism not visible. For, 
once fix the seat of your disorder, and your 
fancies flux into it like bad humours. Those 
medical gentries choose each his favourite 
part ; one takes the lungs, another the 
aforesaid liver, and refer to that, whatever 
in the animal economy is amiss. Above all, 



LETTER TO AINSWORTH. 



131 



use exercise, take a little more spirituous 
liquors, learn to smoke, continue to keep a 
good conscience, and avoid tampering with 
hard terms of art — viscosity, scirrhosity, and 
those bugbears by which simple patients are 
scared into their graves. Believe the general 
sense of the mercantile world, which holds 
that desks are not deadly. It is the mind, 
good B. B., and not the limbs, that taints by 
long sitting. Think of the patience of 
tailors, think how long the Lord Chancellor 
sits, think of the brooding hen ! I protest 
I cannot answer thy sister's kind inquiry ; 
but I judge, I shall put forth no second 
volume. More praise than buy ; and T. and 
H. are not particularly disposed for martyrs. 
Thou wilt see a funny passage, and yet a 
true history, of George Dyer's aquatic 
incursion in the next i London.' Beware his 
fate, when thou comest to see me at my 
Colebrook-cottage. I have filled my little 
space with my little thoughts. I wish thee 
ease on thy sofa ; but not too much indul- 
gence on it. From my poor desk, thy fellow- 
sufferer, this bright November, 

"C. L." 

Southey went to Colebrook-cottage, as 
proposed ; the awkwardness of meeting went 
off in a moment ; and the affectionate 
intimacy, which had lasted for almost twenty 
years, was renewed, to be interrupted only 
by death. 



CHAPTEE XIV. 

[1823 to 1825.] 

LETTERS TO AINSWORTH, BARTON, AND COLERIDGE. 

Lamb was fond of visiting the Universities 
in the summer vacation, and repeatedly spent 
his holiday month at Cambridge with his 
sister. On one of these occasions they met 
with a little girl, who being in a manner 
alone in the world, engaged their sympathy, 
and soon riveted their affections. Emma 
Isola was the daughter of Mr. Charles Isola, 
who had been one of the esquire bedells of 
the University ; her grandfather, Agostino 
Isola, had been compelled to fly from Milan, 
because a friend took up an English book in 
his apartment, which he had carelessly left 



in view. This good old man numbered 
among his pupils, Gray the poet, Mr. Pitt, 
and, in his old age, Wordsworth, whom he 
instructed in the Italian language. His little 
grand-daughter, at the time when she had 
the good fortune to win the regard of Mr. 
Lamb, had lost both her parents, and was 
spending her holidays with an aunt, who 
lived with a sister of Mr. Ayrton, at whose 
house Lamb generally played his evening 
rubber during his stay at Cambridge. The 
liking which both Lamb and his sister took 
for the little orphan, led to their begging her 
of her aunt for the next holidays ; their 
regard for her increased ; she regularly spent 
the holidays with them till she left school, 
and afterwards was adopted as a daughter, 
and lived generally with them until 1833, 
when she married Mr. Moxon. Lamb was 
fond of taking long walks in the country, 
and as Miss Lamb's strength was not always 
equal to these pedestrian excursions, she 
became his constant companion in walks 
which even extended " to the green fields of 
pleasant Hertfordshire." 

About this time, Lamb added to his list of 
friends, Mr. Hood, the delightful humourist ; 
Hone, lifted for a short time into political 
fame by the prosecution of his Parodies, and 
the signal energy and success of his defence, 
but now striving by unwearied researches, 
which were guided by a pure taste and an 
honest heart, to support a numerous family ; 
and Ainsworth, then a youth, who has since 
acquired so splendid a reputation as the 
author of "Rookwood" and "Crichton." 
Mr. Ainsworth, then resident at Manchester, 
excited by an enthusiastic admiration of 
Elia, had sent him some books, for which he 
thus conveyed his thanks to his unseen 
friend. 

TO MR. AINSWORTH. 

"India-House, 9th Dec. 1823. 
"Dear Sir, — I should have thanked you 
for your books and compliments sooner, but 
have been waiting for a revise to be sent, 
which does not come, though I returned the 
proof on the receipt of your letter. I have 
read "Warner with great pleasure. What an 
elaborate piece of alliteration and antithesis ! 
why it must have been a labour far above 
the most difficult versification. There is a 



k 2 



132 



LETTER TO AINSWORTH. 



fine simile or picture of Semiramis arming to 
repel a siege. I do not mean to keep the 
book, for I suspect you are forming a curious 
collection, and I do not pretend to anything 
of the kind. I have not a black-letter book 
among mine, old Chaucer excepted, and am 
not bibliomanist enough to like black-letter. 
It is painful to read ; therefore I must insist 
on returning it at opportunity, not from 
contumacy and reluctance to be obliged, but 
because it must suit you better than me. 
The loss of a present from should never 
exceed the gain of a present to. I hold this 
maxim infallible in the accepting line. — I 
read your magazines with satisfaction. I 
thoroughly agree with you as to 'The 
German Faust,' as far as I can do justice to 
it from an English translation. 'Tis a 
disagreeable canting tale of seduction, which 
has nothing to do with the spirit of Faustus 
— Curiosity. Was the dark secret to be 
explored, to end in the seducing of a weak 
girl, which might have been accomplished 
by earthly agency ? "When Marlow gives his 
Faustus a mistress, he flies him at Helen, 
flower of Greece, to be sure, and not at Miss 
Betsy, or Miss Sally Thoughtless. 

' Cut is the branch that bore the goodly fruit, 
And wither'd is Apollo's laurel tree : 
Faustus is dead.' 

" What a noble natural transition from 
metaphor to plain speaking ! as if the 
figurative had flagged in description of such 
a loss, and was reduced to tell the fact 
simply. 

" I must now thank you for your very kind 
invitation. It is not out of prospect that I 
may see Manchester some day, and then I 
will avail myself of your kindness. But 
holidays are scarce things with me, and the 
laws of attendance are getting stronger and 
stronger at Leadenhall. But I shall bear it 
in mind. Meantime, something may (more 
probably) bring you to town, where I shall 
be happy to see you. I am always to be 
found (alas !) at my desk in the fore part of 
the day. 

" I wonder why they do not send the revise. 
I leave late at office, and my abode lies out 
of the way, or I should have seen about it. 
If you are impatient, perhaps a line to the 
printer, directing him to send it me, at 
Accountant's Office, may answer. You will 



see by the scrawl that I only snatch a few 
minutes from intermitting business. 

" Your obliged servant, C. Lamb." 

"(If I had time I would go over this letter 
again, and dot all my i's.)" 



To Ainsworth, still pressing him to visit 
Manchester, he sent the following reply. 

TO MR. AINSWORTH. 

"I. H., Dec. 29th, 1823.1.' \ 

" My dear sir, — You talk of months at a 
time, and I know not what inducements to 
visit Manchester, Heaven knows how grati- 
fying ! but I have had my little month of 
1823 already. It is all over, and without 
incurring a disagreeable favour, I cannot so 
much as get a single holiday till the season 
returns with the next year. Even our half- 
hour's absences from office are set down in a 
book ! Next year, if I can spare a day or 
two of it, I will come to Manchester, but 
I have reasons at home against longer 
absences. 

" I am so ill just at present — (an illness of 
my own procuring last night ; who is 
perfect ?)— that nothing but your very great 
kindness could make me write. I will bear 
in mind the letter to W. W., and you shall 
have it quite in time, before the 12th. 

" My aching and confused head warns me 
to leave off. With a muddled sense of grate- 
fulness, which I shall apprehend more clearly 
to-morrow, I remain, your friend unseen, 

" C. L." 

" Will your occasions or inclination bring 
you to London ! It will give me great 
pleasure to show you everything that Isling- 
ton can boast, if you know the meaning of 
that very Cockney sound. We have the New 
Eiver ! I am ashamed of this scrawl, but I 
beg you to accept it for the present. I am 
full of qualms. 

' A fool at fifty is a fool indeed.' " 

Bernard Barton still frequently wrote to 
him : and he did not withhold the wished-for 
reply even when letter-writing was a burthen. 
The following gives a ludicrous account of 
his indisposition : — 



LETTERS TO BARTON. 



133 



TO BERNARD BARTON. 

"Jan. 9th, 1824. 

Dear B. B., — Do you know what it is to 
succumb under an insurmountable day-mare, 
— ' a whoreson lethargy,' Falstaff calls it, — 
an indisposition to do anything, or to be 
anything, — a total deadness and distaste, — a 
suspension of vitality, — an indifference to 
locality, — a numb, soporifical, good-for- 
nothingness, — an ossification all over, — an 
oyster-like insensibility to the passing events, 
~-a mind-stupor, — a brawny defiance to the 
needles of a thrusting-in conscience. Did 
you ever have a very bad cold, with a total 
irresolution to submit to water-gruel pro- 
cesses ? This has been for many weeks my 
lot, and my excuse ; my fingers drag heavily 
over this paper, and to my thinking it is 
three-and-twenty furlongs from here to the 
end of this demi-sheet. I have not a thing 
to say ; nothing is of more importance than 
another ; I am flatter than a denial or a 

pancake ; emptier than Judge 's wig 

when the head is in it ; duller than a country 
stage when the actors are off it ; a cipher, 
an ! I acknowledge life at all, only by an 
occasional convulsional cough, and a perma- 
nent phlegmatic pain in the chest. I am 
weary of the world ; life is weary of me. 
My day is gone into twilight, and I don't 
think it worth the expense of candles. My 
wick hath a thief in it, but I can't muster 
courage to snuff it. I inhale suffocation ; I 
can't distinguish veal from mutton ; nothing 
interests me. 'Tis twelve o'clock, and 
Thurtell is just now coming out upon the 
New Drop, Jack Ketch alertly tucking up 
his greasy sleeves to do the last office of 
mortality, yet cannot I elicit a groan or a 
moral reflection. If you told me the world 
will be at an end to-morrow, I should just 
say, ' Will it 1 ' I have not volition enough 
left to dot my i's, much less to comb my 
eyebrows ; my eyes are set in my head ; my 
brains are gone out to see a poor relation in 
Moorfields, and they did not say when they'd 
come back again ; my skull is a Grub-street 
attic, to let — not so much as a joint-stool or 
a crack'd Jordan left in it ; my hand writes, 
not I, from habit, as chickens run about a 
little, when their heads are off. O for a 
vigorous fit of gout, cholic, toothache, — an 
earwig in my auditory, a fly in my visual 



organs ; pain is life — the sharper, the more 
evidence of life ; but this apathy, this death ! 
Did you ever have an obstinate cold, — a six 
or seven weeks' unintermitting chill and 
suspension of hope, fear, conscience, and 
everything ? Yet do I try all I can to cure 
it ; I try wine, and spirits, and smoking, and 
snuff in unsparing quantities, but they all 
only seem to make me worse, instead of. 
better. I sleep in a damp room, but it does 
me no good ; I come home late o' nights, but 
do not find any visible amendment ! Who 
shall deliver me from the body of this 
death ? 

" It is just fifteen minutes after twelve ; 
Thurtell is by this time a good way on his 
journey, baiting at Scorpion perhaps ; Ketch 
is bargaining for his cast coat and waistcoat ; 
the Jew demurs at first at three half-crowns, 
but, on consideration that he may get 
somewhat by showing 'em in the town, 
finally closes. C. L." 



Barton took this letter rather seriously, 
and Lamb thus sought to remove his friendly 
anxieties. 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

"Jan. 23rd, 1824. 

"My dear sir, — That peevish letter of 
mine, which was meant to convey an apology 
for my incapacity to write, seems to have 
been taken by you in too serious a light ; it 
was only my way of telling you I had a 
severe cold. The fact is, I have been 
insuperably dull and lethargic for many 
weeks, and cannot rise to the vigour of a 
letter, much less an essay. The ' London ' 
must do without me for a time, for I have 
lost all interest about it ; and whether I shall 
recover it again I know not. I will bridle 
my pen another time, and not teaze and 
puzzle you with my aridities. I shall begin 
to feel a little more alive with the spring. 
Winter is to me (mild or harsh) always a 
great trial of the spirits. I am ashamed not 
to have noticed your tribute to Woolman, 
whom we love so much. It is done in your 
good manner. Your friend Tayler called 
upon me some time since, and seems a very 
amiable man. His last story is painfully 
fine. His book I ' like ; ' it is only too 
stuffed with scripture, too parsonish. The 



134 



LETTERS TO BARTOK 



best thing in it is the boy's own story. 
When I say it is too full of scripture, I mean 
it is too full of direct quotations ; no book 
can have too much of silent scripture in it ; 
but the natural power of a story is dimin- 
ished when the uppermost purpose in the 
writer seems to be to recommend something 
else, viz., Religion. You know what Horace 
says of the Deus intersit ? I am not able to 
explain myself, — you must do it for me. My 
sister's part in the ' Leicester School ' (about 
two-thirds) was purely her own ; as it was 
(to the same quantity) in the ' Shakspeare 
Tales ' which bear my name. I wrote only 
the ' Witch Aunt ; ' the ' First Going to 
Church ; ' and the final story, about ' A little 
Indian girl,' in a ship. Your account of my 
black-balling amused me. I think, as Quakers 
they did right. There are some things hard 
to be understood. The more I think, the 
more I am vexed at having puzzled you with 
that letter ; but I have been so out of letter- 
writing of late years, that it is a sore effort 
to sit down to it ; and I felt in your debt, 
and sat down waywardly to pay you in bad 
money. Never mind my dulness ; I am used 
to long intervals of it. The heavens seem 
brass to me • then again comes the refreshing 
shower — 

' I have been merry once or twice ere now.' 

" You said something about Mr. Mitford 
in a late letter, which I believe I did not 
advert to. I shall be happy to show him my 
Milton (it is all the show things I have) at 
any time he will take the trouble of a jaunt 
to Islington. I do also hope to see Mr. Tayler 
there some day. Pray say so to both. 
Coleridge's book is in good part printed, but 
sticks a little for more copy. It bears an 
unsaleable title, ' Extracts from Bishop Leigh- 
ton,' but I am confident there will be plenty 
of good notes in it. 

" Keep your good spirits up dear B. B., 
mine will return ; they are at present in 
abeyance ; but I am rather lethargic than 
miserable. I don't know but a good horse- 
whip would be more beneficial to me than 
physic. My head, without aching, will teach 
yours to ache. It is well I am>.getting to the 
conclusion. I will send a better letter when 
I am a better man. Let me thank you for 
your kind concern for me, (which I trust will 
have reason soon to be dissipated,) and 



assure you that it gives me pleasure to hear 
from you. Yours truly. C. L." 

The following sufficiently indicate the 
circumstances under which they were 
written : — 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

"February 25th, 1824. 

"My dear sir, — Your title of 'Poetic 
Vigils ' arrides me much more than a volume 
of verse, which has no meaning. The motto 
says nothing, but I cannot suggest a better.! 
I do not like mottoes, but where they are 
singularly felicitous ; there is foppery in 
them ; they are un-plain, un-Quakerish ; 
they are good only where they flow from the 
title, and are a kind of justification of it. 
There is nothing about watchings or lucu- 
brations in the one you suggest, no com- 
mentary on vigils. By the way, a wag would 
recommend you to the line of Pope, 

1 Sleepless himself — to give his readers sleep.' 

I by no means wish it ; but it may explain 
what I mean, — that a neat motto is child of 
the title. I think ' Poetic Vigils ' as short 
and sweet as can be desired ; only have an 
eye on the proof, that the printer do not 
substitute virgils, which would ill accord 
with your modesty or meaning. Your 
suggested motto is antique enough in spelling, 
and modern enough in phrases, — a good 
modern antique ; but the matter of it is 
germain to the purpose, only supposing the 
title proposed a vindication of yourself from 
the presumption of authorship. The first 
title was liable to this objection — that if you 
were disposed to enlarge it, and the book- 
seller insisted on its appearance in two tomes, 
how oddly it would sound, ' A Volume of 
Verse in two Volumes, Second Edition,' &c. 
You see thro' my wicked intention of cur- 
tailing this epistolet by the above device of 
large margin. But in truth the idea of 
letterising has been oppressive to me of late 
above your candour to give me credit for. 
There is Southey, whom I ought to have 
thanked a fortnight ago for a present of the 
' Church Book : ' I have never had courage 
to buckle myself in earnest even to acknow- 
ledge it by six words ; and yet I am accounted 
by some people a good man. How cheap 
that character is acquired ! Pay your debts, 



LETTERS TO BARTON. 



135 



don't borrow money, nor twist your kitten's 
neck off, or disturb a congregation, &c, your 
business is done. I know things (thoughts 
or things, thoughts are things,) of myself, 
which would make every friend I have fly 
me as a plague patient. I once * * *, and 
set a dog upon a crab's leg that was shoved 
out under a mass of sea-weeds, — a pretty 
little feeler. Oh ! pah ! how sick I am of 
that ; and a lie, a mean one, I once told. I 
stink in the midst of respect. I am much, 
hypt. The fact is, my head is heavy, but 
there is hope ; or if not, I am better than a 
poor shell-fish ; not morally, when I set the 
whelp upon it, but have more blood and 
spirits. Things may turn up, and I may 
creep again into a decent opinion of myself. 
Yanity will return with sunshine. Till when, 
pardon my neglects, and impute it to the 
wintry solstice. C. Lamb." 



TO BERNARD BARTON. 

[No date.] 

" Dear B. B., — I am sure I cannot fill a 
letter, though I should disfurnish my skull to 
fill it ; but you expect something and shall 
have a notelet. Is Sunday, not divinely 
speaking, but humanly and holidaysically, a 
blessing 1 Without its institution, would 
our rugged taskmasters have given us a 
leisure day, so often, think you, as once in a 
month ? or, if it had not been instituted, 
might they not have given us every sixth 
day 1 Solve me this problem. If we are to 
go three times a-day to church, why has 
Sunday slipt into the notion of a hollid&y 1 
A HoLY-day I grant it. The Puritans, I 
have read in Southey's book, knew the 
distinction. They made people observe 
Sunday rigorously, would not let a nursery- 
maid walk out in the fields with children for 
recreation on that day. But then — they gave 
the 'people a holliday from all sorts of work 
every second Tuesday. This was giving to 
the two Caesars that which was his respective. 
Wise, beautiful, thoughtful, generous legis- 
lators ! Would Wilberforce give us our 
Tuesdays 1 No ! — he would turn the six 
days into sevenths, 

' And those three smiling seasons of the year 
Into a Russian winter.' — Old Play. 

" I am sitting opposite a person who is 
making strange distortions with the gout, 



which is not unpleasant — to me at least. 
What is the reason we do not sympathise 
with pain, short of some terrible surgical 
operation ? Hazlitt, who boldly says all he 
feels, avows that not only he does not pity 
sick people, but he hates them. I obscurely 
recognise his meaning. Pain is probably too 
selfish a consideration, too simply a con- 
sideration of self-attention. We pity poverty, 
loss of friends, &c. — more complex things, in 
which the sufferer's feelings are associated 
with others. This is a rough thought 
suggested by the presence of gout ; I want 
head to extricate it and plane it. What is 
all this to your letter ? I felt it to be a good 
one, but my turn when I write at all, is 
perversely to travel out of the record, so that 
my letters are anything but answers. So 
you still want a motto ? You must not take 
my ironical one, because your book, I take 
it, is too serious for it. Bickerstaff might 
have used it for his lucubrations. What do 
you think of (for a title) Eeligio Tremuli ? 
or Tremebundi % There is Eeligio-Medici 
and Laici. But perhaps the volume is not 
quite Quakerish enough, or exclusively so, 
for it. Your own ' Yigils ' is perhaps the 
best. While I have space, let me congratu- 
late with you the return of spring, what a 
summery spring too ! all those qualms about 
the dog and cray-fish melt before it. I am 
going to be happy and vain again. 

" A hasty farewell. 

"C.Lamb." 

to bernard barton. 

" July 7th, 1824. 

" Dear B. B., — I have been suffering under 
a severe inflammation of the eyes, notwith- 
standing which I resolutely went through 
your very pretty volume at once, which I 
dare pronounce in no ways inferior to former 
lucubrations. ' Abroad ' and ' lord ' are vile 
rhymes notwithstanding, and if you count 
you will wonder how many times you have 
repeated the word unearthly ; thrice in one 
poem. It is become a slang word with the 
bards ; avoid it in future lustily. ' Time ' is 
fine, but there are better a good deal, I think. 
The volume does not lie by me ; and, after a 
long day's smarting fatigue, which has almost 
put out my eyes (not blind however to your 
merits), I dare not trust myself with long 
writing. The verses to Bloomfield are the 



136 



LETTERS TO BARTON. 



sweetest in the collection. Religion is some- 
times lugged in, as if it did not come naturally. 
I will go over carefully when I get my seeing, 
and exemplify. You have also too much of 
singing metre, such as requires no deep ear 
to make ; lilting measure, in which you have 
done Woolman injustice. Strike at less 
superficial melodies. The piece on Nayler is 
more to my fancy. 

"My eye runs waters. But I will give 
you a fuller account some day. The book is 
a very pretty one in more than one sense. 
The decorative harp, perhaps, too ostenta- 
tious ; a simple pipe preferable. 

" Farewell, and many thanks. 

"C.Lamb." 

to bernard barton. 

"August, 1824. 

" Dear B. B., — I congratulate you on getting 
a house over your head. I find the comfort 
of it I am sure. The ' Prometheus,' unbound, 
is a capital story. The literal rogue ! "What 
if you had ordered ' Elfrida,' in sheets ! she 'd 
have been sent up, I warrant you. Or bid 
him clasp his Bible (*. e. to his bosom), he 'd 
have clapt on a brass clasp, no doubt. 

" I can no more understand Shelley than 
you can. His poetry is 'thin sown with 
profit or delight.' Yet I must point to your 
notice, a sonnet conceived and expressed 
with a witty delicacy. It is that addressed 
to one who hated him, but who could not 
persuade him to hate him again. His coy- 
ness to the other's passion — (for hate demands 
a return as much as love, and starves without 
it) — is most arch and pleasant. Pray, like it 
very much. For his theories and nostrums, 
they are oracular enough, but I either com- 
prehend 'em not, or there is ' miching malice ' 
and mischief in 'em, but, for the most part, 
ringing with their own emptiness. Hazlitt 
said well of 'em — 'Many are the wiser and 
better for reading Shakspeare, but nobody 
was ever wiser or better for reading Shelley.' 
I wonder you will sow your correspondence 
on so barren a ground as I am, that make 
such poor returns. But my head aches at 
the bare thought of letter-writing. I wish 
all the ink in the ocean dried up, and would 
listen to the quills shivering up in the candle 
flame, like parching martyrs. The same 
indisposition to write it is has stopt my 
' Elias,' but you will see a futile effort in the 



next number, 'wrung from me with slow 
pain.' The fact is, my head is seldom cool 
enough. I am dreadfully indolent. To have 
to do anything — to order me a new coat, for 
instance, though my old buttons are shelled 
like beans — is an effort. My pen stammers 
like my tongue. What cool craniums those 
old inditers of folios must have had, what a 
mortified pulse ! Well ; once more I throw 
myself on your mercy. Wishing peace in 
thy new dwelling, C. Lamb." 

Mr. Barton, having requested of Lamb 
some verses for his daughter's album, 
received the following with the accompanying 
letter beneath, on 30th September in this 
year. Surely the neat loveliness of female 
Quakerism never received before so delicate 
a compliment ! 

" THE ALBUM OF LUCY BARTON. 



Little book, surnamed of white, 
Clean as yet, and fair to sight, 
Keep thy attribution right. 

Never disproportion^ scrawl, 
Ugly, old, (that's worse than all,) 
On thy maiden clearness fall ! 

In each letter here design'd, 
Let the reader emblem find 
Neatness of tbe owner's mind. 

Gilded margins count a sin ; 
Let tby leaves attraction win 
By the golden rules witbin ; 

Sayings fetch'd from sages old ; 
Laws which Holy Writ unfold, 
Worthy to be graved in gold : 

Lighter fancies ; not excluding 
Blameless wit, with nothing rude in, 
Sometimes mildly interluding 

Amid strains of graver measure : 
Virtue's self hath oft her pleasure 
In sweet Muses' groves of leisure. 

Riddles dark, perplexing sense ; 

Darker meanings of offence ; 

What but shades — be banish'd hence 

Whitest thoughts, in whitest dress, 
Candid meanings best express 
Mind of quiet Quakeress." 



TO BERNARD BARTON. 

" Dear B. B., — ' I am ill at these numbers ; ' 
but if the above be not too mean to have a 
place in thy daughter's sanctum, take them 
with pleasure. 

" I began on another sheet of paper, and 
just as I had penned the second line of 
stanza two, an ugly blot fell, to illustrate 



LETTER TO COLERIDGE. 



137 



my counsel. I am sadly given to blot, and 
modern blotting-paper gives no redress ; it 
only smears, and makes it worse. The only 
remedy is scratching out, which gives it a 
clerkish look. The most innocent blots are 
made with red ink, and are rather orna- 
mental. Marry, they are not always to be 
distinguished from the effusions of a cut 
finger.. Well, I hope and trust thy tick 
doleru, or, however you spell it, is vanished, 
for I have frightful impressions of that tick, 
and do altogether hate it, as an unpaid score, 
or the tick of a death-watch. I take it to be 
a species of Vitus's dance (I omit the sanctity, 
writing to ' one of the men called friends'). 
I knew a young lady who could dance no 
other ; she danced it through life, and very 
queer and fantastic were her steps. 

" Heaven bless thee from such measures, 
and keep thee from the foul fiend, who 
delights to lead after false fires in the night, 
Flibbertigibbet, that gives the web, and I 
forget what else. 

"From my den, as Bunyan has it, 30th. 
Sep. 1824. C. L." 



Here is a humorous expostulation with 
Coleridge for carrying away a book from the 
cottage, in the absence of its inmates. 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

[No date.] 

"Dear C, — Why will you make your 
visits, which should give pleasure, matter of 
regret to your friends ? you never come but 
you take away some folio, that is part of my 
existence. With a great deal of difficulty I 
was made to comprehend the extent of my 
loss. My maid, Becky, brought me a dirty 
bit of paper, which contained her description 
of some book which Mr. Coleridge had taken 
away. It was 'Luster's Tables,' which, for 
some time, I could not make out. * What ! 
has he carried away any of the tables, Becky ? ' 
' No, it wasn't any tables, but it was a book 
that he called Luster's Tables.' I was obliged 
to search personally among my shelves, and 
a huge fissure suddenly disclosed to me the 
true nature of the damage I had sustained. 
That book, C, you should not have taken 
away, for it is not mine, it is the property of 
a friend, who does not know its value, nor 
indeed have I been very sedulous in explain- 



ing to him the estimate of it ; but was 
rather contented in giving a sort of corrobo- 
ration to a hint that he let fall, as to its 
being suspected to be not genuine, so that in 
all probability it would have fallen to me as 
a deodand, not but I am as sure it is Luther's, 
as I am sure that Jack Bunyan wrote the 
' Pilgrim's Progress,' but it was not for me to 
pronounce upon the validity of testimony 
that had been disputed by learneder clerks 
than I, so I quietly let it occupy the place it 
had usurped upon my shelves, and should 
never have thought of issuing an ejectment 
against it ; for why should I be so bigoted 
as to allow rites of hospitality to none but 
my own books, children, &c. 1 — a species of 
egotism I abhor from my heart. No ; let 
'em all snug together, Hebrews and Pros- 
elytes of the gate ; no selfish partiality of 
mine shall make distinction between them ; 
I charge no warehouse-room for my friends' 
commodities ; they are welcome to come and 
stay as long as they like, without paying rent. 
I have several such strangers that I treat 
with more than Arabian courtesy ; there 's 
a copy of More's fine poem, which is none of 
mine, but I cherish it as my own ; I am none 
of those churlish landlords that advertise 
the goods to be taken away in ten days' 
time, or then to be sold to pay expenses. So 
you see I had no right to lend you that 
book ; I may lend you my own books, 
because it is at my own hazard, but it is not 
honest to hazard a friend's property ; I 
always make that distinction. I hope you 
will bring it with you, or send it by Hartley ; 
or he can bring that, and you the ' Polemical 
Discourses,' and come and eat some atoning 
mutton with us one of these days shortly. 
We are engaged two or three Sundays deep, 
but always dine at home on week-days at 
half-past four. So come all four — men and 
books I mean — my third shelf (northern 
compartment) from the top has two devilish 
gaps, where you have knocked out its two 
eye-teeth. 

" Your wronged friend, 

" C. Lamb." 

The following preface to a letter, addressed 
to Miss Hutchinson, Mrs. Wordsworth's 
sister, playing on the pretended defects of 
Miss Lamb's handwriting, is one of those 
artifices of affection which, not finding scope 



13S 



,ETTERS TO MISS HUTCHINSON AND BARTON. 



in eulogistic epithets, take refuge in apparent 
abuse. Lamb himself, at this time, wrote a 
singularly neat hand, having greatly improved 
in the India House, where he also learned to 
nourish, — a facility he took a pride in, and 
sometimes indulged ; but his flourishes 
(wherefore it would be too curious to inquire) 
almost always shaped themselves into a 
visionary corkscrew, " never made to draw." 

TO MISS HUTCHINSON. 

" Dear Miss H., — Mary has such an invin- 
cible reluctance to any epistolary exertion, 
that I am sparing her a mortification by 
taking the pen from her. The plain truth 
is, she writes such a pimping, mean, detestable 
hand, that she is ashamed of the formation 
of her letters. There is an essential poverty 
and abjectness in the frame of them. They 
look like begging letters. And then she is 
sure to omit a most substantial word in the 
second draught (for she never ventures an 
epistle without a foul copy first), which is 
obliged to be interlined ; which spoils the 
neatest epistle, you know. Her figures, 
1, 2, 3, 4, &c, where she has occasion to 
express numerals, as in the date (25th April, 
1823), are not figures, but figurantes ; and 
the combined posse go staggering up and 
down shameless, as drunkards in the day- 
time. It is no better when she rules her 
paper. Her Lines ' are not less erring ' than 
her words. A sort of unnatural parallel 
lines, that are perpetually threatening to 
meet ; which, you know, is quite contrary to 
Euclid. Her very blots are not bold like 
this [here a large Hot is inserted], but poor 
smears, half left in and half scratched out, 
with another smear left in their place. I 
like a clear letter. A bold free hand, and a 
fearless flourish. Then she has always to go 
through them (a second operation) to dot her 
i's, and cross her fs. I don't think she can 
make a corkscrew if she tried, which has 
such a fine effect at the end or middle of an 
epistle, and fills up. 

" There is a corkscrew ! One of the best 
I ever drew. By the way, what incomparable 
whisky that was of M.'s ! But if I am to 
write a letter, let me begin, and not stand 
flourishing, like a fencer at a fair. 

" It gives me great pleasure, &c. &c. &c. 
[The letter now begins.] 



What a strange mingling of humour and 
solemn truth is there in the following 
reflection on Fauntleroy's fate, in a letter 
addressed to Bernard Barton ? 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

" Dec. 1st, 1824. 

" And now, my dear sir, trifling apart, the 
gloomy catastrophe of yesterday morning 
prompts a sadder vein. The fate of the 
unfortunate Fauntleroy makes me, whether 
I will or no, to cast reflecting eyes around on 
such of my friends as, by a parity of situa- 
tion, are exposed to a similarity of tempta- 
tion. My very style seems to myself to 
become more impressive than usual, with the 
change of theme. Who that standeth, 
knoweth but he may yet fall ? Your hands 
as yet, I am most willing to believe, have 
never deviated into other's property. You 
think it impossible that you could ever 
commit so heinous an offence ; but so thought 
Fauntleroy once ; so have thought many 
besides him, who at last have expiated as he 
hath done. You are as yet upright ; but you 
are a banker, at least the next thing to it. 
I feel the delicacy of the subject ; but cash 
must pass through your hands, sometimes to 
a great amount. If in an unguarded hour 

but I will hope better. Consider the 

scandal it will bring upon those of your 
persuasion. Thousands would go to see a 
Quaker hanged, that would be indifferent to 
the fate of a Presbyterian or an Anabaptist. 
Think of the effect it would have on the sale 
of your poems alone, not to mention higher 
considerations ! I tremble, I am sure, at 
myself, when I think that so many poor 
victims of the law, at one time of their life, 
made as sure of never being hanged, as I in 
my presumption am too ready to do myself. 
What are we better than they 1 Do we 
come into the world with different necks 1 
Is there any distinctive mark under our left 
ears ? Are we unstrangulable, I ask you % 
Think of these things. I am shocked some- 
times at the shape of my own fingers, not 
for their resemblance to the ape tribe (which 
is something), but for the exquisite adaptation 
of them to the purposes of picking, fingering, 
&c. No one that is so framed, I maintain it, 
but should tremble. C. L." 

In the year 1824, one of Lamb's last ties 



EMANCIPATION FROM THE INDIA HOUSE. 



139 



to the theatre, as a scene of present enjoy- 
ment, was severed. Munden, the rich 
peculiarities of whose acting he has embalmed 
in one of the choicest " Essays of Elia," 
quitted the stage in the mellowness of his 
powers. His relish for Munden's acting was 
almost a new sense ; he did not compare him 
with the old comedians, as having common 
qualities with them, but regarded him as 
altogether of a different and original style. 
On the last night of his appearance, Lamb 
was very desirous to attend, but every place 
in the boxes had long been secured ; and 
Lamb was not strong enough to stand the 
tremendous rush, by enduring which, alone, 
he could hope to obtain a place in the pit ; 
when Munden's gratitude for his exquisite 
praise anticipated his wish, by providing for 
him and Miss Lamb places in a corner of 
the orchestra, close to the stage. The play 
of the " Poor Gentleman," in which Munden 
played " Sir Eobert Bramble," had concluded, 
and the audience were impatiently waiting 
for the farce, in which the great comedian 
was to delight them for the last time, when 
my attention was suddenly called to Lamb 
by Miss Kelly, who sat with my party far 
withdrawn into the obscurity of one of the 
upper boxes, but overlooking the radiant 
hollow which waved below us, to our friend. 
In his hand, directly beneath the line of stage- 
lights, glistened a huge porter-pot, which he 
was draining ; while the broad face of old 
Munden was seen thrust out from the door 
by which the musicians enter, watching the 
close of the draught, when he might receive 
and hide the portentous beaker from the 
gaze of the admiring neighbours. Some 
unknown benefactor had sent four pots of 
stout to keep up the veteran's heart during 
his last trial ; and, not able to drink them 
all, he bethought him of Lamb, and without 
considering the wonder which would be 
excited in the brilliant crowd who surrounded 
him, conveyed himself the cordial chalice to 
Lamb's parched lips. At the end of the 
same farce, Munden found himself unable to 
deliver from memory a short and elegant 
address which one of his sons had written 
for him ; but, provided against accidents, 
took it from his pocket, wiped his eyes, put 
on his spectacles, read it, and made his last 
bow. This was, perhaps, the last night when 
Lamb took a hearty interest in the present 



business scene ; for though he went now and 
then to the theatre to gratify Miss Isola, or 
to please an author who was his friend, his 
real stage henceforth only spread itself out 
in the selectest chambers of his memory. 



CHAPTER XV. 

[1825.] 

LAMB'S EMANCIPATION FROM THE INDIA HOUSE. 

The year 1825 is marked by one of the 
principal events in Lamb's uneventful life — 
his retirement from the drudgery of the 
desk, with a pension equal to two-thirds of 
his now liberal salary. The following letters 
vividly exhibit his hopes and his apprehen- 
sions before he received this noble boon from 
the East India Company, and his bewilder- 
ment of pleasure when he found himself in 
reality free. He has recorded his feelings in 
one of the most beautiful of his "Last 
Essays of Elia," entitled " The Superannuated 
Man ; " but it will be interesting to contem- 
plate them, " living as they rose," in the 
unstudied letters to which this chapter is 
devoted. 

A New Series of the London Magazine 
was commenced with this year, in an in- 
creased size and price ; but the spirit of the 
work had evaporated, as often happens to 
periodical works, as the store of rich fancies 
with which its contributors had begun, was 
in a measure exhausted. Lamb contributed 
a "Memoir of Liston," who occasionally 
enlivened Lamb's evening parties with his 
society ; and who, besides the interest which 
he derived from his theatrical fame, was 
recommended to Lamb by the cordial admi- 
ration he expressed for Munden, whom he 
used to imitate in a style delightfully blend- 
ing his own humour with that of his sometime 
rival. The " Memoir " is altogether a fiction 
— of which, as Lamb did not think it worthy 
of republication, I will only give a specimen. 
After a ludicrously improbable account of 
his hero's pedigree, birth, and early habits, 
Lamb thus represents his entrance on the 
life of an actor. 

"We accordingly find him shortly after 
making his debut, as it is called, upon the 



140 



LETTERS TO BARTON. 



Norwich boards, in the season of that year, 
being then in the 22nd year of his age. 
Having a natural bent to tragedy, he chose 
the part of 'Pyrrhus,' in the 'Distrest 
Mother,' to Sally Parker's ' Hermione.' We 
find him afterwards as 'Barnwell,' 'Alta- 
mont,' ' Chamont,' &c. ; but, as if nature had 
destined him to the sock, an unavoidable 
infirmity absolutely discapacitated him for 
tragedy. His person at this latter period of 
which I have been speaking, was graceful, 
and even commanding ; his countenance set 
to gravity ; he had the power of arresting 
the attention of an audience at first sight 
almost beyond any other tragic actor. But 
he could not hold it. To understand this 
obstacle, we must go back a few years, to 
those appalling reveries at Charnwood. 
Those illusions, which had vanished before 
the dissipation of a less recluse life, and more 
free society, now in his solitary tragic studies, 
and amid the intense calls upon feeling 
incident to tragic acting, came back upon him 
with tenfold vividness. In the midst of some 
most pathetic passage — the parting of Jaffier I 
with his dying friend, for instance — he would j 
suddenly be surprised with a fit of violent 
horse laughter. While the spectators were 
all sobbing before him with emotion, suddenly 
one of those grotesque faces would peep out 
upon him, and he could not resist the 
impulse. A timely excuse once or twice 
served his purpose, but no audiences could be 
expected to bear repeatedly this violation of 
the continuity of feeling. He describes 
them (the illusions) as so many demons 
haunting him, and paralysing every effort. 
Even now, I am told, he cannot recite the 
famous soliloquy in Hamlet, even in private, 
without immoderate bursts of laughter. 
However, what he had not force of reason 
sufficient to overcome, he had good sense 
enough to turn to emolument, and determined 
to make a commodity of his distemper. He 
prudently exchanged the buskin for the sock, 
and the illusions instantly ceased, or, if they 
occurred for a short season, by their very 
co-operation, added a zest to his comic vein ; 
some of his most catching faces being (as he 
expresses it) little more than transcripts and 
copies of those extraordinary phantasmata." 

He completed his half century on the day 
when he addressed the following letter 



TO BERNARD BARTON. 

" February 10th, 1825. 

"Dear B. B.,— The 'Spirit of the Age ' is 
by Hazlitt, the characters of Coleridge, &c. 
he had done better in former publications, 
the praise and the abuse much stronger, &c, 
but the new ones are capitally done. Home 
Tooke is a matchless portrait. My advice is, 
to borrow it rather than buy it. I have it. 
He has laid too many colours on my like- 
ness ; but I have had so much injustice done 
me in my own name, that I make a rule of 
accepting as much over-measure to Elia as 
gentlemen think proper to bestow. Lay it 
on and spare not. Your gentleman brother 
sets my mouth a-watering after liberty. Oh 
that I were kicked out of Leadenhall with 
every mark of indignity, and a competence in 
my fob. The birds of the air would not be 
so free as I should. How I would prance 
and curvet it, and pick up cowslips, and 
ramble about purposeless, as an idiot ! The 
author-mometer is a good fancy. I have 
caused great speculation in the dramatic (not 
thy) world by a lying 'Life of Liston,' all 
pure invention. The town has swallowed it, 
and it is copied into newspapers, play-bills, 
&c, as authentic. You do not know the Droll, 
and possibly missed reading the article (in 
our first number, new series). A life more 
improbable for him to have lived would not 
be easily invented. But your rebuke, coupled 
with ' Dream on J. Bunyan,' checks me. I'd 
rather do more in my favourite way, but feel 
dry. I must laugh sometimes. I am poor 
Hypochondriacus, and not Liston. 

" I have been harassed more than usually 
at office, which has stopt my correspondence 
lately. I write with a confused aching head, 
and you must accept this apology for a letter. 

" I will do something soon, if I can, as a 
peace-offering to the queen of the East 
Angles — something she shan't scold about. 
For the present farewell. 



" Thine, 



C. L." 



" I am fifty years old this day. Drink my 
health." 



Freedom now gleamed on him, and he 
became restless with the approach of deliver- 



LETTER TO WORDSWORTH. 



141 



TO BERNARD BARTON. 

"March 23rd, 1825. 

" Dear B. B., — I have had no impulse to 
write, or attend to any single object but 
myself for weeks past — my single self, I by 
myself — I. I am sick of hope deferred. The 
grand wheel is in agitation, that is to turn 
up my' fortune ; but round it rolls, and will 
turn up nothing. I have a glimpse of freedom, 
of becoming a gentleman at large ; but I am 
put off from day to day. I have offered my 
resignation, and it is neither accepted nor 
rejected. Eight weeks am I kept in this 
fearful suspense. Guess what an absorbing 
stake I feel it. I am not conscious of the 
existence of friends present or absent. The 
East India Directors alone can be that thing 
to me or not. I have just learned that 
nothing will be decided this week. Why 
the next 1 Why any week 1 It has fretted 
me into an itch of the fingers ; I rub 'em 
against paper, and write to you, rather than 
not allay this scorbuta. 

"While I can write, let me abjure you" to 

have no doubts of Irving. Let Mr. M 

drop his disrespect. Irving has prefixed a 
dedication (of a missionary subject, first part) 
to Coleridge, the most beautiful, cordial, and 
sincere. He there acknowledges his obliga- 
tion to S. T. C. for his knowledge of Gospel 
truths, the nature of a Christian Church, &c, 
to the talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (at 
whose Gamaliel feet he sits weekly), rather 
than to that of all the men living. This from 
him, the great dandled and petted sectarian 
— to a religious character so equivocal in the 
world's eye as that of S. T. C, so foreign to 
the Kirk's estimate — can this man be a 
quack 1 The language is as affecting as the 
spirit of the dedication. Some friend told 
him, ' This dedication will do you no good,' 
i.e., not in the world's repute, or with your 
own people. ' That is a reason for doing it,' 
quoth Irving. 

" I am thoroughly pleased with him. He 
is firm, out-speaking, intrepid, and docile as 
a pupil of Pythagoras. You must like him. 
" Yours, in tremors of painful hope, 

" C. Lamb." 



These tremors of painful hope were soon 
changed into certain joy. The following 



letters contain his own expressions of delight 
on his deliverance, as conveyed to several of 
his dearest friends. In the first his happiness 
is a little checked by the death of Mr. Monk- 
house, a relation of Mrs. Wordsworth, who 
had gradually won Lamb's affections, and 
who nobly deserved them. 



TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 
"Colebrook Cottage, 6th April, 1825. 
" Dear Wordsworth, — I have been several 
times meditating a letter to you concerning 
the good thing which has befallen me, but 
the thought of poor Monkhouse came across 
me. He was one that I had exulted in the 
prospect of congratulating me. He and you 
were to have been the first participators, for 
indeed it has been ten weeks since the first 
motion of it. Here am I then, after thirty- 
three years' slavery, sitting in my own room 
at eleven o'clock this finest of all April 
mornings, a freed man, with 441 £. a year for 
the remainder of my life, live I as long as 
John Dennis, who outlived his annuity and 
starved at ninety : 44H., i. e., 450£., with a 
deduction of 91. for a provision secured to 
my sister, she being survivor, the pension 
guaranteed by Act Georgii Tertii, &c. 

" I came home for ever on Tuesday in 
last week. The incomprehensibleness of my 
condition overwhelmed me. It was like 
passing from life into eternity. Every year 
to be as long as three, i. e., to have three 
times as much real time — time that is my 
own, in it ! I wandered about thinking I 
was happy, but feeling I was not. But that 
tumultuousness is passing off, and I begin to 
understand the nature of the gift. Holydays, 
even the annual month, were always uneasy 
joys ; their conscious fugitiveness ; the craving 
after making the most of them. Now, when 
all is holyday, there are no holydays. I can 
sit at home, in rain or shine, without a rest- 
less impulse for walkings. I am daily steady- 
ing, and shall soon find it as natural to me 
to be my own master, as it has been irksome 
to have had a master. Mary wakes every 
morning with an obscure feeling that some 
good has happened to us. 

" and , after their releasements, 

describe the shock of their emancipation much 
as I feel mine. But it hurt their frames. I 
eat, drink, and sleep sound as ever. I lay 



142 



LETTERS TO BARTON AND MISS HUTCHINSON 



no anxious schemes for going hither and 
thither, but take things as they occur. Yes- 
terday I excursioned twenty miles ; to-day 
I write a few letters. Pleasuring was for 
fugitive play-days, mine are fugitive only in 
the sense that life is fugitive. Freedom and 
life co-existent ! 

" At the foot of such a call upon you for 
gratulation, I am ashamed to advert to that 
melancholy event. Monkhouse was a cha- 
racter I learned to love slowly, but it grew 
upon me, yearly, monthly, daily. What a 
chasm has it made in our pleasant parties ! 
His noble friendly face was always coming 
before me, till this hurrying event in my life 
came, and for the time has absorbed all 
interest ;. in fact it has shaken me a little. 
My old desk companions, with whom I have 
had such merry hours, seem to reproach me 
for removing my lot from among them. 
They were pleasant creatures ; but to the 
anxieties of business, and a weight of possible 
worse ever impending, I was not equal. 
Indeed this last winter I was jaded out — 
winters were always worse than other parts 
of the year, because the spirits are worse, arid 
I had no day-light. In summer I had day- 
light evenings. The relief was hinted to me 
from a superior power when I, poor slave, 
had not a hope but that I must wait another 
seven years with Jacob — and lo ! the Rachel j 
which I coveted is brought to me. 

"Have you read the noble dedication of i 
Irving' s ' Missionary Orations ' to S. T. C. j 
Who shall call this man a quack hereafter ? 
What the Kirk will think of it neither I nor 
Irving care. When somebody suggested to 
him that it would not be likely to do him 
good, videlicet, among his own people, ' That 
is a reason for doing it,' was his noble 
answer. That Irving thinks he has profited 
mainly by S. T. C, I have no doubt. The 
very style of the Dedication shows it. 

" Communicate my news to Southey, and 
beg his pardon for my being so long acknow- 
ledging his kind present of the ' Church,' 
which circumstances, having no reference to 
himself, prevented at the time. Assure him 
of my deep respect and friendliest feelings. 

" Divide the same, or rather each take the 
whole to you — I mean you and all yours. 
To Miss Hutchinson I must write separate. 

" Farewell ! and end at last, long selfish 
letter ! C. Lamb." 



TO BERNARD BARTON. 

"April, 1825. 

" Dear B. B. — My spirits are so tumultuary 
with the novelty of my recent emancipation, 
that I have scarce steadiness of hand, much 
more mind, to compose a letter. I am free, 
B. B. — free as air ! 

' The little bird that wings the sky 
Knows no such liberty.' 

I was set free on Tuesday in last week at 
four o'clock. I came home for ever ! 

" I have been describing my feelings as 
well as I can to Wordsworth in a long letter, 
and don't care to repeat. Take it briefly, 
that for a few days I was painfully oppressed 
by so mighty a change, but it is becoming 
daily more natural to me. I went and sat 
among 'em all at my old thirty-three-years' 
desk yester morning ; and, deuce take me', . 
if I had not yearnings at leaving all my old 
pen-and-ink fellows, merry, sociable lads, at 
leaving them in the lurch, fag, fag, fag ! — 
The comparison of my own superior felicity 
gave me anything but pleasure. 

" B. B., I would not serve another seven 
years for seven hundred thousand pounds ! 
I have got 441?. net for life, sanctioned by 
act of parliament, with a provision for Mary 
if she survives me. I will live another fifty 
years ; or, if I live but ten, they will be 
thirty, reckoning the quantity of real time 
in them, i.e. the time that is a man's own. 
Tell me how you like ' Barbara S.* ; ' will it 
be received in atonement for the foolish 
' Vision ' — I mean by the lady % A-propos, I 
never saw Mrs. Crawford in my life ; never- 
theless it's all true of somebody. 

" Address me, in future, Colebrook- 
cottage, Islington. I am really nervous (but 
that will wear off), so take this brief 
announcement. 

"Yours truly, C. L." 

TO MISS HUTCHINSON. 

"April 18th, 1825. 
"Dear Miss Hutchinson, — You want to 
know all about my gaol delivery. Take it 
then. About twelve weeks since I had a sort 



* The true heroine of this beautiful story is still 
living, though she has left the stage. It is enough to 
make a severer quaker than B. B. feel " that there is 
some soul of goodness " in players. 



LETTER TO SOUTHEY. 



143 



of intimation that a resignation might be 
well accepted from me. This was a kind 
bird's whisper. On that hint I spake. 
G and T furnished me with certifi- 
cates of wasted health and sore spirits — not 
much more than the truth, I promise you — 
and for nine weeks I was kept in a fright. 
I had gone too far to recede, and they might 
take advantage, and dismiss me with a much 
less sum than I had reckoned on. However, 
liberty came at last, with a liberal provision. 
I have given up what I could have lived on 
in the country ; but have enough to live 
here, by management and scribbling occa- 
sionally. I would not go back to my prison 
for seven years longer for 10,000?. a year — 
seven years after one is fifty, is no .trifle to 
give up. Still I am a young pensioner, and 
have served but thirty-three years ; very 
few, I assure you, retire before forty, forty- 
five, or fifty years' service. 

"You will ask how I bear my freedom ? 
Faith, for some days I was staggered ; could 
not comprehend the magnitude of my deliv- 
erance ; was confused, giddy ; knew not 
whether I was on my head or my heel, as 
they say. But those giddy feelings have 
gone away, and my weather-glass stands at a 
degree or two above 

CONTENT. 

" I go about quiet, and have none of that 
restless hunting after recreation, which made 
holydays formerly uneasy joys. All being 
holydays, I feel as if I had none, as they do 
in heaven, where 'tis all red-letter days. I 
have a kind letter from the Wordsworths, 
congratulatory not a little. It is a damp, I 
do assure you, amid all my prospects, that I 
can receive none from a quarter upon which 
T had calculated, almost more than from any, 
upon receiving congratulations. I had grown 
to like poor Monkhouse more and more. I 
do not esteem a soul living or not living more 
warmly than I had grown to esteem and 
value him. But words are vain. "We have 
none of us to count upon many years. That 
is the only cure for sad thoughts. If only 
some died, and the rest were permanent on 
earth, what a thing a friend's death would 
be then ! 

" I must take leave, having put off answer- 
ing a load of letters to this morning, and this 



alas ! is the first. Our kindest remembrances 
to Mrs. Monkhouse, 

" And believe us yours most truly, 
"C. Lamb." 

In this summer Lamb and his sister paid 
a long visit to Enfield, which induced their 
removing thither some time afterwards. 
The following letter is addressed thence, 

TO MR. SOUTHEY. 

"August 19th, 1825. 

"Dear Southey, — You'll know who this 
letter comes from by opening slap-dash upon 
the text, as in the good old times. I never 
could come into the custom of envelopes ; 
'tis a modern foppery; the Plinian corres- 
pondence gives no hint of such. In single- 
ness of sheet and meaning, then, I thank you 
for your little book. I am ashamed to add 
a codicil of thanks for your ' Book of the 
Church.' I scarce feel competent to give an 
opinion of the latter ; I have not reading 
enough of that kind to venture at it. I can 
only say the fact, that I have read it with 
attention and interest. Being, as you know, 
not quite a Churchman, I felt a jealousy at 
the Church taking to herself the whole 
deserts of Christianity, Catholic and Pro- 
testant, from Druid extirpation downwards. 
I call all good Christians the Church, Capilla- 
rians and all. But I am in too light a 
humour to touch these matters. May all 
our churches flourish ! Two things staggered 
me in the poem, (and one of them staggered 
both of us), I cannot away with a beautiful 
series of verses, as I protest they are, com- 
mencing ' Jenner.' 'Tis like a choice banquet 
opened with a pill or an electuary — physic 
stuff. T'other is, we cannot make out how 
Edith should be no more than ten years old. 
By'r Lady, we had taken her to be some 
sixteen or upwards. We suppose you have 
only chosen the round number for the metre. 
Or poem and dedication may be both older 
than they pretend to ; but then some hint 
might have been given ; for, as it stands, it 
may only serve some day to puzzle the parish 
reckoning. But without inquiring further, 
(for 'tis ungracious to look into a lady's years,) 
the dedication is evidently pleasing and 
tender, and we wish Edith May Southey joy 
of it. Something, too, struck us as if we had 
heard of the death of John May. A John 



144 



LETTER TO SOUTHEY. 



May's death was a few years since in the 
papers. We think the tale one of the 
quietest, prettiest things we have seen. You 
have been temperate in the use of localities, 
which generally spoil poems laid in exotic 
regions. You mostly cannot stir out (in such 
things) for humming-birds and fire-flies. A 
tree is a Magnolia, &c. — Can I but like the 
truly Catholic spirit ? ' Blame as thou 
mayest the Papist's erring creed ' — which, 
and other passages, brought me back to the 
old Anthology days, and the admonitory 
lesson to ' Dear George ' on ' The Vesper 
Bell,' a little poem which retains its first hold 
upon me strangely. 

"The compliment to the translatress is 
daintily conceived. Nothing is choicer in 
that sort of writing than to bring in some 
remote, impossible parallel, — as between a 
great empress and the inobtrusive quiet soul 
who digged her noiseless way so perseveringly 
through that rugged Paraguay mine. How 
she Dobrizhoffered it all out, it puzzles my 
slender Latinity to conjecture. Why do you 
seem to sanction Landor's unfeeling allegor- 
ising away of honest Quixote ! He may as 
well say Strap is meant to symbolise the 
Scottish nation before the Union, and Random 
since that act of dubious issue ; or that 
Partridge means the Mystical Man, and Lady 
Bellaston typifies the Woman upon Many 
Waters. Gebir, indeed, may mean the state 
of the hop markets last month, for anything 
I know to the contrary. That all Spain 
overflowed with romancical books (as Madge 
Newcastle calls them) was no reason that 
Cervantes should not smile at the matter of 
them ; nor even a reason that, in another 
mood, he might not multiply them, deeply as 
he was tinctured with the essence of them. 
Quixote is the father of gentle ridicule, and 
at the same time the very depository and 
treasury of chivalry and highest notions. 
Marry, when somebody persuaded Cervantes 
that he meant only fun, and put him upon 
writing that unfortunate Second Part with 
the confederacies of that unworthy duke and 
most contemptible duchess, Cervantes sacri- 
ficed his instinct to his understanding. 

" We got your little book but last night, 
being at Enfield, to which place we came 
about a month since, and are having quiet 
holydays. Mary walks her twelve miles a 
day some days, and I my twenty on others. 



'Tis all holiday with me now, you know. 
The change works admirably. 

" For literary news, in my poor way, I 
have a one-act farce going to be acted at 
Haymarket ; but when ? is the question. 
'Tis an extravaganza, and like enough to 
follow Mr. H. ' The London Magazine ' has 
shifted its publishers once more, and I shall 
shift myself out of it. It is fallen. My 
ambition is not at present higher than to 
write nonsense for the playhouses, to eke out 
a something contracted income. Tempus erat. 
There was a time, my dear Cornwallis, when 
the Muse, &c. But I am now in Mac 
Fleckno's predicament, — 

' Promised a play, and dwindled to a farce.' 

" Coleridge is better (was, at least, a few 
weeks since) than he has been for years. His 
accomplishing his book at last has been a 
source of vigour to him. We are on a half 
visit to his friend Allsop, at a Mrs. Leishman's, 
Enfield, but expect to be at Colebrook- 
cottage in a week or so, where, or anywhere, 
I shall be always most happy to receive 
tidings from you. G. Dyer is in the height 
of an uxorious paradise. His honeymoon 
will not wane till he wax cold. Never was 
a more happy pair, since Acme and Septimius, 
and longer. Farewell, with many thanks, 
dear S. Our loves to all round your 
Wrekin. Your old friend, 

« C. Lamb." 

The farce referred to in this letter was 
founded on Lamb's essay " On the Inconveni- 
ence of being Hanged." It was, perhaps, too 
slight for the stage, and never was honoured 
by a trial ; but was ultimately published in 
" Blackwood's Magazine." 



CHAPTER XVI. 

[1826 to 1828.] 

LETTERS TO ROBINSON, CARY, COLERIDGE, PATMORE, 
PROCTER, AND BARTON. 

When the first enjoyment of freedom was 
over, it may be doubted whether Lamb was 
happier for the change. He lost a grievance 
on which he could lavish all the fantastical 
exaggeration of a sufferer without wounding 



LETTER TO ROBINSON. 



145 



the feelings of any individual, and perhaps 
the loss was scarcely compensated by the 
listless leisure which it brought him. When- 
ever the facile kindness of his disposition 
permitted, he fled from those temptations of 
society, which he could only avoid by flight ; 
and his evening hours of solitude were hardly 
so sweet as when they were the reliefs and 
resting-places of his mind, — " glimpses which 
might make him less forlorn " of the world 
of poetry and romance. His mornings were 
chiefly occupied in long walks, sometimes 
extending to ten or twelve miles, in which at 
this time he was accompanied by a noble 
dog, the property of Mr. Hood, to whose 
humours Lamb became almost a slave,* and 
who, at last, acquired so portentous an. 
ascendancy that Lamb requested his friend 
Mr. Patmore to take him under his care. 
At length the desire of assisting Mr. Hone, 
in his struggle to support his family by 
antiquarian research and modern pleasantry, 
renewed to him the blessing of regular 
labour ; he began the task of reading through 
the glorious heap of dramas collected at the 
British Museum under the title of the 
" Garrick Plays," to glean scenes of interest 
and beauty for the work of his friend ; and 
the work of kindness brought with it its own 
reward. 



* The following allusion to Lamb's subservience to 
Dash is extracted from one of a series of papers, written 
in a most cordial spirit, and with great characteristic 
power, by the friend to whom Dash was assigned, which 
appeared in the " Court Magazine." " During these 
interminable rambles — heretofore pleasant in virtue of 
their profound loneliness and freedom from restraint, 
Lamb made himself a perfect slave to the dog — whose 
habits were of the most extravagantly errant nature, 
for, generally speaking, the creature was half a mile off 
from his companion either before or behind, scouring 
the fields or roads in all directions, scampering up or 
down ' all manner of streets,' and leaving Lamb in a 
perfect fever of irritation and annoyance ; for he was 
afraid of losing the dog when it was out of sight, and 
yet could not persuade himself to keep it in sight for a 
moment, by curbing its roving spirit. Dash knew 
Lamb's weakness in these particulars as well as he did 
himself, and took a dog-like advantage of it. In the 
Regent's Park, in particular, Dash had his master com- 
pletely at his mercy ; for the moment they got into the 
ring, he used to get through the paling on to the green 
sward, and disappear for a quarter or half an hour to- 
gether, knowing perfectly well that Lamb did not dare 
move from the spot where he (Dash) had disappeared, 
till such time as he thought proper to show himself 
again. And they used to take this particular walk much 
oftener than they otherwise would, precisely because 
Dash liked it and Lamb did not." — Under his second 
master, we learn from the same source, that Dash 
" subsided into the best bred and best behaved of his 
species." 



" It is a sort of office work to me," says 
Lamb, in a letter to Barton ; " hours ten to 
four, the same. It does me good. Man must 
have regular occupation that has been used 
to it." 

The Christmas of 1825 was a melancholy 
season for Lamb. He had always from a boy 
spent Christmas in the Temple with Mr. 
Norris, an officer of the Inner Temple, and 
this Christmas was made wretched by the 
last illness of his oldest friend. Anxious to 
excite the sympathy of the Benchers of the 
Inn for the survivors, Lamb addressed the 
following letter to a friend as zealous as 
himself in all generous offices, in order that 
he might show it to some of the Benchers. 

TO MR. H. C. ROBINSON. 

" Colebrooke Row, Islington. 

"Saturday, 20th Jan. 1826. 

" Dear Bobinson, — I called upon you this 
morning, and found that you were gone to 
visit a dying friend. I had been upon a like 
errand. Poor Norris has been lying dying 
for now almost a week, such is the penalty 
we pay for having enjoyed a strong constitu- 
tion ! Whether he knew me or not, I know 
not ; or whether he saw me through his poor 
glazed eyes ; but the group I saw about him 
I shall not forget. Upon the bed, or about 
it, were assembled his wife and two daughters, 
and poor deaf Kichard, his son, looking 
doubly stupified. There they were, and 
seemed to have been sitting all the week. I 
could only reach out a hand to Mrs. Norris. 
Speaking was impossible in that mute cham- 
ber. By this time I hope it is all over with 
him. In him I have a loss the world cannot 
make up. He was my friend and my father's 
friend all the life I can remember. I seem 
to have made foolish friendships ever since. 
Those are friendships which outlive a second 
generation. Old as I am waxing, in his eyes 
I was still the child he first knew me. To 
the last he called me Charley. I have none 
to call me Charley now. He was the last 
link that bound me to the Temple. You are 
but of yesterday. In him seem to have died 
the old plainness of manners and singleness 
of heart. Letters he knew nothing of, nor 
did his reading extend beyond the pages of 
the ' Gentleman's Magazine.' Yet there was 
a pride of literature about him from being 



146 



LETTERS TO BARTOK 



amongst books (he was librarian), and from 
some scraps of doubtful Latin which he had 
picked up in his office of entering students, 
that gave him very diverting airs of pedantry. 
Can I forget the erudite look with which, 
when he had been in vain trying to make out 
a black-letter text of Chaucer in the Temple 
Library, he laid it down and told me that — 
' in those old books, Charley, there is some- 
times a deal of very indifferent spelling ;' 
and seemed to console himself in the reflec- 
tion ! His jokes, for he had his jokes, are 
now ended ; but they were old trusty peren- 
nials, staples that pleased after decies repetita, 
and were always as good as new. One song 
he had, which was reserved for the night of 
Christmas-day, which we always spent in the 
Temple. It was an old thing, and spoke of 
the flat bottoms of our foes, and the possi- 
bility of their coming over in darkness, and 
alluded to threats of an invasion many years 
blown over ; and when he came to the part 

; We'll still make 'em run, and we'll still make 'em 
sweat, 
In spite of the devil, and Brussels Gazette ! ' 

his eyes would sparkle as with the freshness 
of an impending event. And what is the 
Brussels Gazette now 1 I cry while I enu- 
merate these trifles. 'How shall we tell 
them in a stranger's ear 1 ' 

" My first motive in writing, and, indeed, 
in calling on you, was to ask if you were 
enough acquainted with any of the Benchers, 
to lay a plain statement before them of the 
circumstances of the family. I almost fear 
not, for you are of another hall. But if you 
can oblige me and my poor friend, who is 
now insensible to any favours, pray exert 
yourself. You cannot say too much good of 
poor Norris and his poor wife. 

" Yours ever, Charles Lamb." 



In the spring of 1826, the following letters 
to Bernard Barton were written. 



TO BERNARD BARTON. 

"Feb. 7th, 1826. 
" Dear B. B.,— L got your book not more 
than five days ago, so am not so negligent as 
I must have appeared to you with a fort- 
night's sin upon my shoulders. I tell you 
with sincerity, that I think you have com- 



pletely succeeded in what you intended to 
do. What is poetry may be disputed. These 
are poetry to me at least. They are concise, 
pithy, and moving. Uniform as they are, and 
untristorify'd, I read them through at two 
sittings, without one sensation approaching 
to tedium. I do not know that among your 
many kind presents of this nature, this is not 
my favourite volume. The language is never 
lax, and there is a unity of design and feeling. 
You wrote them with love — to avoid the 
coxcombical phrase, con amove. I am par- 
ticularly pleased with the 'Spiritual Law/ 
pages 34 and 35. It reminded me of Quarles, 
and 'holy Mr. Herbert,' as Izaak Walton 
calls him ; the two best, if not only, of our 
devotional poets, though some prefer Watts, 
and some Tom Moore. I am far from well, or 
in my right spirits, and shudder at pen-and- 
ink work. I poke out a monthly crudity for 
Colburn in his magazine, which I call ' Popu- 
lar Fallacies,' and periodically crush a proverb 
or two, setting up my folly against the wis- 
dom of nations. Do you see the 'New 
Monthly % ' 

" One word I must object to in your little 
book, and it recurs more than once— fadeless 
is no genuine compound ; loveless is, because 
love is a noun as well as verb ; but what is a 
fade 1 And I do not quite like whipping the 
Greek drama upon the back of ' Genesis,' 
page 8. I do not like praise handed in by 
disparagement ; as I objected to a side cen- 
sure on Byron, &c. in the ' Lines on Bloom- 
field.' With these poor cavils excepted, your 
verses are without a flaw. 

"C.Lamb." 

to bernard barton. 

"March 20th, 1826. 

" Dear B. B., — You may know my letters 
by the paper and the folding. For the former, 
I live on scraps obtained in charity from an 
old friend, whose stationery is a permanent 
perquisite ; for folding, I shall do it neatly 
when I learn to tie my neckcloths. I surprise 
most of my friends, by writing to them on 
ruled paper, as if I had not got past pot- 
hooks and hangers. Sealing-wax, I have 
none on my establishment ; wafers of the 
coarsest bran supply its place. When my 
epistles come to be weighed with Pliny's, 
however superior to the Boman in delicate 
irony, judicious reflections, &c, his gilt post 



LETTERS TO BARTON. 



vr, 



will bribe over the judges to him. All the 
time I was at the E. I. H., I never 
mended a pen ; I now cut 'em to the stumps, 
marring rather than mending the primitive 
goose-quill. I cannot bear to pay for articles 
I used to get for nothing. When Adam laid 
out his first penny upon nonpareils at some 
stall in Mesopotamos, I think it went hard 
with him, reflecting upon his old goodly 
orchard, where he had so many for nothing. 
When I write to a great man at the court 
end, he opens with surprise upon a naked 
note, such as Whitechapel people interchange, 
with no sweet degrees of envelope. I never 
enclosed one bit of paper in another, nor under- 
stood the rationale of it. Once only I sealed 
with borrowed wax, to set Walter- Scott a 
wondering, signed with the imperial quartered 
arms of England, which my friend Field bears 
in compliment to his descent, in the female 
line, from Oliver Cromwell. It must have set 
his antiquarian curiosity upon watering. To 
your questions upon the currency, I refer 
you to Mr. Eobinson's last speech, where, if 
you can find a solution, I cannot. I think 
this, though, the best ministry we ever 
stumbled upon ; — gin reduced four shillings 
in the gallon, wine two shillings in the quart ! 
This comes home to men's minds and bosoms. 
My tirade against visitors was not meant 

particularly at you or A. K . I scarce 

know what I meant, for I do not just now 
feel the grievance. I wanted to make an 
article. So in another thing I talked of 
somebody's insipid wife, without a corres- 
pondent object in my head : and a good lady, 
a friend's wife, whom I really love, (don't 
startle, I mean in a licit way,) has looked 
shyly on me ever since. The blunders of 
personal application are ludicrous. I send 
out a character every now and then, on 
purpose to exercise the ingenuity of my 
friends. 'Popular Fallacies' will go on; 
that word concluded is an erratum, I suppose 
for continued. I do not know how it got 
stuffed in there. A little thing without name 
will also be printed on the Eeligion of the 
Actors, but it is out of your way, so I recom- 
mend you, with true author's hypocrisy, to 
skip it. We are about to sit down to roast 
beef, at which we could wish A. K., B. B., 
and B. B.'s pleasant daughter to be humble 
partakers. So much for my hint at visitors, 
which was scarcely calculated for droppers- 



in from Woodbridge ; the sky does not drop 
such larks every day. My very kindest 
wishes to you all three, with my sister's best 
love. C. Lamb." 



TO BERNARD BARTON. 

" May 16th, 1826. 

" Dear B. B., — I have had no spirits lately 
to begin a letter to you, though I am under 
obligations to you (how many !) for your neat 
little poem. 'Tis just what it professes to be, 
a simple tribute, in chaste verse, serious and 
sincere. 

" I do not know how friends will relish it, 
but we outlyers, honorary friends, like it 
very well. I have had my head and ears 
stuffed up with the east winds. A continual 
ringing in my brain of bells jangled, or the 
spheres touched by some raw angel. It is 
not George the Third trying the Hundredth 
Psalm % I get my music for nothing. But 
the weather seems to be softening, and will 
thaw my stunnings. Coleridge, writing to 
me a week or two since, begins his note — 
' Summer has set in with its usual severity.' 
A cold summer is all I know of disagreeable 
in cold. I do not mind the utmost rigour of 
real winter, but these smiling hypocrities of 
Mays wither me to death. My head has 
been a ringing chaos, like the day the winds 
were made, before they submitted to the 
discipline of a weathercock, before the 
quarters were made. In the street, with the 
blended noises of life about me, I hear, and my 
head is lightened ; but in a room the hubbub 
comes back, and I am deaf as a sinner. Did 
I tell you of a pleasant sketch Hood has 
done, which he calls — ' Very deaf indeed ? ' 
It is of a good-natured stupid-looking old 
gentleman, whom a footpad has stopped, but 
for his extreme deafness cannot make him 
understand what he wants. The unconscious 
old gentleman is extending his ear trumpet 
very complacently, and the fellow is firing a 
pistol into it to make him hear, but the ball 
will pierce his skull sooner than the report 
reach his sensorium. I choose a very little, 
bit of paper, for my ear hisses when I bend 
down to write. I can hardly read a book, for 
I miss that small soft voice which the idea of 
articulated words raises (almost impercept- 
ibly to you) in a silent reader. I seem too 
deaf to see what I read. But with a touch 
or two of returning zephyr my head will 



l 2 



148 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE AND CARY. 



melt. What lies you poets tell about the 
May ! It is the most ungenial part of the 
year. Cold crocuses, cold primroses, you 
take your blossoms in ice — a painted sun. 

' Unmeaning joy around appears, 
And nature smiles as if she sneers.' 

" It is ill with me when I begin to look 
which way the wind sits. Ten years ago, I 
literally did not know the point from the broad 
end of the vane, which it was that indicated 
the quarter. I hope these ill winds have 
blown over you as they do through me. 

" So A. K. keeps a school ; she teaches 
nothing wrong, I '11 answer for 't. I have a 
Dutch print of a school-mistress ; little old- 
fashioned Fleminglings, with only one face 
among them. She a princess of a school- 
mistress, wielding a rod for form more than 
use ; the scene, an old monastic chapel, with 
a Madonna over her head, looking just as 
serious, as thoughtful, as pure, as gentle as 
herself. Tis a type of thy friend. 

"Yours with kindest wishes to your 
daughter and friend, in which Mary joins, 

"C.Lamb." 



About this time a little sketch was taken 
of Lamb, and published. It is certainly not 
nattering ; but there is a touch of Lamb's 
character in it. He sent one of the prints to 
Coleridge, with the following note. 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

"June 1st, 1826. 

" Dear Coleridge, — If I know myself, nobody 
more detests the display of personal vanity, 
which is implied in the act of sitting for one's 
picture, than myself. But the fact is, that 
the likeness which accompanies this letter 
was stolen from my person at one of my un- 
guarded moments by some too partial artist, 
and my friends are pleased to think that he 
has not much nattered me. "Whatever its 
merits may be, you, who have so great an 
interest in the original, will have a satisfaction 
in tracing the features of one that has so long 
esteemed you. There are times when in a 
friend's absence these graphic representations 
of him almost seem to bring back the man 
himself. The painter, whoever he was, seems 
to have taken me in one of those disengaged 
moments, if I may so term them, when the 



native character is so much more honestly 
displayed than can be possible in the 
restraints of an inforced sitting attitude. 
Perhaps it rather describes me as a thinking 
man, than a man in the act of thought. 
Whatever its pretensions, I know it will be 
dear to you, towards whom I should wish my 
thoughts to flow in a sort of an undress 
rather than in the more studied graces of 
diction. 

" I am, dear Coleridge, yours sincerely, 
"C„ Lamb." 



In the following summer, Lamb and his 
sister went on a long visit to Enfield, which 
ultimately led to his giving up Colebrooke- 
cottage, and becoming a constant resident at 
that place. It was a great sacrifice to him, 
who loved London so well ; but his sister's 
health and his own required a secession from 
the crowd of visitors who pressed on him at 
Islington, and whom he could not help wel- 
coming. He thus invited Mr. Cary, once 
librarian of the British Museum, to look in 
upon his retreat. 

TO MR. CART. 

" Dear Sir, — It is whispered me that you 
will not be unwilling to look into our doleful 
hermitage. Without more preface, you will 
gladden our cell by accompanying our old 
chums of the London, Darley and A. C, to 
Enfield on Wednesday. You shall have her- 
mit's fare, with talk as seraphical as the 
novelty of the divine life will permit, with an 
innocent retrospect to the world which we 
have left, when I will thank you for your 
hospitable offer at Chiswick, and with plain 
hermit reasons evince the necessity of abiding 
here. 

"Without hearing from you, then, you 
shall give us leave to expect you. I have 
long had it on my conscience to invite you, 
but spirits have been low ; and I am indebted 
to chance for this awkward but most sincere 
invitation. 

" Yours, with best loves to Mrs. Cary, 
"C.Lamb." 

" D. knows all about the coaches. Oh, for 
a Museum in the wilderness ! " 

The following letter was addressed about 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE AND BARTON. 



149 



this time to Coleridge, who was seriously 
contemplating a poetical pantomime. 



TO MR. COLERIDGE. 



1826. 



"Dear C, — We will with great pleasure 
be with you on Thursday in the next week 
early. Your finding out my style in your 
nephew's pleasant book is surprising to me. 
I want eyes to descry it. You are a little 
too hard upon his morality, though I confess 
he has more of Sterne about him than of 
Sternhold. But he saddens into excellent 
sense before the conclusion. Your query 
shall be submitted to Miss Kelly, though it 
is obvious that the pantomime, when done, 
will be more easy to decide upon than in 
proposal. 1 say, do it by all means. I have 
Decker's play by me, if you can filch any- 
thing out of it. Miss G — , with her kitten 
eyes, is an actress, though she shows it not 
at all ; and pupil to the former, whose ges- 
tures she mimics in comedy to the disparage- 
ment of her own natural manner, which is 
agreeable. It is funny to see her bridling up 
her neck, which is native to E. K. ; but there 
is no setting another's manners upon one's 
shoulders any more than their head. I am 
glad you esteem Manning, though you see 
but his husk or shrine. He discloses not, 
save to select worshippers, and will leave the 
world without any one hardly but me know- 
ing how stupendous a creature he is. I am 
perfecting myself in the ' Ode to Eton Col- 
lege ' against Thursday, that I may not 
appear unclassic. I have just discovered 
that it is much better than the ' Elegy.' 

"In haste, C. L." 

" P.S. — I do not know what to say to your 
latest theory about Nero being the Messiah, 
though by all accounts he was a 'nointed 
one." 



Lamb's desire for dramatic success was not 
even yet wholly chilled. In this summer 
he wrote a little piece on the story of 
Crabbe's tale of the " Confidant," which was 
never produced, but ultimately published in 
" Blackwood's Magazine." It runs on agree- 
ably in melodious blank verse, entirely free 
from the occasional roughnesses of " John 
Woodvil," but has not sufficient breadth or 



point for the stage. He alludes to it in the 
following letter. 



TO BERNARD BARTON. 

"Aug. 10th, 1827. 

" Dear B. B., — I have not been able to 
answer you, for we have had, and are having, 
(I just snatch a moment,) our poor quiet 
retreat, to which we fled from society, full of 
company, — some staying with us, and this 
moment, as I write, almost, a heavy importa- 
tion of two old ladies has come in. Whither 
can I take wing, from the oppression of 
human faces 1 Would I were in a wilderness 
of apes, tossing cocoa-nuts about, grinning 
and grinned at ! 

"M was hoaxing you, surely, about 

my engraving ; 'tis a little sixpenny thing, 
too like by half, in which the draughtsman 
has done his best to avoid flattery. There 
have been two editions of it, which I think 
are all gone, as they have vanished from the 
window where they hung, — a print-shop, 
corner of Great and Little Queen-streets, 
Lincoln's Inn Fields, — where any London 
friend of yours may inquire for it ; for I am 
(though you won't understand it) at Enfield 
Chase. We have been here near three 
months, and shall stay two more, if people 
will let us alone ; but they persecute us from 
village to village. So, don't direct to Isling- 
ton again, till further notice. I am trying 
my hand at a drama, in two acts, founded 
on Crabbe's 'Confidant,' mutatis mutandis. 
You like the Odyssey ; did you ever read 
my 'Adventures of Ulysses,' founded on 
Chapman's old translation of it ? for children 
or men. Chapman is divine, and my abridg- 
ment has not quite emptied him of his 
divinity. When you come to town I'll show 
it you. You have well described your old 
fashioned grand paternal hall. Is it not odd 
that every one's earliest recollections are of 
some such place ! I had my Blakesware 
(Blakesmoor in the ' London '). Nothing fills 
a child's mind like a large old mansion ; 
better if un — or partially — occupied ; peopled 
with the spirits of deceased members of the 
county, and justices of the quorum. Would 
I were buried in the peopled solitudes of one, 
with my feelings at seven years old ! Those 
marble busts of the emperors, they seemed 
as if they were to stand for ever, as they had 
stood from the living days of Rome, in that 



150 



LETTERS TO BARTON AND PATMORE. 



old marble hall, and I too partake of their 
permanency. Eternity was, while I thought 
not of Time. But he thought of me, and 
they are toppled down, and corn covers the 
spot of the noble old dwelling and its princely 
gardens. I feel like a grasshopper that, 
chirping about the grounds, escaped the 
scythe only by my littleness. Even now he 
is whetting one of his smallest razors to clean 
wipe me out, perhaps. Well ! " 



The following is an acknowledgment of 
some verses which Lamb had begged for 
Miss Isola's album. 

"Aug. 28th, 1827. 

" Dear B. B., — I am thankful to you for 
your ready compliance with my wishes. 
Emma is delighted with your verses ; I have 
sent them, with four album poems of my 

own, to a Mr. F , who is to be editor of 

a more superb pocket-book than has yet 
appeared, by far ! the property of some 
wealthy booksellers ; but whom, or what its 
name, I forgot to ask. It is actually to have 
in it schoolboy exercises by his present 
Majesty and the late Duke of York. Words- 
worth is named as a contributor. F , 

whom I have slightly seen, is editor of a 
forthcome or coming review of foreign books, 
and is intimately connected with Lockhart, 
&c. So I take it that this is a concern of 
Murray's. Walter Scott also contributes 
mainly. I have stood off a long time from 
these annuals, which are ostentatious trum- 
pery, but could not withstand the request of 
Jameson, a particular friend of mine and 
Coleridge. 

" I shall hate myself in frippery, strutting 
along, and vying finery with beaux and 
belles, with ' future Lord Byrons and sweet 
L. E. Ls.' Your taste, I see, is less simple 
than mine, which the difference in our per- 
suasions has doubtless effected. In fact, of 
late you have so Frenchified your style, 
larding it with hors de combats, and au deso- 
poirs, that o' my conscience the Foxian blood 
is quite dried out of you, and the skipping 
Monsieur spirit has been infused. 

" If you have anything you'd like to send 
further, I dare say an honourable place would 
be given to it ; but I have not heard from 
V- since ] sent mine, nor shall probably 



again, and therefore I do not solicit it as 
from him. Yesterday I sent off my tragi- 
comedy to Mr. Kemble. Wish it luck. I 
made it all ('tis blank verse, and I think of 
the true old dramatic cut) or most of it, in 
the green lanes about Enfield, where I am, 
and mean to remain, in spite of your per- 
emptory doubts on that head. Your refusal 
to lend your poetical sanction to my ' Icon,' 
and your reasons to Evans, are most sensible. 
Maybe I may hit on a line or two of my own 
jocular ; maybe not. Do you never London- 
ize again ? I should like to talk over old 
poetry with you, of which I have much, and 
you, I think, little. Do your Drummonds 
allow no holydays 1 I would willingly come 
and work for you a three weeks or so, to let 
you loose. Would I could sell or give you 
some of my leisure ! Positively, the best 
thing a man can have to do is nothing, and 
next to that perhaps — good works. I am 
but poorlyish, and feel myself writing a dull 
letter ; poorlyish from company ; not gener- 
ally, for I never was better, nor took more 
walks, fourteen miles a day on an average, 
with a sporting dog, Dash. You would not 
know the plain poet, any more than he doth 
recognise James Naylor trick'd out au deser- 
poy (how do you spell it ?). 

" C. Lamb." 



The following was written to the friend to 
whom Lamb had intrusted Dash, a few days 
after the parting. 

TO MR. PATMORE. 
"Mrs. Irishman's, Chase, Enfield. 
" Dear P., — Excuse my anxiety, but how 
is Dash ? I should have asked if Mrs. 

P e kept her rules, and was improving ; 

but Dash came uppermost. The order of 
our thoughts should be the order of our 
writing. Goes he muzzled, or aperto ore? 
Are his intellects sound, or does he wander 
a little in his conversation ? You cannot be 
too careful to watch the first symptoms of 
incoherence. The first illogical snarl he 
makes, to St. Luke's with him. All the dogs 
here are going mad, if you believe the over- 
seers ; but I protest they seem to me very 
rational and collected. But nothing is so 
deceitful as mad people, to those who are not 
used to them. Try him with hot water : if 



LETTERS TO BARTON. 



151 



he won't lick it up it is a sign — he does not 
like it. Does his tail wag horizontally, or 
perpendicularly ? That has decided the fate 
of many dogs in Enfield. Is his general 
deportment cheerful ? I mean when he is 
pleased — for otherwise there is no judging. 
You can't be too careful. Has he bit any of 
the children yet 1 If he has, have them shot, 
and keep him for curiosity, to see if it was 
the hydrophobia. They say all our army in 
India had it at one time ; but that was in 
Hyder- Ally's time. Do you get paunch for 
him ? Take care the sheep was sane. 
You might pull out his teeth (if he would 
let you), and then you need not mind if he 
were as mad as a Bedlamite. It would be 
rather fun to see his odd ways. It might 

amuse Mrs. P and the children. They'd 

have more sense than he. He'd be like a fool 
kept in a family, to keep the household in 
good humour with their own understanding. 
You might teach him the mad dance, set to 
the mad howl. Madge Owlet would be nothing 
to him. ' My ! how he capers ! ' [In the 
margin is written, ' One of the children speaks 
this*'] * * * What I scratch out is a 
German quotation, from Lessing, on the bite 
of rabid animals ; but I remember you don't 

read German. But Mrs. P may, so I 

wish I had let it stand. The meaning in 
English is — 'Avoid to approach an animal 
suspected of madness, as you would avoid 
fire or a precipice,' which I think is a sensible 
observation. The Germans are certainly 
profounder than we. If the slightest sus- 
picion arises in your breast that all is not 
right with him, muzzle him and lead him in 
a string (common pack-thread will do — he 
don't care for twist) to Mr. Hood's, his 
quondam master, and he'll take him in at 
any time. You may mention your suspicion, 
or not, as you like, or as you think it may 
wound or not Mr. H.'s feelings. Hood, I 
know, will wink at a few follies in Dash, in 
consideration of his former sense. Besides, 
Hood is deaf, and, if you hinted anything, 
ten to one he would not hear you. Besides 
you will have discharged your conscience, 
and laid the child at the right door, as they 
say. 

" We are dawdling our time away very 
idly and pleasantly at a Mrs. Leishman's, 

* Here three lines are carefully erased. 



Chase, Enfield, where, if you come a-hunting, 
we can give you cold meat and a tankard. 
Her husband is a tailor ; but that, you know, 
does not make her one. I knew a jailor 
(which rhymes), but his wife was a fine 
lady. 

"Let us hear from you respecting Mrs. 

P 's regimen. I send my love in a ■ 

to Dash. 

" C. Lamb."- 



On the outside of the letter is written : 

" Seriously, I wish you would call upon 
Hood when you are that way. He's a capital 
fellow. I've sent him two poems, one 
ordered by his wife, and written to order ; 
and 'tis a week since, and I've not heard 
from him. I fear something is the matter. 

" Our kindest remembrance to Mrs. P." 



He thus, in December, expresses his misery 
in a letter. 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

"Dec. 4th, 1827. 

" My dear B. B., — I have scarce spirits to 
write, yet am harassed with not writing. 
Nine weeks are completed, and Mary does 
not get any better. It is perfectly exhausting. 
Enfield, and everything, is very gloomy. 
But for long experience I should fear her 
ever getting well. I feel most thankful for 
the spinsterly attentions of your sister. 
Thank the kind ' knitter in the sun ! ' What 
nonsense seems verse, when one is seriously 
out of hope and spirits ! I mean, that at 
this time I have some nonsense to write, 
under pain of incivility. Would to the 
fifth heaven no coxcombess had invented 
Albums. 

"I have not had a Bijoux, nor the slightest 

notice from about omitting four out of 

five of my things. The best thing is never 
to hear of such a thing as a bookseller again, 
or to think there are publishers. Second- 
hand stationers and old book-stalls for me. 
Authorship should be an idea of the past. 
Old kings, old bishops, are venerable ; all 
present is hollow. I cannot make a letter. 
I have no straw, not a pennyworth of chaff, 
only this may stop your kind importunity to 



152 



LETTER TO A LADY. 



know about us. Here is a comfortable bouse, 
but no tenants. One does not make a house- 
hold. Do not think I am quite in despair ; 
but, in addition to hope protracted, I have a 
stupifying cold and obstructing headache, 
and the sun is dead. 

" I will not fail to apprise you of the 
revival of a beam. Meantime accept this, 
rather than think I have forgotten you all. 
Best remembrances. 

" Yours and theirs truly, 

" C. Lamb." 



A proposal to erect a memorial to Clarkson, 
upon the spot by the way-side where he 
stopped when on a journey from Cambridge 
to London, and formed the great resolution 
of devoting his life to the abolition of the 
slave-trade, produced from Lamb the follow- 
ing letter to the lady who had announced it 
to him : — 



" Dear Madam, — I return your list with 
my name. I should be sorry that any respect 
should be going on towards Clarkson, and I 
be left out of the conspiracy. Otherwise I 
frankly own that to pillarise a man's good 
feelings in his lifetime is not to my taste. 
Monuments to goodness, even after death, 
are equivocal. I turn away from Howard's, 
I scarce know why. Goodness blows no 
trumpet, nor desires to have it blown. We 
should be modest for a modest man — as he is 
for himself. The vanities of life — art, poetry, 
skill military — are subjects for trophies ; not 
the silent thoughts arising in a good man's 
mind in lonely places. Was I Clarkson, I 
should never be able to walk or ride near 
the spot again. Instead of bread, we are 
giving him a stone. Instead of the locality 
recalling the noblest moment of his existence, 
it is a place at which his friends (that is, 
himself) blow to the world, ' What a good 
man is he ! ' I sat down upon a hillock at 
Forty Hill yesternight, — a fine contemplative 
evening, — with a thousand good speculations 
about mankind. How I yearned with cheap 
benevolence ! I shall go and inquire of the 
stone-cutter, that cuts the tombstones here, 
what a stone with a short inscription will 
cost ; just to say, ' Here C. Lamb loved his 
brethren of mankind.' Everybody will come 



there to love. As I can't well put my own 
name, I shall put about a subscription : 



Mrs. 



.£050 



Procter . . . 


. 


2 6 


G. Dyer . . 


. 


1 


Mr. Godwin . 


. 





Mrs. Godwin 


. 





Mr. Irving . 




a watch-chain. 


Mr. . . 




( the proceeds of 
\ first edition. 





£0 8 6 

" I scribble in haste from here, where we 

shall be some time. Pray request Mr. 

to advance the guinea for me, which shall 
faithfully be forthcoming, and pardon me 
that I don't see the proposal in quite the 
light that he may. The kindness of his 
motives, and his power of appreciating the 
noble passage, I thoroughly agree in. 
" With most kind regards to him, I conclude 
" Dear madam, yours truly, 

"C.Lamb." 

" From Mrs. Leishman's, Chase, Enfield." 



The following appears to have been written 
in October 1828, 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

" Oct. Tlth, 1828. 

"A splendid edition of 'Bunyan's Pilgrim !' 
Why, the thought is enough to turn one's 
moral stomach. His cockle-hat and staff 
transformed to a smart cock'd beaver, and a 
jemmy cane; his amice grey, to the last 
Eegent-street cut : and his painful palmer's 
pace to the modern swagger. Stop thy 
friend's sacrilegious hand. Nothing can be 
done for B. but to reprint the old cuts in as 
homely but good a style as possible. The 
Vanity Fair, and the Pilgrims there— the 
Silly-soothness in his setting-out countenance 
— the Christian Idiocy (in a good sense), of 
his admiration of the shepherds on the 
Delectable mountains ; the lions, so truly 
allegorical, and remote from any similitude 
to Pidcock's ; the great head (the author's), 
capacious of dreams and similitudes, dream- 
ing in the dungeon. Perhaps you don't know 
my edition, what I had when a child. If you 
do, can you bear new designs from Martin, 
enamelled into copper or silver plate by 
Heath, accompanied with verses from Mrs. 
Hemans' pen. O how unlike his own ! 



LETTERS TO BARTON. 



153 



Wouldst thou divert thyself from melancholy t 

Wouldst thou be pleasant, yet be far from folly 1 

"Wouldst thou read riddles, and their explanation ? 

Or else be drowned in thy contemplation 1 

Dost thou love picking meat I or wouldst thou see 

A man i' the clouds, and hear him speak to thee 1 

Wouldst thou be in a dream, and yet not sleep ? 

Or wouldst thou in a moment laugh and weep 1 

Or wouldst thou lose thyself, and catch no harm, 

And find thyself again without a charm 1 

Wouldst read thyself, and read thou knowest not what, 

And yetknow whether thou art blest or not 

By reading the same lines ? O then come hither, 

And lay my book, thy head, and heart together. 

John Bunyan. 



Show me any such poetry in any one of the 
fifteen forthcoming combinations of show and 
emptiness, yclept ' Annuals.' So there's 
verses for thy verses ; and now let me tell 
you, that the sight of your hand gladdened 
me. I have been daily trying to write to 
you, but paralysed. You have spurred me 
on this tiny effort, and at intervals I hope to 
hear from and talk to you. But my spirits 
have been in an opprest way for a long long 
time, and they are things which must be to 
you of faith, for who can explain depression ? 
Yes, I am hooked into the ' Gem,' but only 
for some lines written on a dead infant of the 
Editor's, which being, as it were, his pro- 
perty, I could not refuse their appearing ; 
but I hate the paper, the type, the gloss, the 
dandy plates, the names of contributors 
poked up into your eyes in first page, and 
whisked through all the covers of magazines, 
the barefaced sort of emulation, the immodest 
candidateship. Brought into so little space 
■ — in those old ' Londons,' a signature was 
lost in the wood of matter, the paper coarse 
(till latterly, which spoiled them) ; in short, 
I detest to appear in an Annual. What a 
fertile genius (and a quiet good soul withal) 
is Hood ! He has fifty things in hand ; 
farces to supply the Adelphi for the season ; 
a comedy for one of the great theatres, just 
ready ; a whole entertainment, by himself, 
for Mathews and Yates to figure in ; a medi- 
tated Comic Annual for next year, to be 
nearly done by himself. You'd like him 
very much. 

"Wordsworth, I see, has a good many 
pieces announced in one of 'em, not our Gem. 
W. Scott has distributed himself like a 
bribe haunch among 'em. Of all the poets, 
Cary has had the good sense to keep quite 
clear of 'em, with clergy-gentle-manly right 
notions. Don't think I set up for being 



proud on this point ; I like a bit of flattery, 
tickling my vanity, as well as any one. But 
these pompous masquerades without masks 
(naked names or faces) I hate. So there's a 
bit of my mind. Besides, they infallibly cheat 
you ; I mean the booksellers. If I get but a 
copy, I only expect it from Hood's being my 
friend. Coleridge has lately been here. He 
too is deep among the prophets, the year- 
servers, — the mob of gentlemen annuals. 
But they'll cheat him, I know. And now, 
dear B. B., the sun shining out merrily, and 
the dirty clouds we had yesterday having 
washed their own faces clean with their own 
rain, tempts me to wander up Winchmore 
Hill, or into some of the delightful vicinages 
of Enfield, which I hope to show you at some 
time when you can get a few days up to the 
great town. Believe me, it would give both 
of us great pleasure to show you our pleasant 
farms and villages. 

" We both join in kindest loves to you and 
yours. C. Lamb, 



The following is of December, and closes 
the letters which remain of this year. 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

"Dec. 5th, 1828. 

<e Dear B. B., — I am ashamed to receive so 
many nice books from you, and to have none 
to send you in return. You are always 
sending me some fruits or wholesome pot- 
herbs, and mine is the garden of the Sluggard, 
nothing but weeds, or scarce they. Never- 
theless, if I knew how to transmit it, I would 
send you Blackwood's of this month, which 
contains a little drama, to have your opinioD 
of it, and how far I have improved, or other- 
wise, upon its prototype. Thank you for 
your kind sonnet. It does me good to see 
the Dedication to a Christian Bishop. I am 
for a comprehension, as divines call it ; but 
so as that the Church shall go a good deal 
more than half way over to the silent 
Meeting-house. I have ever said that the 
Quakers are the only professors of Christian- 
ity, as I read it in the Evangiles ; I say pro- 
fessors — marry, as to practice, with their 
gaudy hot types and poetical vanities, they 
are much as one with the sinful. Martin's 
Frontispiece is a very fine thing, let C. L. say 
what he please to the contrary. Of the Poems, 



154 



LETTERS TO BARTON". 



I like them as a volume, better than any one 
of the preceding ; particularly, ' Power and 
Gentleness' — 'The Present' — 'Lady Russell ;' 
with the exception that I do not like the 
noble act of Curtius, true or false — one of 
the grand foundations of the old Roman pa- 
triotism — to be sacrificed to Lady R.'s taking 
notes on her husband's trial. If a thing is 
good, why invidiously bring it into light with 
something better 1 There are too few heroic 
things in this world, to admit of our mar- 
shalling them in anxious etiquettes of prece- 
dence. Would you make a poem on the 
story of Euth, (pretty story !) and then say — 
Ay, but how much better is the story of 
Joseph and his brethren ! To go on, the 
stanzas to ' Chalon ' want the name of Clark- 
son in the body of them ; it is left to infer- 
ence. The 'Battle of Gibeon' is spirited, 
again ; but you sacrifice it in last stanza to 
the song at Bethlehem. Is it quite orthodox 
to do so % The first was good, you suppose, 
for that dispensation. Why set the word 
against the word % It puzzles a weak 
Christian. So Watts' Psalms are an implied 
censure on David's. But as long as the 
Bible is supposed to be an equally divine 
emanation with the Testament, so long it will 
stagger weaklings to have them set in oppo- 
sition. 'Godiva' is delicately touched. I 
have always thought it a beautiful story, 
characteristic of the old English times. But 
I could not help amusing myself with the 
thought — if Martin had chosen this subject 
for a frontispiece — there would have been 
in some dark corner a white lady, white 
as the walker on the waves, riding upon 
some mystical quadruped ; and high above 
would have risen ' tower above tower a massy 
structure high' — the Tenterden steeples of 
Coventry, till the poor cross would scarce 
have known itself among the clouds ; 
and far above them all the distant Clint 
hills peering over chimney-pots, piled up, 
Ossa-on-Olympus fashion, till the admiring 
spectator (admirer of a noble deed) might 
have gone look for the lady, as you must 
hunt for the other in the lobster. But M. 
should be made royal architect. What 
palaces he would pile ! But then, what par- 
liamentary grants to make them good ! 
Nevertheless, I like the frontispiece. ' The 
Elephant ' is pleasant ; and I am glad you 
are getting into a wider scope of subjects. 



There may be too much, not religion, but too 
many good words in a book, till it becomes a 
rhapsody of words. I will just name, that 
you have brought in the 'Song to the 
Shepherds ' in four or five, if not six places. 
Now this is not good economy. The 'Enoch' 
is fine ; and here I can sacrifice 'Elijah ' to 
it, because 'tis illustrative only, and not dis- 
paraging of the latter prophet's departure. 
I like this best in the book. Lastly, I much 
like the ' Heron ; ' 'tis exquisite. Know you 
Lord Thurlow's Sonnet to a bird of that sort 
on Lacken water 1 If not, 'tis indispensable 
I send it you, with my Blackwood. 'Fludyer' 
is pleasant, — you are getting gay and Hood- 
ish. What is the enigma ? Money ? If not, 
I fairly confess I am foiled, and sphynx must 

eat me. Four times I've tried to 

write — eat me, and the blotting pen turns 
it into — cat me. And now I will take my 
leave with saying, I esteem thy verses, like 
thy present, honour thy frontispicer, and 
right reverence thy patron and dedicatee, 
and am, dear B. B., 

" Yours heartily, C. Lamb." 



CHAPTER XVII. 

[1829, 1830.] 

LETTERS TO ROBINSON, PROCTER, BARTON, WILSON, 
GILMAN, WORDSWORTH, AND DYER. 

Having decided on residing entirely at 
Enfield, Lamb gave up Colebrooke-cottage, 
and took what he described in a notelet to 
me as "an odd-looking gambogish-coloured 
house," at Chase-side, Enfield. The situation 
was far from picturesque, for the opposite 
side of the road only presented some middling 
tenements, two dissenting-chapels, and a 
public -house decorated with a swinging sign 
of a Rising Sun ; but the neighbouring field- 
walks were pleasant, and the country, as he 
liked to say, quite as good as Westmoreland. 

He continued occasional contributions to 
the New Monthly, especially the series of 
" Popular Fallacies ; " wrote short articles in 
the Athenaeum ; and a great many acrostics 
on the names of his friends. He had now a 
neighbour in Mr. Serjeant Wilde, to whom 
he was introduced by Mr. Burney, and whom 



LETTERS TO ROBINSON AND PROCTER. 



155 



he held in high esteem, though Lamb cared 
nothing for forensic eloquence, and thought, 
very little of eloquence of any kind ; which, 
it must be confessed, when printed is the 
most vapid of all reading. What political 
interest could not excite, personal regard 
produced in favour of his new friend ; and 
Lamb supplied several versified squibs and 
snatches of electioneering songs to grace 
Wilde's contests at Newark. With these 
slender avocations his life was dull, and only 
a sense of duty induced him to persist in 
absence from London. 

The following letter was written in ac- 
knowledgment of a parcel sent to Miss 
Lamb, comprising (what she had expressed 
a wish to have) a copper coal-scoop, and a 
pair of elastic spectacles, accompanied by a 
copy of "Pamela," which having been bor- 
rowed and supposed to be lost, had been 
replaced by another in Lamb's library. 



TO MR. H. C. ROBINSON. 

"Enfield, Feb. 27th, 1829. 

" Dear E., — Expectation was alert on the 
receipt of your strange-shaped present, while 
yet undisclosed from its fuse envelope. Some 
said, 'tis a viol da Gamba, others pronounced 
it a fiddle ; I, myself, hoped it a liqueur case, 
pregnant with eau-de-vie and such odd nectar. 
When midwifed into daylight, the gossips 
were at a loss to pronounce upon its species. 
Most took it for a marrow-spoon, an apple- 
scoop, a banker's guinea -shovel ; at length its 
true scope appeared, its drift, to save the 
back-bone of my sister stooping to scuttles. 
A philanthropic intent, borrowed, no doubt, 
from some of the Colliers. You save people's 
backs one way, and break 'em again by loads 
of obligation. The spectacles are delicate 
and Vulcanian. No lighter texture than 
their steel did the cuckoldy blacksmith frame 
to catch Mrs. Yulcan and the Captain in. 
For ungalled forehead, as for back unbursten, 
you have Mary's thanks. Marry, for my 
own peculium of obligation, 'twas superero- 
gatory. A second part of Pamela was enough 
in conscience. Two Pamelas in a house are 
too much, without two Mr. B.'s to reward 
'em. 

" Mary, who is handselling her new aerial 
perspectives upon a pair of old worsted 
stockings trod out in Cheshunt lanes, sends 



her love : I, great good-liking. Bid us a 
personal farewell before you see the Vatican. 
" Charles Lamb." 



The following letter to his friend, who so 
prosperously combines conveyancing with 
poetry, is a fair sample of Lamb's elaborate 
and good-natured fictions. It is hardly 
necessary to say, that the reference to a 
coolness between him and two of his legal 
friends, is part of the fiction. 

TO MR. PROCTER. 

"Jan. 19th, 1829. 

" My dear Procter, — I am ashamed not to 
have taken the drift of your pleasant letter, 
which I find to have been pure invention. 
But jokes are not suspected in Boeotian 
Enfield. We are plain people, and our talk 
is of corn, and cattle, and Waltham markets. 
Besides, I was a little out of sorts when I 
received it. The fact is, I am involved in a 
case which has fretted me to death, and I 
have no reliance except on you to extricate 
me. I am sure you will give me your best 
legal advice, having no professional friend 
besides, but Eobinson and Talfourd, with 
neither of whom, at present, I am on the 
best of terms. My brother's widow left a 
will, made during the lifetime of my brother, 
in which I am named sole executor, by which 
she bequeaths forty acres of arable property, 
which it seems she held under covert baron, 
unknown to my brother, to the heirs of the 
body of Elizabeth Dowden, her married 
daughter by a first husband, in fee simple, 
recoverable by fine ; invested property, mind, 
for there is the difficulty ; subject to leet and 
quit-rent ; in short, worded in the most 
guarded terms, to shut out the property from 
Isaac Dowden, the husband. Intelligence 
has just come of the death of this person in 
India, where he made a will, entailing this 
property (which seemed entangled enough 
already) to the heirs of his body, that should 
not be born of his wife, for it seems by the 
law in India, natural children can recover. 
They have put the cause into Exchequer 
process here, removed by certiorari from the 
native courts ; and the question is, whether 
I should, as executor, try the cause here, or 
again re-remove it to the Supreme Sessions 
at Bangalore, which I understand I can, or 



156 



LETTERS TO PROCTER. 



plead a hearing before the Privy Council 
here. As it involves all the little property 
of Elizabeth Dowden, I am anxious to take 
the fittest steps, and what may be least 
expensive. For God's sake assist me, for the 
case is so embarrassed that it deprives me of 
sleep and appetite. M. Burney thinks there 
is a case like it in chap. 170, sec. 5, in * Fearn's 
Contingent Remainders.' Pray read it over 
with him dispassionately, and let me have 
the result. The complexity lies in the ques- 
tionable power of the husband to alienate in 
usum ; enfeoffments whereof he was only 
collaterally seised, &c. 

" I had another favour to beg, which is the 
beggarliest of beggings. A few lines of verse 
for a young friend's album (six will be 
enough). M. Burney will tell you who she 
is I want 'em for. A girl of gold. Six lines 

— make 'em eight — signed Barry C . 

They need not be very good, as I chiefly want 
'em as a foil to mine. But I shall be seriously 
obliged by any refuse scrap. "We are in the 
last ages of the world, when St. Paul pro- 
phesied that women should be ' headstrong, 
lovers of their own wills, having albums.' I 
fled hither to escape the albumean persecution, 
and had not been in my new house twenty- 
four hours, when the daughter of the next 
house came in with a friend's album to beg 
a contribution, and the following day inti- 
mated she had one of her own. Two more 
have sprung up since. If I take the wings 
of the morning and fly unto the uttermost 
parts of the earth, there will albums be. 
New Holland has albums. But the age is to 
be complied with. M. B. will tell you the 
sort of girl I request the ten lines for. Some- 
what of a pensive cast, what you admire. 
The lines may come before the law question, 
as that cannot be determined before Hilary 
Term, and I wish your deliberate judgment 
on that. The other may be flimsy and super- 
ficial. And if you have not burnt your 
returned letter, pray resend it me, as a 
monumental token of my stupidity." 



Lamb was as unfortunate in his commu- 
nications with the annuals, as unhappy in 
the importunities of the fair owners of albums. 
His favourite pieces were omitted ; and a 
piece not his, called " The Widow," was, by a 
license of friendship, which Lamb forgave, 



inserted in one of them. He thus complains 
of these grievances in a letter which he 
wrote on the marriage of the daughter of a 
friend to a great theoretical chemist. 

TO MR. PROCTER. 

"Jan. 22nd, 1829. 

" Eumour tells us that Miss is mar- 
ried. Who is % Have I seen him at 

Montacutes ? I hear he is a great chemist. 
I am sometimes chemical myself. A thought 
strikes me with horror. Pray heaven he 
may not have done it for the sake of trying 
chemical experiments upon her, — -young 
female subjects are so scarce. An't you glad 
about Burke's case ! We may set off the 
Scotch murders against the Scotch novels. 
Hare, the Great Unhanged. 

" M. B. is richly worth your knowing. He 
is on the top scale of my friendship ladder, 
on which an angel or two is still climbing, 
and some, alas ! descending. Did you see a 
sonnet of mine in Blackwood's last 1 Curious 
construction ! Elaborata facilitas ! And now 
I'll tell. 'Twas written for < The Gem,' but 
the editors declined it, on the plea that it 
would shock all mothers; so they published 
' The Widow ' instead. I am born out of time. 
I have no conjecture about what the present 
world calls delicacy. I thought ' Rosamund 
Gray' was a pretty modest thing. Hessey 
assures me that the world would not bear it. 
I have lived to grow into an indecent charac- 
ter. When my sonnet was rejected, I ex- 
claimed, 'Hang the age, I will write for 
antiquity ! " 

" Erratum in sonnet. — Last line but some- 
thing, for tender, read tend. The Scotch do 
not know our law terms ; but I find some 
remains of honest, plain, old writing lurking 
there still. They were not so mealy-mouthed 
as to refuse my verses. Maybe 'tis their 
oatmeal. 

"Blackwood sent me 20?. for the drama. 
Somebody cheated me out of it next day ; 
and my new pair of breeches, just sent home, 
cracking at first putting on, I exclaimed, in 
my wrath, 'All tailors are cheats, and all 
men are tailors.' Then I was better. 

"C. L." 

The next contains Lamb's thanks for the 
verses he had begged for Miss Isola's album. 



LETTERS TO PROCTER. 



157 



They comprehended a compliment turning 
on the words Isola Bella. 

TO MR. PROCTER. 

"The comings in of an incipient convey- 
ancer are not adequate to the receipt of three 
twopenny post non-paids in a week. There- 
fore, after this, T condemn my stub to long 
and deep silence, or shall awaken it to write 
to lords. Lest those raptures in this honey- 
moon of my correspondence, which you avow 
for the gentle person of my Nuncio, after 
passing through certain natural grades, as 
Love, Love and Water, Love with the chill 
off, then subsiding to that point which the 
heroic suitor of his wedded dame, the noble- 
spirited Lord Eandolph in the play; declares 
to be the ambition of his passion, a recipro- 
cation of ' complacent kindness,' — should 
suddenly plum down (scarce staying to bait 
at the mid point of indifference, so hungry it 
is for distaste) to a loathing and blank aver- 
sion, to the rendering probable such counter 
expressions as this, — 'Hang that infernal 
two-penny postman,' (words which make the 
not yet glutted inamorato ' lift up his hands 
and wonder who can use them.') While, 
then, you are not ruined, let me assure thee, 
O thou above the painter, and next only 
under Giraldus Cambrensis, the most immor- 
tal and worthy to be immortal Barry, thy 
most ingenious and golden cadences do take 
my fancy mightily. But tell me, and tell 
me truly, gentle swain, is that Isola Bella a 
true spot in geographical denomination, or a 
floating Delos in thy brain. Lurks that fair 
island in verity in the bosom of Lake Mag- 
giore, or some other with less poetic name, 
which thou hast Cornwallized for the occa- 
sion. And what if Maggiore itself be but a 
coinage of adaptation 1 Of this, pray resolve 
me immediately, for my albumess will be 
catechised on this subject ; and how can I 
prompt her? Lake Leman I know, and 
Lemon Lake (in a punch bowl) I have swum 
in, though those lymphs be long since dry. 
But Maggiore may be in the moon. Un- 
sphinx this riddle for me, for my shelves 
have no gazetteer." 



The following letters contain a noble 
instance of Lamb's fine consideration, and 
exquisite feeling in morality. 



TO MR. PROCTER. 

"Jan. 29th, 1829. 

" When Miss was at Enfield, which 

she was in summer-time, and owed her 
health to its sun and genial influences, she 
visited (with young lady like impertinence) a 
poor man's cottage that had a pretty baby 
(O the yearning !), gave it fine caps and 
sweetmeats. On a day, broke into the parlour 
our two maids uproarious. ' O ma'am, who 

do you think Miss has been working a 

cap for ? ' 'A child,' answered Mary, in 
true Shandean female simplicity. ' It's the 
man's child as was taken up for sheep- 
stealing.' Miss was staggered, and 

would have cut the connection, but by main 
force I made her go and take her leave of 
her protegee. I thought, if she went no 
more, the Abactor or Abactor's wife (vide 
Ainsworth) would suppose she had heard 
something ; and I have delicacy for a sheep- 
stealer. The overseers actually overhauled 
a mutton-pie at the baker's (his first, last, 
and only hope of mutton-pie), which he never 
came to eat, and thence inferred his guilt. 
Per occasionem cujus, I framed the sonnet ; 
observe its elaborate construction. I was 
four days about it. 

'THE GIPSY'S MALISON. 

" Suck, baby, suck ! mother's love grows by giving, 
Drain the sweet founts that only thrive by 
wasting ; 
Black manhood comes, when riotous guilty living 
Hands thee the cup that shall be death in 
tasting. 
Kiss, baby, kiss ! mother's lips shine by kisses, 
Choke the warm breath that else would fall in 
blessings ; 
Black manhood comes, when turbulent guilty blisses 

Tend thee the kiss that poisons 'mid caressings. 
Hang, baby, hang ! mother's love loves such forces, 
Strain the fond neck that bends still to thy 
clinging ; 
Black manhood comes, when violent lawless courses 
Leave thee a spectacle in rude air swinging." 
So sang a wither'd beldam energetical, 
And bann'd the ungiving door with lips pro- 
phetical.' 

" Barry, study that sonnet. It is curiously 
and perversely elaborate. 'Tis a choking 
subject, and therefore the reader is directed 
to the structure of it. See you 1 and was 
this a fourteener to be rejected by a trumpery 
annual 1 forsooth, 'twould shock all mothers ; 
and may all mothers, who would so be 
shocked, be hanged ! as if mothers were such 
sort of logicians as to infer the future hanging 



15S 



LETTERS TO PROCTER AND BARTON". 



of their child from the theoretical hangibility 
(or capacity of being hanged, if the judge 
pleases) of every infant born with a neck on. 
Oh B. C. my whole heart is faint, and my 
whole head is sick (how is it ?) at this cursed, 
canting, unmasculine age ! " 



There is a little Latin letter about the 
same time to the same friend. 



TO MR. PROCTER. 

"Feb. 2nd, 1829. 

" Facundissime Poeta ! quanquam istius- 
modi epitheta oratoribus potius quam poetis 
attinere facile^ scio — tamen, facundissime ! 

"Comnioratur nobiscum jamdiu, in agro 
Enfeldiense, scilicet, leguleius futurus, illus- 
trissimus Martinus Burneius, otium agens, 
negotia nominalia, et officinam clientum 
vacuam, paululum fugiens. Orat, implorat 
te — nempe, Martinus — ut si (qudd Dii 
faciant) forte fortuna, absente ipso, advenerit 
tardus cliens, eum certiorem feceris per 
literas hue missas. Intelligisne ? an me 
Anglicd et barbarice ad te hominem perdoc- 
tum scribere oportet 1 C. Agnus." 

" Si status de franco tenemento datur avo, 
et in eodem facto si mediate vel immediate 
datur hceredibus vel hceredibus corporis dicti 
avi, postrema hsec verba sunt Limitationis 
non Perquisitionis. 

" Dixi. Carlagnulus." 



An allusion to Rogers, worthy of both, 
occurs in a letter 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

" June 3rd, 1829. 

" Dear B. B., — to get out of home themes, 
have you seen Southey's ' Dialogues ? ' His 
lake descriptions, and the account of his 
library at Keswick, are very fine. But he 
needed not have called up the ghost of 
More to hold the conversations with ; which 
might as well have passed between A. and 
B., or Caius and Lucius. It is making too 
free with a defunct Chancellor and Martyr. 

" I feel as if I had nothing farther to write 
about. O ! I forget the prettiest letter I 
ever read, that I have received from 
' Pleasures of Memory ' Rogers, in acknow- 



ledgment of a sonnet I sent him on the loss 
of his brother. 

" It is too long to transcribe, but I hope to 
show it you some day, as I hope some time 
again to see you, when all of us are well. 
Only it ends thus, 'We were nearly of an 
age (he was the elder) ; he was the only 
person in the world in whose eyes I always 
appeared young.' " 



What a lesson does the following read to 
us from one who, while condemned to unin- 
teresting industry, thought happiness con- 
sisted in an affluence of time ! 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 
"Enfield Chase-side, Saturday, 25th July, 
a.d. 1829, 11 A.M. 

"There — a fuller, plumper, juicier date 
never dropt from Idumean palm. Am I in 
the dative case now 1 if not, a fig for dates, 
which is more than a date is worth. I never 
stood much affected to these limitary speci- 
alities. Least of all, since the date of my 
superannuation. 

• What have I with time to do ? 
Slaves of desks, 'twas meant for you.' 



But town, with all my native hankering after 
it, is not what it was. The streets, the shops 
are left, but all old friends are gone. And 
in London I was frightfully convinced of this 
as I passed houses and places, empty caskets 
now. I have ceased to care almost about 
anybody. The bodies I cared for are in 
graves, or dispersed. My old clubs, that 
lived so long, and flourished so steadily, are 
crumbled away. When I took leave of our 
adopted young friend at Charing Cross, 'twas 
heavy unfeeling rain, and I had no where to 
go. Home have I none, and not a sympa- 
thising house to turn to in the great city. 
Never did the waters of heaven pour down 
on a forlomer head. Yet I tried ten days at 
a sort of a friend's house, but it was large and 
straggling, — one of the individuals of my old 
long knot of friends, card-players, pleasant 
companions, that have tumbled to pieces, 
into dust and other things ; and I got home 
on Thursday, convinced that I was better to 
get home to my hole at Enfield, and hide 
like a sick cat in my corner. And to make 



LETTER TO WILSON. 



159 



me more alone, our ill-tempered maid is gone, 
who, with all her airs, was yet a home-piece 
of furniture, a record of better days ; the 
young thing that has succeeded her is good 
and attentive, but she is nothing. And I have 
no one here to talk over old matters with. 
Scolding and quarrelling have something of 
familiarity, and a community of interest; 
they imply acquaintance ; they are of re- 
sentment, which is of the family of dear- 
ness. 

" I can neither scold nor quarrel at this 
insignificant implement of household services ; 
she is less than a cat, and just better than a 
deal dresser. What I can do, and do over-do, 
is to walk ; but deadly long are the days, these 
summer all-day days, with but a half hour's 
candle-light, and no fire-light. I do not 
write, tell your kind inquisitive Eliza, and 
can hardly read. In the ensuing Blackwood 
will be an old rejected farce of mine, which 
may be new to you, if you see that same 
medley. 'Tis cold work authorship, without 
something to puff one into fashion. Could 
you not write something on Quakerism, for 
Quakers to read, but nominally addressed to 
Non-Quakers, explaining your dogmas — 
waiting on the Spirit — by the analogy of 
human calmness and patient waiting on the 
judgment ? I scarcely know what I mean, 
but to make Non-Quakers reconciled to your 
doctrines, by showing something like them 
in mere human operations ; but I hardly 
understand myself, so let it pass for nothing. 
I pity you for over-work, but, I assure you, 
no work is worse. The mind preys on itself, 
the most unwholesome food. I bragged 
formerly that I could not have too much 
time. I have a surfeit. With few years to 
come, the days are wearisome. But weari- 
ness is not eternal. Something will shine out 
to take the load off that flags me, which is 
at present intolerable. I have killed an hour 
or two in this poor scrawl. I am a sanguinary 
murderer of time, and would kill him inch- 
meal just now. But the snake is vital. 
Well : I shall write merrier anon. 'Tis the 
present copy of my countenance I send, and 
to complain is a little to alleviate. May you 
enjoy yourself as far as the wicked world 
will let you, and think that you are not 
quite alone, as I am ! Health to Lucia, and 
to Anna, and kind remembrances. 

" Your forlorn C. L." 



The cares of housekeeping pressed too 
heavily on Miss Lamb, and her brother 
resolved to resign the dignity of a house- 
keeper for the independence of a lodger. A 
couple of old dwellers in Enfield, hard by his 
cottage, had the good fortune to receive 
them. Lamb refers to the change in the 
following letter, acknowledging the receipt 
of Wilson's " Life of De Foe," in which a 
criticism from his pen was inserted, embody- 
ing the sentiments which he had expressed 
some years before. 



TO MR. WALTER WILSON. 

"Enfield, 15th November, 1829. 
" My dear Wilson, — I have not opened a 
packet of unknown contents for many years, 
that gave me so much pleasure as when I 
disclosed your three volumes. I have given 
them a careful perusal, and they have taken 
their degree of classical books upon my 
shelves. De Foe was always my darling, but 
what darkness was I in as to far the larger 
part of his writings ! I have now an epi- 
tome of them all. I think the way in which 
you have done the 'Life' the most judicious 
you could have pitched upon. You have 
made him tell his own story, and your com- 
ments are in keeping with the tale. Why, I 
never heard of such a work as ' the Review.' 
Strange that in my stall-hunting days I 
never so much as lit upon an odd volume of 
it. This circumstance looks as if they were 
never of any great circulation. But I may 
have met with 'em, and not knowing the 
prize, overpast 'em. I was almost a stranger 
to the whole history of Dissenters in those 
reigns, and picked my way through that 
strange book the ' Consolidator ' at random. 
How affecting are some of his personal 
appeals : what a machine of projects he set 
on foot, and following writers have picked 
his pocket of the patents ! I do not under- 
stand whereabouts in Boxana he himself left 
off. I always thought the complete-tourist- 
sort of description of the town she passes 
through on her last embarkation miserably 
unseasonable, and out of place. I knew not 
they were spurious. Enlighten me as to 
where the apocryphal matter commences. I, 
by accident, can correct one A. D., ' Family 
Instructor,' vol. ii. 1718 ; you say his first 
volume had then reached the fourth edition ; 



160 



LETTER TO OILMAN. 



now I have a fifth, printed for Eman 
Matthews, 1717. So have I plucked one 
rotten date, or rather picked it up where it 
had inadvertently fallen, from your flourish- 
ing date tree, the Palm of Engaddi. I may 
take it for my pains. I think yours a book 
which every public library must have, and 
every English scholar should have. I am 
sure it has enriched my meagre stock of the 
author's works. I seem to be twice as 
opulent. Mary is by my side just finishing 
the second volume. It must have interest to 
divert her away so long from her modern 
novels. Colburn will be quite jealous. I 
was a little disappointed at my ' Ode to the 
Treadmill ' not finding a place, but it came 
out of time. The two papers of mine will 
puzzle the reader, being so akin. Odd, that 
never keeping a scrap of my own letters, 
with some fifteen years' interval I should 
nearly have said the same things. But I 
shall always feel happy in having my name 
go down any how with De Foe's, and that of 
his historiographer. I promise myself, if 
not immortality, yet diuternity of being read 
in consequence. We have both had much 
illness this year ; and feeling infirmities and 
fretfulness grow upon us, we have cast off the 
cares of housekeeping, sold off our goods, 
and commenced boarding and lodging with 
a very comfortable old couple next door to 
where you found us. We use a sort of com- 
mon table. Nevertheless, we have reserved 
a private one for an old friend ; and when 
Mrs. Wilson and you revisit Babylon, we 
shall pray you to make it yours for a season. 
Our very kindest remembrances to you 
both. 

" From your old friend and fellow-journalist, 
now in two instances. 

" C. Lamb." 

" Hazlitt is going to make your book a 
basis for a review of De Foe's Novels in ' the 
Edinbro.' I wish I had health and spirits to 
do it. Hone I have not seen, but I doubt 
not he will be much pleased with your per- 
formance. I very much hope you will give 
us an account of Dunton, &c. But what I 
should more like to see would be a life and 
times of Bunyan. Wishing health to you, 
and long life to your healthy book, again I 
subscribe me, 

" Yours in verity, C. L." 



About the same time, the following letter 
was written, alluding to the same change. 



TO MR. GILMAN. 
"Chase-side, Enfield, 26th Oct. 1829. 

" Dear Gilman, — Allsop brought me your 
kind message yesterday. How can I account 
for having not visited Highgate this long 
time 1 Change of place seemed to have 
changed me. How grieved I was to hear in 
what indifferent health Coleridge has been, 
and I not to know of it ! A little school 
divinity, well applied, may be healing. I 
send him honest Tom of Aquin ; that was 
always an obscure great idea to me : I never 
thought or dreamed to see him in the flesh, 
but t'other day I rescued him from a stall in 
Barbican, and brought him off in triumph. 
He comes to greet Coleridge's acceptance, 
for his shoe-latchets I am unworthy to 
unloose. Yet there are pretty pro's and 
con's, and such unsatisfactory learning in him. 
Commend me to the question of etiquette — 
' utrum annunciatio debuerit fieri per angelum " 
■ — Quosst. 30, Articulus 2. I protest, till now 
I had thought Gabriel a fellow of some mark 
and livelihood, not a simple esquire, as I find 
him. Well, do not break your lay brains, 
nor I neither, with these curious nothings. 
They are nuts to our dear friend, whom 
hoping to see at your first friendly hint that 
it will be convenient, I end with begging our 
very kindest loves to Mrs. Gilman. We 
have had a sorry house of it here. Our 
spirits have been reduced till we were at 
hope's end what to do. Obliged to quit this 
house, and afraid to engage another, till in 
extremity, I took the desperate resolve of 
kicking house and all down, like Bunyan's 
pack ; and here we are in a new life at board 
and lodging, with an honest couple our 
neighbours. We have ridded ourselves of 
the cares of dirty acres ; and the change, 
though of less than a week, has had the most 
beneficial effects on Mary already. She 
looks two years and a half younger for it. 
But we have had sore trials. 

" God send us one happy meeting ! — Yours 
faithfully, C. Lamb." 



The first result of the experiment was 
happy, as it brought improved health to 
Miss Lamb; to which Lamb refers in the 



LETTERS TO BARTON AND WORDSWORTH. 



161 



following letter to his Suffolk friend, who 
had announced to him his appointment as 
assignee under a bankruptcy. 



TO BERNARD BARTON. 

"December 8th, 1829. 

" My dear B. B., — You are very good to 
have been uneasy about us, and I have the 
satisfaction to tell you, that we are both in 
better health and spirits than we have been 
for a year or two past ; I may say, than we 
have been since we have been at Enfield. 
The cause may not aj^pear quite adequate, 
when I tell you, that a course of ill-health 
and spirits brought us to the determination 
of giving up our house here, and we are 
boarding and lodging with a worthy old 
couple, long inhabitants of Enfield, where 
everything is done for us without our trouble, 
further than a reasonable weekly payment. 
"We should have done so before, but it is not 
easy to flesh and blood to give up an ancient 
establishment, to discard old Penates, and 
from house-keepers to turn house-sharers. 
(N.B. We are not in the workhouse.) Dio- 
cletian, in his garden, found more repose 
than on the imperial seat of Rome ; and the 
nob of Charles the "Fifth ached seldomer 
under a monk's cowl than under the diadem. 
With such shadows of assimilation we coun- 
tenance our degradation. With such a load 
of dignified cares just removed from our 
shoulders, we can the more understand and 
pity the accession to yours, by the advance- 
ment to an assigneeship. I will tell you 
honestly, B. B., that it has been long my 
deliberate judgment that all bankrupts, of 
what denomination, civil or religious, soever, 
ought to be hanged. The pity of mankind 
has for ages run in a wrong channel, and has 
been diverted from poor creditors — (how 
many have I known sufferers ! Hazlitt has 
just been defrauded of 100?. by his 
bookseller-friend's breaking) — to scoundrel 
debtors. I know all the topics, — that dis- 
tress may come upon an honest man without 
his fault ; that the failure of one that he 
trusted was his calamity, &c. Then let both 
be hanged. O how careful this would make 
traders ! These are my deliberate thoughts, 
after many years' experience in matters of 
trade. What a world of trouble it would 
save you, if Friend ***** had been imme- 



diately hanged, without benefit of clergy, 
which (being a Quaker I presume) he could 
not reasonably insist upon. "Why, after 
slaving twelve months in your assign- 
business, you will be enabled to declare Id. 
in the pound in all human probability. B. B., 
he should be hanged. Trade will never re- 
flourish in this land till such a law is 
established. I write big, not to save ink but 
eyes, mine having been troubled with reading 
through three folios of old Fuller in almost 
as few days, and I went to bed last night in 
agony, and am writing with a vial of eye- 
water before me, alternately dipping in vial 
and inkstand. This may inflame my zeal 
against bankrupts, but it was my speculation 
when I could see better. Half the world's 
misery (Eden else) is owing to want of 
money, and all that want is owing to bank- 
rupts. I declare I would, if the state wanted 
practitioners, turn hangman myself, and 
should have great pleasure in hanging the 
first after my salutary law should be estab- 
lished. I have seen no annuals, and wish to 
see none. I like your fun upon them, and 
was quite pleased with Bowles's sonnet. 
Hood is, or was, at Brighton ; but a note 
(prose or rhyme) to him, Robert-street, 
Adelphi, I am sure, would extract a copy of 
his, which also I have not seen. Wishing 
you and yours all health, I conclude while 
these frail glasses are to me — eyes. 

"C. L." 



The following letter, written in the begin- 
ning of 1830, describes his landlord and land- 
lady, and expresses, with a fine solemnity, 
the feelings which still held him at Enfield. 

TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 

"Jan. 22nd, 1830. 

" And is it a year since we parted from 
you at the steps of Edmonton stage ? There 
are not now the years that there used to be. 
The tale of the dwindled age of men, reported 
of successional mankind, is true of the same 
man only. We do not live a year in a year 
now. 'Tis a punctum stans. The seasons 
pass us with indifference. Spring cheers not, 
nor winter heightens our gloom ; autumn 
hath foregone its moralities, — they are ' hey- 
pass repass,' as in a show-box. Yet, as far 
as last year, occurs back, — for they scarce 



162 



LETTER TO WORDSWORTH. 



show a reflex now, they make no memory as 
heretofore, — 'twas sufficiently gloomy. Let 
the sullen nothing pass. Suffice it, that after 
sad spirits, prolonged through many of its 
months, as it called them, we have cast our 
skins ; have taken a farewell of the pompous, 
troublesome trifle, called housekeeping, and 
are settled down into poor boarders and 
lodgers at next door with an old couple, the 
Baucis and Baucida of dull Enfield. Here 
we have nothing to do with our victuals but 
to eat them ; with the garden but to see it 
grow ; with the tax-gatherer but to hear him 
knock ; with the maid but to hear her 
scolded. Scot and lot, butcher, baker, are 
things unknown to us, save as spectators of 
the pageant. "We are fed we know not how ; 
quietists, — confiding ravens. We have the 
otium pro dignitate, a respectable insignifi- 
cance. Yet in the self-condemned oblivious- 
ness, in the stagnation, some molesting 
yearnings of life, not quite killed, rise, 
prompting me that there was a London, and 
that I was of that old Jerusalem. In dreams 
I am in Fleet Market, but I wake and cry to 
sleep again. I die hard, a stubborn Eloisa 
in this detestable Paraclete. What have I 
gained by health ? Intolerable dullness. 
What by early hours and moderate meals ? 
A total blank. O ! never let the lying poets 
be believed, who 'tice men from the cheerful 
haunts of streets, or think they mean it not 
of a country village. In the ruins of Pal- 
myra I could gird myself up to solitude, or 
muse to the snorings of the Seven Sleepers ; 
but to have a little teazing image of a town 
about one ; country folks that do not look 
like country folks ; shops two yards square, 
half a dozen apples and two penn'orth 
of overlooked ginger-bread for the lofty 
fruiterers of Oxford-street; and, for the 
immortal book and print stalls, a circulating 
library that stands still, where the show- 
picture is a last year's Valentine, and whither 
the fame of the last ten Scotch novels has 
not yet travelled, — (marry, they just begin to 
be conscious of the Eedgauntlet :) — to have 
a new plastered flat church, and to be wishing 
that it was but a cathedral ! The very 
blackguards here are degenerate ; the top- 
ping gentry stock -brokers ; the passengers 
too many to insure your quiet, or let you go 
about whistling or gaping, too few to be the 
fine indifferent pageants of Fleet-street. 



Confining, room-keeping, thickest winter, is 
yet more bearable here than the gaudy 
months. Among one's books at one's fire 
by candle, one is soothed into an oblivion 
that one is not in the country ; but with the 
light the green fields return, till I gaze, and 
in a calenture can plunge myself into St. 
Giles's. O ! let no native Londoner imagine 
that health, and rest, and innocent occupa- 
tion, interchange of converse sweet, and 
recreative study, can make the country any- 
thing better than altogether odious and 
detestable. A garden was the primitive 
prison, till man, with Promethean felicity 
and boldness, luckily sinned himself out of it. 
Thence followed Babylon, Nineveh, Venice, 
London, haberdashers, goldsmiths, taverns, 
playhouses, satires, epigrams, puns, — these 
all came in on the town part, and the thither 
side of innocence. Man found out inven- 
tions. From my den I return you condolence 
for your decaying sight ; not for anything 
there is to see in the country, but for the 
miss of the pleasure of reading a London 
newspaper. The poets are as well to listen 
to ; anything high may, nay must, be read 
out ; you read it to yourself with an 
imaginary auditor ; but the light paragraphs 
must be glid over by the proper eye ; 
mouthing mumbles their gossamery sub- 
stance. 'Tis these trifles I should mourn in 
fading sight. A newspaper is the single 
gleam of comfort I receive here ; it comes 
from rich Cathay with tidings of mankind. 
Yet I could not attend to it, read out by the 
most beloved voice. But your eyes do not 
get worse, I gather. O for the collyrium of 
Tobias inclosed in a whiting's liver, to send 
you with no apocryphal good wishes ! The 
last long time I heard from you, you had 
knocked your head against something. Do 
not do so ; for your head (I do not flatter) is 
not a knob, or the top of a brass nail, or the 
end of a nine-pin, — unless a Vulcanian ham- 
mer could fairly batter a ' Eecluse ' out of it ; 
then would I bid the smirched god knock 
and knock lustily, the two-handed skinker. 
Mary must squeeze out a line propria manu, 
but indeed her fingers have been incorrigibly 
nervous to letter writing for a long interval. 
'Twill please you all to hear, that though I 
fret like a lion in a net, her present health 
and spirits are better than they have been 
for some time past ; she is absolutely three 



LETTER TO WORDSWORTH. 



163 



years and a half younger, as I tell her, since 
■we have adopted this boarding plan. 

" Our providers are an honest pair, Dame 

W and her husband ; he, when the light 

of prosperity shined on them, a moderately 
thriving haberdasher within Bow bells, re- 
tired since with something under a com- 
petence ; writes himself parcel gentleman ; 
hath borne parish offices ; sings fine old sea 
songs at threescore and ten ; sighs only now 
and then when he thinks that he has a 
son on his hands about fifteen, whom he 
finds a difficulty in getting out into the 
world, and then checks a sigh with muttering, 
as I once heard him prettily, not meaning to 
be heard, e I have married my daughter, 
however ; ' takes the weather as it comes ; 
outsides it to town in severest season ; and 
o' winter nights tells old stories not tending 
to literature, (how comfortable to author-rid 
folks !) and has one anecdote, upon which 
and about forty pounds a year he seems to 
have retired in green old age. It was how 
he was a rider in his youth, travelling for 
shops, and once (not to balk his employer's 
bargain) on a sweltering day in August, rode 
foaming into Dunstable upon a mad horse, 
to the dismay and expostulatory wonder- 
ment of inn-keepers, ostlers, &c, who de- 
clared they would not have bestrid the beast 
to win the Derby. Understand, the creature 
galled to death and desperation by gad-flies, 
cormorant-winged, worse than beset Inachus' 
daughter. This he tells, this he brindles 
and burnishes on a winter's eve ; 'tis his star 
of set glory, his rejuvenescence, to descant 
upon. Far from me be it {dii avertant) to look 
a gift story in the mouth, or cruelly to surmise 
(as those who doubt the plunge of Curtius) 
that the inseparate conjuncture of man and 
beast, the centaur-phenomenon that stag- 
gered all Dunstable, might have been the 
effect of unromantic necessity ; that the 
horse-part carried the reasoning, willy nilly ; 
that needs must when such a devil drove \ 
that certain spiral configurations in the 
frame of T W unfriendly to alight- 
ing, made the alliance more forcible than 
voluntary. Let him enjoy his fame for me, 
nor let me hint a whisper that shall dis- 
mount Bellerophon. But in case he was an 
involuntary martyr, yet if in the fiery con- 
flict he buckled the soul of a constant haber- 
dasher to him, and adopted his flames, let 



accident and him share the glory. You 

would all like T W . *[ ] How 

weak is painting to describe a man ! Say 
that he stands four feet and a nail high by 
his own yard measure, which, like the 
sceptre of Agamemnon, shall never sprout 
again, still you have no adequate idea ; nor 
when I tell you that his dear hump, which I 
have favoured in the picture, seems to me of 
the buffalo — indicative and repository of mild 
qualities, a budget of kindnesses — still you 
have not the man. Knew you old Norris of 
the Temple? sixty years ours and our 
fathers' friend ? He was not more natural 
to us than this old W., the acquaintance of 
scarce more weeks. Under his roof now 
ought I to take my rest, but that back- 
looking ambition tells me I might yet be a 
Londoner ! Well, if we ever do move, we 
have incumbrances the less to impede us ; 
all our furniture has faded under the 
auctioneer's hammer, going for nothing, like 
the tarnished frippery of the prodigal, and 
we have only a spoon or two left to bless us. 
Clothed we came into Enfield, and naked we 
must go out of it. I would live in London 
shirtless, bookless. Henry Crabb is at 
Borne; advices to that effect have reached 
Bury. But by solemn legacy he bequeathed 
at parting (whether he should live or die) a 
turkey of Suffolk to be sent every succeeding 
Christmas to us and divers other friends. 
What a genuine old bachelor's action ! I 
fear he will find the air of Italy too classic. 
His station is in the Harz forest ; his soul is 
be-Goethed. Miss Kelly we never see ; Tal- 
fourd not this half year : the latter flourishes, 
but the exact number of his children, God 
forgive me, I have utterly forgotten ; we 
single people are often out in our count 
there. Shall I say two 1 We see scarce 
anybody. Can I cram loves enough to you 
all in this little O ? Excuse particularising. 

" C. L." 



A letter which, addressed to Mr. Gilman, 
was intended both for him and his great 
guest Coleridge, gives another version of the 

same character. " One anecdote " of T 

W is repeated in it, with the substitution 



* Here was a rude sketch of a gentleman answering 
to the description. 



ar 2 



164 



LETTEltS TO GILMAN. 



of Devizes for Dunstable. Which is the 
veritable place must remain a curious question 
for future descant, as the hero is dead, and 
his anecdote survives alone in these pages. 
It seems that Miss Lamb had accompanied 
his landlord on a little excursion. 

TO MR. GILMAN. 

" Dear G., — The excursionists reached 
home, and the good town of Enfield, a little 
after four, without slip or dislocation. Little 
has transpired concerning the events of the 
back-journey, save that on passing the house 
of 'Squire Mellish, situate a stone bow's cast 

from the hamlet, Father W , with a 

good-natured wonderment, exclaimed, ' I can- 
not think what is gone of Mr. Mellish's 
rooks. I fancy they have taken flight some- 
where, but I have missed them two or three 
years past.' All this while, according to his 
fellow-traveller's report, the rookery was 
darkening the air above with undiminished 
population, and deafening all ears but his 
with their cawings. But nature has been 
gently withdrawing such phenomena from 

the notice of T W 's senses, from 

the time he began to miss the rooks. T, 

W has passed a retired life in this 

hamlet, of thirty or forty years, living upon 
the minimum which is consistent with gen- 
tility, yet a star among the minor gentry, 
receiving the bows of the tradespeople, and 
courtesies of the alms' women, daily. Children 
venerate him not less for his external show of 
gentry, than they wonder at him for a gentle 
rising endorsation of the person, not amount- 
ing to a hump, or if a hump, innocuous as 
the hump of the buffalo, and coronative of as 
mild qualities. 'Tis a throne on which 
patience seems to sit— the proud perch of a 
self-respecting humility, stooping with con- 
descension. Thereupon the cares of life 
have sate, and rid him easily. For he has 
thrid the angustice domils with dexterity. 
Life opened upon him with comparative 
brilliancy. He set out as a rider or traveller 
for a wholesale house, in which capacity he 
tells of many hair-breadth escapes that befell 
him ; one especially, how he rode a mad horse 
into the town of Devizes ; how horse and 
rider arrived in a foam, to the utter conster- 
nation of the expostulating hostlers, inn- 
keepers, &c. It seems it was sultry weather, 
piping hot ; the steed tormented into frenzy 



with gad-flies, long past being roadworthy ; 
j but safety and the interest of the house he 
rode for were incompatible things ; a fall in 
serge cloth was expected, and a mad entrance 
they made of it. Whether the exploit was 
purely voluntary, or partially ; or whether a 
certain personal defiguration in the man part 
of this extraordinary centaur (non-assistive 
to partition of natures) might not enforce the 
conjunction, I stand not to inquire. I look 
not with 'skew eyes into the deeds of heroes. 
The hosier that was burnt with his shop in 
Field-lane, on Tuesday night, shall have past 
to heaven for me like a Marian Martyr, 
provided always, that he consecrated the 
fortuitous incremation with a short ejacula- 
tion in the exit, as much as if he had taken 
his state degrees of martyrdom in forma in 
the market vicinage. There is adoptive as 
well as acquisitive sacrifice. Be the animus 
what it might, the fact is indisputable, that 
this composition was seen flying all abroad, 
and mine host of Daintry may yet remember 
its passing through his town, if his scores are 
not more faithful than his memory. After 

this exploit (enough for one man), T 

W seems to have subsided into a less 

hazardous occupation; and in the twenty- 
fifth year of his age, we find him a haber- 
dasher in Bow-lane : yet still retentive of his 
early riding (though leaving it to rawer 
stomachs), and Christmasly at night sithence 
to this last, and shall to his latest Christmas, 
hath he, doth he, and shall he, tell after 
supper the story of the insane steed and the 
desperate rider. Save for Bedlam or Luke's 
no eye could have guessed that melting day 
what house he rid for. But he reposes on 
his bridles, and after the ups and downs 
(metaphoric only) of a life behind the 
counter — hard riding sometimes, I fear, for 
poor T. W. — with the scrapings together of 
the shop, and one anecdote, he hath finally 
settled at Enfield ; by hard economising, 
gardening, building for himself, hath reared 
a mansion : married a daughter ; qualified a 
son for a counting-house ; gotten the respect 
of high and low ; served for self or substitute 
the greater parish offices ; hath a special 
voice at vestries ; and, domiciliating us, hath 
reflected a portion of his house-keeping 
respectability upon your humble servants. 
We are greater, being his lodgers, than when 
we were substantial renters. His name is a 



LETTERS TO GILMAN. 



165 



passport to take off the sneers of the native 
Enfielders against obnoxious foreigners. We 

are endenizened. Thus much of T. W 

have I thought fit to acquaint you, that you 
may see the exemplary reliance upon Provi- 
dence with which I entrusted so dear a 
charge as my own sister to the guidance of 
the man that rode the mad horse into 
Devizes. To come from his heroic character, 
all the amiable qualities of domestic life 
concentre in this tamed Bellerophon. He is 
excellent over a glass of grog ; just as 
pleasant without it ; laughs when he hears a 
joke, and when (which is much oftener) he 
hears it not ; sings glorious old sea songs on 
festival nights ; and but upon a slight 
acquaintance of two years, Coleridge, is as 
dear a deaf old man to us, as old Norris, rest 
his soul ! was after fifty. To him and his 
scanty literature (what there is of it, sound) 
have we flown from the metropolis and its 
cursed annualists, reviewers, authors, and the 
whole muddy ink press of that stagnant 
pool. 

" Now, Gilman again, you do not know the 
treasure of the Fullers. I calculate on 
having massy reading till Christmas. All I 
want here, is books of the true sort, not 
those things in boards that moderns mistake 
for books, what they club for at book clubs. 

" I did not mean to cheat you with a blank 
side, but my eye smarts, for which I am 
taking medicine, and abstain, this day at least, 
from any aliments but milk-porridge, the 
innocent taste of which I am anxious to 
renew after a half-century's disacquaintance. 
If a blot fall here like a tear, it is not pathos, 
but an angry eye. 

" Farewell, while my specilla are sound. 
" Yours and yours, C. Lamb." 



The next letter to Coleridge's excellent 
host, is a reply to a request from an impor- 
tunate friend of his correspondent, that he 
would write something on behalf of the 
Spitalfields' weavers. Alien as such a task 
would have been to his habits of thought or 
composition, if Lamb had been acquainted 
with that singular race, living in their high, 
narrow, over-peopled houses, in the thickest 
part of London, yet almost apart from the 
great throng of its dwellers ; indulging their 
straitened sympathies in the fostering of the 



more tender animals, as rabbits and pigeons 
nurtured in their garrets or cellars ; or cul- 
tivating some stunted plants with an intuitive 
love of nature, unfed by any knowledge of 
verdure beyond Hoxton ; their painful in- 
dustry, their uneducated morals, their eager 
snatches of pleasure from the only quickening 
of their intellect, by liquors which make glad 
the heart of man ; he would scarcely have 
refused the offered retainer for them. 



TO MR. GILMAN. 

"March 8th, 1830. 

" My dear G.,— Your friend B (for I 

knew him immediately by the smooth 
satinity of his style) must excuse me for 
advocating the cause of his friends in Spital- 
fields. The fact is, I am retained by the 
Norwich people, and have already appeared 
in their paper under the signatures of ' Lucius 
Sergius,' 'Bluff,' 'Broad-Cloth,' 'No-Trade-to- 
the-Woollen-Trade,' 'Anti-plush,' &c, in 
defence of druggets and long camblets. And 
without this pre-engagement, I feel I should 
naturally have chosen a side opposite 

to , for in the silken seemingness of 

his nature there is that which offends me. 
My flesh tingles at such caterpillars. He 
shall not crawl me over. Let him and his 
workmen sing the old burthen, 

1 Heigh ho, ye weavers ! ' 

for any aid I shall offer them in this 
emergency. I was over Saint Luke's the 
other day with my friend Tuthill, and 
mightily pleased with one of his contrivances 
for the comfort and amelioration of the 
students. They have double cells, in which 
a pair may lie feet to feet horizontally, and 
chat the time away as rationally as they can. 
It must certainly be more sociable for them 
these warm raving nights. The right-hand 
truckle in one of these friendly recesses, at 
present vacant, was preparing, I understood, 
for Mr. Irving. Poor fellow ! it is time he 
removed from Pentonville. I followed him 
as far as to Highbury the other day, with a 
mob at his heels, calling out upon Ermigiddon, 
who I suppose is some Scotch moderator. 
He squinted out his favourite eye last Friday, 
in the fury of possession, upon a poor woman's 
shoulders that was crying matches, and has 
not missed it. The companion truck, as far 
as I could measure it with my eye, would 



166 



LETTERS TO BARTON AND SOUTHEY. 



conveniently fit a person about the length of 
Coleridge, allowing for a reasonable drawing 
up of the feet, not at all painful. Does he 
talk of moving this quarter 1 ? You and I 
have too much sense to trouble ourselves with 
revelations; marry, to the same in Greek, 
you may have something professionally to 
say. Tell C. that he was to come and see us 
some fine day. Let it be before he moves, 
for in his new quarters he will necessarily 
be confined in his conversation to his brother 
prophet. Conceive the two Rabbis foot to 
foot, for there are no Gamaliels there to 
affect a humbler posture ! All are masters 
in that Patmos, where the law is perfect 
equality ; Latmos, I should rather say, for 
they will be Luna's twin darlings ; her 
affection will be ever at the full. "Well ; keep 
your brains moist with gooseberry this mad 
March, for the devil of exposition seeketh 
dry places. C. L." 



Here is a brief reply to the questioning of 
Lamb's true-hearted correspondent, Barton, 
who doubted of the personal verity of Lamb's 
" Joseph Paice," the most polite of merchants. 
This friend's personal acquaintance with 
Lamb had not been frequent enough to teach 
him, that if Lamb could innocently "lie 
like truth," he made up for this freedom, by 
sometimes making truth look like a lie. His 
account of Mr. Paice's politeness, could be 
attested to the letter by living witnesses. 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

" Dear B. B., — To reply to you by return 
of post, I must gobble up my dinner, and 
despatch this in 'propria persona to the office, 
to be in time. So take it from me hastily, 
that you are perfectly welcome to furnish 
A. C. with the scrap, which I had almost 
forgotten writing. The more my character 
comes to be known, the less my veracity will 
come to be suspected. Time every day clears 
up some suspected narrative of Herodotus, 
Bruce, and others of us great travellers. 
Why, that Joseph Paice was as real a person 
as Joseph Hume, and a great deal pleasanter. 
A careful observer of life, Bernard, has no 
need to invent. Nature romances it for him. 
Dinner plates rattle, and I positively shall 
incur indigestion by carrying it half concocted 
to the post-house. Let me congratulate you 



on the spring coming in, and do you in 
return condole with me on the winter going 
out. When the old one goes, seldom comes 
a better. I dread the prospect of summer, 
with his all-day-long days. No need of his 
assistance to make country places dull. 
With fire and candle-light, I can dream 
myself in Holborn. With lightsome skies 
shining in to bed-time I cannot. This 
Meschek, and these tents of Kedar — I would 
dwell in the skirts of Jericho rather, and 
think every blast of the coming in mail a 
ram's horn. Give me old London at fire 
and plague times, rather than these tepid 
gales, healthy country air, and purposeless 
exercise. 

" Leg of mutton absolutely on the table. 

" Take our hasty loves and short farewell. 

" C. L." 



Lamb's kindness to Hone was not confined 
to his contributions to the "Every-day Book," 
and the " Table Book." Those pleasant and 
blameless works had failed to supply an 
adequate income for a numerous family, and 
Lamb was desirous of interesting his influen- 
tial friends in a new project of Hone's, to 
establish himself in a coffee-house conducted 
in a superior style. With this view, he wrote 
to Southey, who, nobly forgetting Hone's old 
heresies in politics or parodies, had made a 
genial reference to his late work in his " Life 
of Bunyan." 

TO MR. SOUTHET. 

"May 10th, 1830. 

" Dear Southey, — My friend Hone, whom 
you would like for a friend, I found deeply 
impressed with your generous notice of him 
in your beautiful ' Life of Bunyan,' which I 
am just now full of. He has written to you 
for leave to publish a certain good-natured 
letter. I write not this to enforce his request, 
for we are fully aware that the refusal of 
such publication would be quite consistent 
with all that is good in your character. 
Neither he nor I expect it from you, nor 
exact it ; but if you would consent to it, you 
would have me obliged by it, as well as him. 
He is just now in a critical situation : kind 
friends have opened a coffee-house for him in 
the City, but their means have not extended 
to the purchase of coffee-pots, credit for 



LETTER TO DYER. 



167 



Reviews, newspapers, and other parapher- 
nalia. So I am sitting in the skeleton of a 
possible divan. "What right I have to 
interfere, you best know. Look on me as 
a dog who went once temporarily insane, 
and bit you, and now begs for a crust. "Will 
you set your wits to a dog ? 

"Our object is to open a subscription, 

which my friends of the are most 

willing to forward for him, but think that a 
leave from you to publish would aid it. 

"But not an atom of respect or kindness 
will or shall it abate in either of us, if you 
decline it. Have this strongly in your mind. 

"Those 'Every-day' and 'Table' Books 
will be a treasure a hundred years hence, but 
they have failed to make Hone's fortune. 

"Here his wife and all his children are 
about me, gaping for coffee customers ; but 
how should they come in, seeing no pot 
boiling ! 

" Enough of Hone. I saw Coleridge a day 
or two since. He has had some severe 
attack, not paralytic ; but, if I had not heard 
of it, I should not have found it out. He 
looks, and especially speaks, strong. How 
are all the "Words worths, and all the 
Southeys, whom I am obliged to you if you 
have not brought up haters of the name of 

" C. Lamb ? 

" P.S. — I have gone lately into the acrostic 
line. I find genius (such as I had) declines 
with me, but I get clever. Do you know 
anybody that wants charades, or such things, 
for Albums 1 I do 'em at so much a sheet. 
Perhaps an epigram (not a very happy-gram) 
I did for a school-boy yesterday may amuse. 
I pray Jove he may not get a flogging for any 
false quantity ; but 'tis, with one exception, 
the only Latin verses I have made for forty 
years, and I did it 'to order.' 

CUIQUE SUUM. 

Adsciscit sibi divitias et opes alienas 

Fur, rapiens, spolians, quod mini, quod-que tibi, 
Proprium erat, temnens haec verba, meum-que, 
tuum-que 

Omne suum est : tandem Cui-que Suum tribuit. 
Dat resti collum ; restes, vab ! carnifici dat ; 

Sese Diabolo, sic bene ; Cuique Suum. 

"I write from Hone's, therefore Mary 
cannot send her love to Mrs. Southey, but 
I do. 

" Yours ever, C. L." 



A rural conflagration at this time kindled 
the noblest range of Lamb's thoughts, which 
he expressed in the following letter. The 
light he flashes on the strange power exerted 
by the half-witted incendiary shows in it 
something of a fearful grandeur. It i.s 
addressed 

TO MR. DYER. 

"Dec. 20th, 1830. 
"Dear Dyer, — I should have written before 
to thank you for your kind letter, written 
with your own hand. It glads us to see your 
writing. It will give you pleasure to hear 
that after so much illness we are in tolerable 
health and spirits once more. Poor Enfield, 
that has been so peaceable hitherto, has 
caught the inflammatory fever ; the tokens 
are upon her ; and a great fire was blazing 
last night in the barns and haystacks of a 
farmer, about half a mile from us. Where 
will these things end 1 There is no doubt of 
its being the work of some ill-disposed rustic, 
but how is he to be discovered ? They go to 
work in the dark with strange chemical 
preparations, unknown to our forefathers. 
There is not even a dark lantern, to have a 
chance of detecting these Guy Fauxes. "We 
are past the iron age, and are got into the 
fiery age, undreamed of by Ovid. You are 
lucky in Clifford's Inn, where I think you 
have few ricks or stacks worth the burning. 
Pray, keep as little corn by you as you can 
for fear of the worst. It was never good 
times in England since the poor began to 
speculate upon their condition. Formerly 
they jogged on with as little reflection as 
horses. The whistling ploughman went 
cheek by jowl with his brother that neighed. 
Now the biped carries a box of phosphorus in 
his leather breeches, and in the dead of night 
the half-illuminated beast steals his magic 
potion into a cleft in a barn, and half the 
country is grinning with new fires. Farmer 
Graystock said something to the touchy 
rustic, that he did not relish, and he writes 
his distaste in flames. What a power to 
intoxicate his crude brains, just muddlingly 
awake to perceive that something is wrong 
in the social system, — what a hellish faculty 
a,bove gunpowder ! Now the rich and poor 
are fairly pitted. We shall see who can hang 
or burn fastest. It is not always revenge 
that stimulates these kindlings. There is a. 



163 



LETTEES TO MES. WILLIAMS. 



love of exerting mischief ! Think, of a dis- 
respected clod, that was trod into earth ; that 
was nothing ; on a sudden by damned arts 
refined into an exterminating angel, devour- 
ing the fruits of the earth, and their growers, 
in a mass of fire ; what a new existence ! 
What a temptation above Lucifer's ! Would 
clod be anything but a clod, if he could resist 
it 1 Why, here was a spectacle last night 
for a whole country, a bonfire visible to 
London, alarming her guilty towers, and 
shaking the Monument with an ague fit, all 
done by a little vial of phosphor in a clown's 
fob. How he must grin, and shake his empty 
noddle in clouds ! The Vulcanian epicure ! 
Alas ! can we ring the bells backward 1 Can 
we unlearn the arts that pretend to civilise, 
and then burn the world 1 There is a march 
of science ; but who shall beat the drums for 
its retreat 1 Who shall persuade the boor 
that phosphor will not ignite 1 Seven goodly 
stacks of hay, with corn-barns proportionable, 
lie smoking ashes and chaff, which man and 
beast would sputter out and reject like those 
apples of asphaltes and bitumen. The food 
for the inhabitants of earth will quickly 
disappear. Hot rolls may say, l Fuimus 
panes, fuit quartern-loaf, et ingens gloria 
apple-pasty-orum.' That the good old 
munching system may last thy time and 
mine, good un-incendiary George ! is the 
devout prayer of thine, 



" To the last crust. 



C. Lamb." 



In 1830, Lamb took a journey to Bury 
St. Edmund's, to fetch Miss Isola to her 
adopted home, from a visit which had been 
broken by her illness. It was on his return 
that Lamb's repartee to the query of the 
statistical gentleman as to the prospects of 
the turnip crop, which has been repeatedly 
published, was made. The following is his 
own version of it, contained in a letter 
addressed to Miss Isola's hostess, on their 
arrival. 

" A rather talkative gentleman, but very 
civil, engaged me in a discourse for full 
twenty miles, on the probable advantages of 
steam carriages, which, being merely pro- 
blematical, I bore my part in with some 
credit, in spite of my totally un-engineer-like 
faculties. But when, somewhere about Stan- 



stead, he put an unfortunate question to me, 
as to the 'probability of its turning out a 
good turnip season,' and when I, who am 
still less of an agriculturist than a steam 
philosopher, not knowing a turnip from a 
potato ground, innocently made answer, that 
' I believed it depended very much upon 
boiled legs of mutton,' my unlucky reply set 
Miss Isola a laughing to a degree that 
disturbed her tranquillity for the only 
moment in our journey. I am afraid my 
credit sank very low with my other fellow- 
traveller, who had thought he had met with 
a well-informed passenger, which is an 
accident so desirable in a stage-coach. We 
were rather less communicative, but still 
friendly, the rest of the way." 



To the same lady, having sent him an 
acrostic on his sister's name, he replied with 
a letter which contained one on hers, and the 
following notice of his own talent in the 
acrostic line. 

" Dear Madam, — I do assure you that your 
verses gratified me very much, and my sister 
is quite proud of them. For the first time in 
my life I congratulated myself upon the 
shortness and meanness of my name. Had 
it been Schwartzenberg or Esterhazy, it 
would have put you to some puzzle. I am 
afraid I shall sicken you of acrostics, but 
this last was written to order. I beg you to 
have inserted in your county paper, some- 
thing like this advertisement. ' To the 
nobility, gentry, and others, about Bury. — 
C. Lamb respectfully informs his friends and 
the public in general, that he is leaving off 
business in the acrostic line, as he is going 
into an entirely new line. Kebuses and 
charades done as usual, and upon the old 
terms. Also, epitaphs to suit the memory of 
any person deceased.' 

"I thought I had adroitly escaped the 
rather unpliable name of ' Williams,' curtail- 
ing your poor daughters to their proper 
surnames, but it seems you would not let me 
off so easily. If these trifles amuse you, I am 
paid. Though really 'tis an operation too 
much like — ' A, apple-pie ; B, bit it.' To 
make amends, I request leave to lend you 
the ' Excursion,' and to recommend, in parti- 
cular, the ' Churchyard Stories ; ' in the 



ALBUM VERSES.— LAST LETTERS. 



169 



seventh book, I think. They will strengthen 

the tone of your mind after its weak diet on 

acrostics." 

* * *■ * 

In 1830, a small volume of poems, the 
gleanings of some years, during which Lamb 
had devoted himself to prose, under his name 
of "Elia," was published by Mr. Moxon, 
under the title of "Album Verses," and 
which Lamb, in token of his strong regard, 
dedicated to the Publisher. An unfavour- 
able review of them in the Literary Gazette 
produced some verses from Southey, which 
were inserted in the " Times," and of which the 
following, as evincing his unchanged friend- 
ship, may not unfitly be inserted here. The 
residue, being more severe on Lamb's critics 
than Lamb himself would have wished, may 
now be spared. 

Charles Lamb, to those who know thee justly dear 
For rarest genius, and for sterling worth, 
Unchanging friendship, warmth of heart sincere, 
And wit that never gave an ill thought birth, 
Nor ever in its sport infix'd a sting ; 
To us who have admired and loved thee long, 
It is a proud as well as pleasant thing 
To hear thy good report, now borne along 
Upon the honest breath of public praise : 
We know that with the elder sons of song, 
In honouring whom thou hast delighted still, 
Thy name shall keep its course to after days. 

This year closed upon the grave of Hazlitt. 
Lamb visited him frequently during his last 
illness, and attended his funeral. They had 
taken great delight in each other's conversa- 
tion for many years; and though the indif- 
ference of Lamb to the objects of Hazlitt's 
passionate love or hatred, as a politician, at 
one time produced a coolness, the warmth of 
the defence of Hazlitt in " Elia's Letter to 
Southey " renewed the old regard of the 
philosopher, and set all to rights. Hazlitt, 
in his turn, as an Edinburgh Keviewer, had 
opportunities which he delighted to use, of 
alluding to Lamb's Specimens and Essays, 
and making him amends for the severity of 
ancient criticism, which the editor, who could 
well afford the genial inconsistency, was too 
generous to exclude. The conduct, indeed, 
of that distinguished person to Hazlitt, espe- 
cially in his last illness, won Lamb's admira- 
tion, and wholly effaced the recollection of 
the time when, thirty years before, his play 
had been denied critical mercy under his rule. 
Hazlitt's death did not so much shock Lamb 
at the time, as it weighed down his spirits 



afterwards, when he felt the want of those 
essays which he had used periodically to 
look for with eagerness in the magazines and 
reviews which they alone made tolerable to 
him ; and when he realised the dismal 
certainty that he should never again enjoy 
that rich discourse of old poets and painters 
with which so many a long winter's night 
had been gladdened, or taste life with an 
additional relish in the keen sense of enjoy- 
ment which endeared it to his companion. 



CHAPTEK XVIII. 

[1830 to 1834.] 
lamb's last letters and death. 

After the year 1830, Lamb's verses and 
essays were chiefly given to his friends ; the 
former consisting of album contributions, the 
latter of little essences of observation and 
criticism. Mr. Moxon, having established a 
new magazine, called the " Englishman's 
Magazine," induced him to write a series of 
papers, some of which were not inferior to 
his happiest essays. At this time, his old 
and excellent friend, Dyer, was much annoyed 
by some of his witticisms, — which, in truth, 
were only Lamb's modes of expressing his 
deep-seated regard ; and at the quotation of 
a couplet in one of his early poems, which he 
had suppressed as liable to be misconstrued 
by Mr. Eogers. Mr. Barker had unfortu- 
nately met with the unexpurgated edition 
which contained this dubious couplet, and in 
his "Memorials of Dr. Parr" quoted the 
passage ; which, to Mr. Dyer's delicate feel- 
ings,* conveyed the apprehension that Mr. 
Eogers would treat the suppression as 



* Mr. Dyer also complained to Mr. Lamb of some 
suggestions in Elia, which annoyed him, not so much 
for his own sake as for the sake of others, who, in the 
delicacy of his apprehensiveness, he thought might feel 
aggrieved by imputations which were certainly not in- 
tended, and which they did not deserve. One passage in 
Elia, hinting that he had been hardly dealt with by 
schoolmasters, under whom he had been a teacher in his 
younger days, hurt him ; as, in fact, he was treated by 
them with the most considerate generosity and kindness. 
Another passage which he regarded as implying that he 
had been underpaid by booksellers also vexed him ; as 
his labours have always been highly esteemed, and have, 
according to the rate of remuneration of learned men, 
been well compensated by Mr. Valpy and others. The 
truth is that Lamb wrote from a vague recollection, 



170 



LETTER TO DYER. 



colourable, and refer the revival of the lines 
to his sanction. The following letter was 
written to dispel those fears from his mind. 

TO MR. DYER. 

"Feb. 22nd, 1831. 

" Dear Dyer, — Mr. Rogers, and Mr. Rogers' 
friends, are perfectly assured, that you never 
intended any harm by an innocent couplet, 
and that in the revivification of it by blun- 
dering Barker you had no hand whatever. 
To imagine that, at this time of day, Rogers 
broods over a fantastic expression of more 
than thirty years' standing, would be to sup- 
pose him indulging his 'pleasures of memory' 
with a vengeance. You never penned a line 
which for its own sake you need, dying, wish 
to blot. You mistake your heart if you 
think you can write a lampoon. Your whips 
are rods of roses. Your spleen has ever had 
for its objects vices, not the vicious ; abstract 
offences, not the concrete sinner. But you 
are sensitive, and wince as much at the con- 
sciousness of having committed a compliment, 
as another man would at the perpetration 
of an affront. But do not lug me into the 
same soreness of conscience with yourself. 
I maintain, and will to the last hour, that I 
never writ of you but con amove. That if 
any allusion was made to your near-sighted- 
ness, it was not for the purpose of mocking 
an infirmity, but of connecting it with 
scholar-like habits : for, is it not erudite and 
scholarly to be somewhat near of sight, be- 
fore age naturally brings on the malady 1 
You could not then plead the obrepens senectus. 
Did I not moreover make it an apology for a 
certain absence, which some of your friends 
may have experienced, when you have not on 
a sudden made recognition of them in a casual 
street-meeting ? and did I not strengthen 
your excuse for this slowness of recog- 
nition, by further accounting morally for the 
present engagement of your mind in worthy 
objects ? Did I not, in your person, make 
the handsomest apology for absent-of-mind 
people that was ever made ? If these things 



-without intending any personal reference at all to 
Mr. Dyer himself, and only seeking to illustrate the 
pure, simple, and elevated character of a man of letters 
" unspotted from the world." Probably no one has ever 
applied these suggestions to the parties for whose repu- 
tation Mr. Dyer has been so honourably anxious but 
himself ; but it is due to his feelings to state that they 
are founded in error. 



be not so, I never knew what I wrote, or 

meant by my writing, and have been penning 
libels all my life without being aware of it. 
Does it follow that I should have exprest 
myself exactly in the same way of those dear 
old eyes of yours now, now that Father Time 
has conspired with a hard task-master to put 
a last extinguisher upon them. I should as 
soon have insulted the Answerer of Salmasius, 
when he awoke up from his ended task, and 
saw no more with mortal vision. But you 
are many films removed yet from Milton's 
calamity. You write perfectly intelligibly. 
Marry, the letters are not all of the same 
size or tallness ; but that only shows your 
proficiency in the hands, text, german-hand, 
court-hand, sometimes law-hand, and affords 
variety. You pen better than you did a 
twelvemonth ago ; and if you continue to 
improve, you bid fair to win the golden pen 
which is the prize at your young gentlemen's 
academy. But you must be aware of Yalpy, 
and his printing-house, that hazy cave of Tro- 
phonius, out of which it was a mercy that 
you escaped with a glimmer. Beware of 
MSS. and Varise Lectiones. Settle the text 
for once in your mind, and stick to it. You 
have some years' good sight in you yet, if you 
do not tamper with it. It is not for you (for 
us I should say), to go poring into Greek con- 
tractions, and star-gazing upon slim Hebrew 
points. We have yet the sight 

Of sun, and moon, and star, throughout the year, 
And man and -woman. 

You have vision enough to discern Mrs. Dyer 
from the other comely gentlewoman who lives 
up at staircase No. 5; or, if you should make 
a blunder in the twilight, Mrs. Dyer has too 
much good sense to be jealous for a mere 
effect of imperfect optics. But don't try to 
write the Lord's Prayer, Creed, and Ten 
Commandments, in the compass of a half- 
penny ; nor run after a midge, or a mote, to 
catch it ; and leave off hunting for needles 
in bushels of hay, for all these things 
strain the eyes. The snow is six feet deep in 
some parts here. I must put on jack-boots 
to get at the post-office with this. It is not 
good for weak eyes to pore upon snow too 
much. It lies in drifts. I wonder what its 
drift is ; only that it makes good pancakes, 
remind Mrs. Dyer. It turns a pretty green 
world into a white one. It glares too much 



TO THE EDITOR OF THE " ATHEN^UM." 



171 



for an innocent colour methinks. I wonder 
why you think I dislike gilt edges. They 
set off a letter marvellously. Yours, for in- 
stance, looks for all the world like a tablet 
of curious hieroglyphics in a gold frame. But 
don't go and lay this to your eyes. You 



always 



wrote hieroglyphically, yet not to 
come up to the mystical notations and 
conjuring characters of Dr. Parr. You 
never wrote what I call a schoolmaster's 

hand, like C ; nor a woman's hand, like 

S ; nor a missal hand, like Porson ; nor 

an all-of-the-wrong-side sloping hand, like 

Miss H ; nor a dogmatic, Mede-and- 

Persian, peremptory hand, like R ; but 

you ever wrote what I call a Grecian's 
hand ; what the Grecians write (or used) at 
Christ's Hospital ; such as Whalley would 
have admired, and Boyer have applauded, 
but Smith or Atwood (writing-masters) 
would have horsed you for. Your boy-of- 
genius hand and your mercantile hand are 
various. By your nourishes, I should think 
you never learned to make eagles or cork- 
screws, or nourish the governors' names in 
the writing-school ; and by the tenor and 
cut of your letters, I suspect you were never 
in it at all. By the length of this scrawl you 
will think 1 have a design upon your optics ; 
but I have writ as large as I could, out of 
respect to them ; too large, indeed, for beauty. 
Mine is a sort of deputy Grecian's hand ; a 
little better, and more of a worldly hand, 
than a Grecian's, but still remote from the 
mercantile. I don't know how it is, but I 
keep my rank in fancy still since school-days. 
I can never forget I was a deputy Grecian ! 
And writing to you, or to Coleridge, besides 
affection, I feel a reverential deference as to 
Grecians still. I keep my soaring way above 
the Great Erasmians, yet far beneath the 
other. Alas ! what am I now ? what is a 
Leadenhall clerk, or India pensioner, to a 
deputy Grecian ? How art thou fallen, 
O Lucifer ! Just room for our loves to 
Mrs. D., &c. C. Lamb." 



The death of Munden reviving his recol- 
lections of "the veteran comedian," called 
forth the following letter of the 11th 
February, 1832, to the editor of the "Athe- 
naeum," whom Lamb had, for a long time, 
numbered among his friends. 



TO THE EDITOR OF THE " ATHEN^UM. 

" Dear Sir, — Your communication to me of 
the death of Munden made me weep. Now, 
Sir, I am not of the melting mood. But, in j 
these serious times, the loss of half the 
world's fun is no trivial deprivation. It was I 
my loss (or gain shall I call it) in the early 
time of my play-going, to have missed all 
Munden's acting. There was only he and 
Lewis at Covent Garden, while Drury Lane 
was exuberant with Parsons, Dodd, &c, such 
a comic company as, I suppose, the stage 
never showed. Thence, in the evening of 
my life I had Munden all to myself, more 
mellowed, richer, perhaps, than ever. I can- 
not say what his change of faces produced in 
me. It was not acting. He was not one of 
my ' old actors.' It might be better. His 
power was extravagant. I saw him one 
evening in three drunken characters. Three 
farces were played. One part was Dosey — 
I forget the rest ; but they were so discrimi- 
nated that a stranger might have seen them 
all, and not have dreamed that he was seeing 
the same actor. I am jealous for the actors 
who pleased my youth. He was not a Par- 
sons or a Dodd, but he was more wonderful. 
He seemed as if he could do anything. He 
was not an actor, but something better, if you 
please. Shall I instance Old Foresight, in 
1 Love for Love,' in which Parsons was at 
once the old man, the astrologer, &c. Munden 
dropped the old man, the doater — which 
makes the character — but he substituted for 
it a moon-struck character, a perfect abstrac- 
tion from this earth, that looked as if he had 
newly come down from the planets. Now, that 
is not what I call acting. It might be better. 
He was imaginative ; he could impress upon 
an audience an idea — the low one, perhaps, of 
a leg of mutton and turnips ; but such was 
the grandeur and singleness of his expres- 
sions, that that single expression would 
convey to all his auditory a notion of all the 
pleasures they had all received from all the 
legs of mutton and turnips they had ever eaten 
in their lives. Now, this is not acting, nor 
do I set down Munden amongst my old actors. 
He was only a wonderful man, exerting his 
vivid impressions through the agency of the 
stage. In one only thing did I see him act — 
— that is, support a character ; it was in a 
wretched farce, called ' Johnny Gilpin,' for 



17 



LETTER TO CARY. 



Dowton's benefit, in which he did a cockney. 
The thing ran but one night ; but when I 
say that Liston's Lubin Log was nothing to 
it, I say little : it was transcendent. And 
here let me say of actors, envious actors, that 
of Munden, Liston was used to speak, almost 
with the enthusiasm due to the dead, in terms 
of such allowed superiority to every actor 
on the stage, and this at a time when Munden 
was gone by in the world's estimation, that it 
convinced me that artists (in which term I 
include poets, painters, &c), are not so 
envious as the world think. I have little 
time, and therefore enclose a criticism on 
Munden's Old Dosey and his general acting,* 
by a friend. C. Lamb." 

" Mr. Munden appears to us to be the most 
classical of actors. He is that in high farce, 
which Kemble was in high tragedy. The 
lines of these great artists are, it must be 
admitted, sufficiently distinct ; but the same 
elements are in both, — the same directness 
of purpose, the same singleness of aim, the 
same concentration of power, the same iron- 
casing of inflexible manner, the same statue- 
like precision of gesture, movement, and 
attitude. The hero of farce is as little 
affected with impulses from without, as the 
retired Prince of Tragedians. There is some- 
thing solid, sterling, almost adamantine, in 
the building up of his most grotesque cha- 
racters. "When he fixes his wonder-working 
face in any of its most amazing varieties, it 
looks as if the picture were carved out from 
a rock by Nature in a sportive vein, and 
might last for ever. It is like what we can 
imagine a mask of the old Grecian Comedy 
to have been, only that it lives, and breathes, 
and changes. His most fantastical gestures 
are the grand ideal of farce. He seems as 
though he belonged to the earliest and the 
stateliest age of Comedy, when instead of 
superficial foibles and the airy varieties of 
fashion, she had the grand asperities of man 
to work on, when her grotesque images had 
something romantic about them, and when 
humour and parody were themselves heroic. 
His expressions of feeling and bursts of 
enthusiasm are among the most genuine 

* A little article inserted in "The Champion" before 
Lamb wrote his essay on the Acting of Munden. Lamb's 
repetition may cast on it sufficient interest to excuse its 
lepetition lure. 



which we have ever felt. They seem to come 
up from a depth of emotion in the heart, and 
burst through the sturdy casing of manner 
with a strength which seems increased ten- 
fold by its real and hearty obstacle. The 
workings of his spirit seem to expand his 
frame, till we can scarcely believe that by 
measure it is small : for the space which he 
fills in the imagination is so real, that we 
almost mistake it for that of corporeal dimen- 
sions. His Old Dosey, in the excellent farce of 
' Past Ten o' Clock,' is his grandest effort of 
this kind, and we know of nothing finer. He 
seems to have a ' heart of oak ' indeed. His 
description of a sea-fight is the most noble 
and triumphant piece of enthusiasm which 
we remember. It is as if the spirits of a 
whole crew of nameless heroes ' were swell- 
ing in his bosom.' "We never felt so ardent 
and proud a sympathy with the valour of 
England as when we hearoj. it. May health 
long be his, thus to do our hearts good — for 
we never saw any actor whose merits have 
the least resemblance to his even in species ; 
and when his genius is withdrawn from the 
stage, we shall not have left even a term by 
which we can fitly describe it." 



The following letter is 

TO MR. CARY. 

" Assidens est mihi bona soror, Euripiden 
evolvens, donum vestrum, carissime Cary, 
pro quo gratias agimus, lecturi atque iterum 
lecturi idem. Pergratus est liber ambobus, 
nempe ' Sacerdotis Commiserationis,' sacrum 
opus a te ipso Humanissimse Religionis 
Sacerdote dono datum. Lachrymantes gavi- 
suri sumus ; est ubi dolor fiat voluptas ; nee 
semper dulce mihi est ridere ; aliquando 
commutandum est he ! he ! he ! cum heu ! 
heu ! heu ! 

" A Musis Tragicis me non penitus abhor- 
ruisse testis sit Carmen Calamitosum, nescio 
quo autore lingua prius vernacula scriptum, 
et nuperrime a me ipso Latine versum, 
scilicet, 'Tom Tom of Islington.' Tenuistine ? 



Thomas Thomas de Islington, 

Uxorem duxit Die quadam Solis, 

Abduxit domum sequenti die, 

Emit baculum subsequenti, 

Vapulat ilia postera, 

jEgrotat succedcnt.i, Mortua fit crastina. 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE AND CARY. 



173 



Et miro gaudio afficitur Thomas luce postera. 
quod subsequenti (nempe, Dominica) uxor 
sit efferenda. 

1 En Iliades Domesticas ! 
En circulum calamitatum ! 
Plane hebdomadalem tragocdiam.' 

T nunc et confer Euripiden vestrum his 
luctibus, hac morte uxoria ; confer Alcesten ! 
Hecuben ! quas non antiquas Heroinas 
Dolorosas. 

" Suffundor genas lachrymis tantas strages 
revolvens. Quid restat nisi quod Tecum 
Tuam Caram salutamus ambosque valere 
jubeamus, nosmet ipsi bene valentes. 

"Elia. 

" Datum ab agro Enfeldiensi, Maii die sexta, 1831." 



Coleridge, now in declining health, seems 
to have feared, from a long intermission of 
Lamb's visits to Highgate, that there was 
some estrangement between them, and to 
have written to Lamb under that fear. The 
following note shows how much he was 
mistaken. 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

"April 14th, 1832. 
"My dear Coleridge, — Not an unkind 
thought has passed in my brain about you. 
But I have been wofully neglectful of you, 
so that I do not deserve to announce to you, 
that if I do not hear from you before then, I 
will set out on Wednesday morning to take 
you by the hand. I would do it this moment, 
but an unexpected visit might flurry you. I 
shall take silence for acquiescence ; and 
come. I am glad you could write so long a 
letter. Old loves to, and hope of kind looks 
from, the Gilmans when I come. 

" Yours, semper idem, C. L. 

" If you ever thought an offence, much 
more wrote it, against me, it must have been 
in the times of Noah, and the great waters 
swept it away. Mary's most kind love, and 
maybe a wrong prophet of your bodings ! — 
here she is crying for mere love over your 
letter. I wring out less, but not sincerer 
showers. 

" My direction is simply, Enfield." 



Lamb's regard for Mr. Cary had now 
ripened into a fast friendship ; and by agree- 
ment he dined every third Wednesday in the 
month at the Museum. In general, these 
were occasions on which Lamb observed the 
strictest rules of temperance ; but once 
accident of stomach or of sentiment caused a 
woful deviation, which Lamb deplored in the 
following letter. 

TO MR. CARY. 

" I protest I know not in what words to 
invest my sense of the shameful violation of 
hospitality, which I was guilty of on that 
fatal Wednesday. Let it be blotted from 
the calendar. Had it been committed at a 
layman's house, say a merchant's or a manu- 
facturer's, a cheesemonger's, or greengrocer's, 
or, to go higher, a barrister's, a member of 
Parliament's, a rich banker's, I should have 
felt alleviation, a drop of self-pity. But to be 
seen deliberately to go out of the house of a 
clergyman drunk ! a clergyman of the Church 
of England too ! not that alone, but of an 
expounder of that dark Italian Hierophant, 
an exposition little short of his who dared 
unfold the Apocalypse : divine riddles both ; 
and, without supernal grace vouchsafed, Arks 
not to be fingered without present blasting 
to the touchers. And then, from what house ! 
Not a common glebe, or vicarage (which yet 
had been shameful), but from a kingly reposi- 
tory of sciences, human and divine, with the 
primate of England for its guardian, arrayed 
in public majesty, from which the profane 
vulgar are bid fly. Could all those volumes 
have taught me nothing better ! With feverish 
eyes on the succeeding dawn I opened upon 
the faint light, enough to distinguish, in a 
strange chamber, not immediately to be recog- 
nised, garters, hose, waistcoat, neckerchief, 
arranged in dreadful order and proportion, 
which I knew was not mine own. 'Tis the 
common symptom, on awaking, I judge my 
last night's condition from. A tolerable 
scattering on the floor I hail as being, too 
probably my own, and if the candlestick be 
not removed, I assoil myself. But this 
finical arrangement, this finding everything 
in the morning in exact diametrical rectitude, 
torments me. By whom was I divested ? 
Burning blushes ! not by the fair hands of 
nymphs, the Buffam Graces 1 Kemote 
whispers suggested that I coached it home in 



174 



LETTER TO CARY. 



triumph. Far be that from working pride 
in me, for I was unconscious of the locomotion. 
That a young Mentor accompanied a repro- 
bate old Telemachus ; that, the Trojan like, 
he bore his charge upon his shoulders, 
while the wretched incubus, in glimmering 
sense, hiccuped drunken snatches of flying 
on the bats' wings after sunset. An 
aged servitor was also hinted at, to make 
disgrace more complete, one, to whom my 
ignominy may offer further occasions of 
revolt (to which he was before too fondly 
inclining) from the true faith ; for, at a sight 
of my helplessness, what more was needed to 
drive him to the advocacy of independency ? 
Occasion led me through Great Eussell 
Street yesterday. I gazed at the great 
knocker. My feeble hands in vain essayed 
to lift it. T dreaded that Argus Portitor, 
who doubtless lanterned me out on that 
prodigious night. I called the Elginian 
marbles. They were cold to my suit. I 
shall never again, I said, on the wide gates 
unfolding, say, without fear of thrusting 
back, in a light but a peremptory air, 'I am 
going to Mr. Cary's.' I passed by the walls 
of Balclutha. I had imaged to myself a 
zodiac of third Wednesdays irradiating by 
glimpses the Edmonton dulness. I dreamed 
of Highmore ! I am de-vited to come on 
"Wednesdays. Yillanous old age, that, with 
second childhood, brings linked hand in 
hand her inseparable twin, new inexperience, 
which knows not effects of liquor. Where I 
was to have sate for a sober, middle-aged- 
and-a-half-gentleman, literary too, the neat 
fingered artist can educe no notions but of a 
dissoluted Silenus, lecturing natural philo- 
sophy to a jeering Chromius, or a Mnasilus. 
Pudet. From the context gather the lost 
name of ." 



In 1833 the choicest prose essays, which 
Lamb had written since the publication of 
Elia, were collected and published — as with 
a melancholy foreboding — under the title of 
" The Last Essays of Elia ; " by Mr. Moxon. 
The work contains ample proof that the 
powers of the author had ripened rather 
than declined ; for the paper called "Blakes- 
moor in H — shire," which embodies his 
recollection of the old mansion in which his 
grandmother lived as housekeeper ; those 



on Elliston, " Captain Jackson," and " The 
Old Margate Hoy," are among the most 
original, the least constrained, and the most 
richly coloured of his works. It was favour- 
ably noticed by almost all the principal 
critics — by many enthusiastically and sin- 
cerely praised — and an admirable notice in 
"The Quarterly" was published just after 
the foreboding of the title was fulfilled. His 
indisposition to write, however, increased ; 
but in creating so much, excellent in its kind, 
so complete in itself, and so little tinged with 
alloy, he had, in truth, done enough, and 
had earned in literature, as in the drudgery 
of the desk, a right to repose. Yet, still 
ready to obey the call of friendship, he wrote 
both prologue and epilogue to Knowles's play 
of " The Wife ; " the composition of which 
must have been mere labour, as they are 
only decently suited to the occasion, and 
have no mark or likelihood to repay the 
vanity of the poet. 

Miss Isola's marriage, which left Lamb 
and his sister once more alone, induced them 
to draw a little nearer to their friends ; and 
they fixed their abode in Church -street, 
Edmonton, within reach of the Enfield walks 
which custom had endeared to them. There 
with his sister he continued, regularly visiting 
London and dining with Mr. Cary on every 
third Wednesday. The following notelet is 
in answer to a letter inclosing a list of 
candidates for a widows' fund society, for 
which he was entitled to vote. 



TO MR. CART. 

"Dear Sir, — The unbounded range of 
munificence presented to my choice, staggers 
me. What can twenty votes do for one 
hundred and two widows ? I cast my eyes 
hopeless among the viduage. N.B. Southey* 
might be ashamed of himself to let his aged 
mother stand at the top of the list, with his 
100?. a year and butt of sack. Sometimes I 
sigh over No. 12, Mrs. Carve-ill, some poor 
relation of mine, no doubt. No. 15 has my 
wishes, but then she is a Welsh one. I have 
Ruth upon No. 21. I'd tug hard for No. 24, 
No. 25 is an anomaly, there can be no Mrs. 
Hogg. No. 34 ensnares me. No. 73 should 
not have met so foolish a person. No. 92 

* A Mrs. Southey headed the inclosed list. 



LETTER TO OILMAN. 



175 



may bob it as she likes, but she catches no 
cherry of me. So I have even fixed at hap- 
hazard, as you'll see. 

" Yours, every third Wednesday, 

"C.L." 



Lamb was entirely destitute of what is 
commonly called " a taste for music." A few 
old tunes ran in his head ; now and then the 
expression of a sentiment, though never of 
song, touched him with rare and exquisite 
delight ; and Braham in his youth, Miss 
Rennell, who died too soon, and who used to 
sing the charming air, " In infancy our hopes 
and fears," and Miss Burrell, won his ear and 
his heart. But usually music only confused 
him, and an opera — to which he once or twice 
tried to accompany Miss Isola — was to him 
a maze of sound in which he almost lost his 
wits. But he did not, therefore, take less 
pleasure in the success of Miss Clara Novell o, 
— whose family he had known for many 
years, — and to whom he addressed the 
following lines, which were inserted in the 
" Athenaeum," of July 26, in this his last 
year. 

TO CLARA N . 

The Gods have made me most unmusical, 
With feelings that respond not to the call 
Of stringed harp, or voice — obtuse and mute 
To hautboy, sackbut, dulcimer, and flute ; 
King David's lyre, that made the madness flee 
From Saul, had been but a jew's-harp to me : 
Theorbos, violins, French horns, guitars, 
Leave in my wounded ears inflicted scars ; 
I hate those trills, and shakes, and sounds that 

float 
Upon the captive air ; I know no note, 
Nor ever shall, whatever folks may say, 
Of the strange mysteries of Sol and Fa ; 
I sit at oratorios like a fish, 
Incapable of sound, and only wish 
The thing was over. Yet do I admire, 
O tuneful daughter of a tuneful sire, 
Thy painful labours in a science, which 
To your deserts I pray may make you rich 
As much as you are loved, and add a grace 
To the most musical Novello race. 
Women lead men by the nose, some cynics say ; 
You draw them by the ear — a delicater way. 

C. Lamb. 

He had now to sustain the severest of his 
losses. After a long and painful illness — 
borne with an heroic patience which con- 
cealed the intensity of his sufferings from 
the bystanders, Coleridge died. As in the 
instance of Hazlitt, Lamb did not feel the 
immediate blow so acutely as he himself 



expected — but the calamity sank deep into 
his mind, and was, I believe, seldom far from 
his thoughts. It had been arranged that the 
attendance at the funeral should be confined 
to the family of the departed poet and philo- 
sopher, and Lamb, therefore, was spared the 
misery of going through the dismal ceremony 
of mourning. For the first week he forebore 
to write ; but at its close he addressed the 
following short letter to one of the family of 
him whom he once so justly denominated 
Coleridge's " more than friend." Like most 
of Lamb's letters, it is undated, but the post- 
mark is Aug. 5, 1834. 

TO THE REV. JAMES GILMAN. 

" My dear Sir, — The sad week being over, 
I must write to you to say, that I was glad 
of being spared from attending ; I have no 
words to express my feeling with you all. I 
can only say that when you think a short 
visit from me would be acceptable, when 
your father and mother shall be able to see 
me with comfort, I will come to the bereaved 
house. Express to them my tenderest re- 
gards and hopes that they will continue our 
friends still. We both love and respect 
them as much as a human being can, and 
finally thank them with our hearts for what 
they have been to the poor departed. 

" God bless you all. C. Lamb." 

"Mr. Walden's, 
" Church-street, Edmonton." 



Shortly after, assured that his presence 
would be welcome, Lamb went to Highgate. 
There he asked leave to see the nurse who 
had attended upon Coleridge ; and being 
struck and affected by the feeling she mani- 
fested towards his friend, insisted on her 
receiving five guineas from him, — a gratuity 
which seemed almost incomprehensible to 
the poor woman, but which Lamb could not 
help giving as an immediate expression of 
his own gratitude. From her he learned the 
effort by which Coleridge had suppressed the 
expression of his sufferings, and the discovery 
affected him even more than the news of his 
death. He would startle his friends some- 
times by suddenly exclaiming, " Coleridge is 
dead ! " and then pass on to common themes, 
having obtained the momentary relief of 



176 



PRESENT OF GAME. 



oppressed spirits. He still continued, how- 
ever, his monthly visits to Mr. Cary ; and 
was ready to write an acrostic, or a compli- 
mentary epigram, at the suggestion of any 
friend. The following is the last of his effu- 
sions in verse. 



TO MARGARET W . 

Margaret, in happy hour 
Christen'd from that humble flower 

Which we a daisy * call ! 
May thy pretty namesake be 
In all things a type of thee, 

And image thee in all. 

Like it you show a modest face, 
An unpretending native grace ; — 

The tulip, and the pink, 
The china and the damask rose, 
And every flaunting flower that blows, 

In the comparing shrink. 

Of lowly fields you think no scorn ; 
Yet gayest gardens would adorn, 

And grace wherever set. 
Home-seated in your lonely bower, 
Or wedded — a transplanted flower — 
I bless you, Margaret ! 

Charles Lamb. 
Edmonton, Oct. 8th, 1834. 



A present of game, from an unknown 
admirer, produced the following acknowledg- 
ment, in the "Athenaeum " of 30th November, 
destined to be, in sad verity, the last essay 
of Elia. 

THOUGHTS ON PRESENTS OF GAME, &C. 

" We love to have our friend in the country 
sitting thus at our table by proxy ; to appre- 
hend his presence (though a hundred miles 
may be between us) by a turkey, whose 
goodly aspect reflects to us his ' plump cor- 
pusculum ; ' to taste him in grouse or wood- 
cock ; to feel him gliding down in the toast 
peculiar to the latter ; to concorporate him 
in a slice of Canterbury brawn. This is 
indeed' to have him within ourselves ; to 
know him intimately ; such participation is 
methinks unitive, as the old theologians 
phrase it." — Last Essays of Elia. 

" Elia presents his acknowledgments to his 
'Correspondent unknown,' for a basket of pro- 
digiously fine game. He takes for granted 
that so amiable a character must be a reader 
of the " Athenaeum," else he had meditated a 
notice in the " Times." Now if this friend had 
consulted the Delphic oracle for a present 

* Marguerite, in French, signifies a daisy. 



suited to the palate of Elia, he could not 
have hit upon a morsel so acceptable. The 
birds he is barely thankful for : pheasants 
are poor fowls disguised in fine feathers. 
But a hare roasted hard and brown, with 
gravy and melted butter ! — old Mr. Chambers, 
the sensible clergyman in Warwickshire, 
whose son's acquaintance has made many 
hours happy in the life of Elia, used to allow 
a pound of Epping to every hare. Perhaps 
that was over-doing it. But, in spite of the 
note of Philomel, who, like some fine poets, 
that thijik no scorn to adopt plagiarisms 
from a humble brother, reiterates every 
spring her cuckoo cry of i Jug, Jug, Jug,' 
Elia pronounces that a hare, to be truly 
palated, must be roasted. Jugging sophisti- 
cates her. In our way it eats so ' crips,' as 
Mrs. Minikin says. Time was, when Elia 
was not arrived at his taste, that he preferred 
to all luxuries a roasted pig. But he dis- 
claims all such green-sickness appetites in 
future, though he hath to acknowledge the 
receipt of many a delicacy in that kind from 
correspondents — good, but mistaken men — 
in consequence of their erroneous supposi- 
tion, that he had carried up into mature life 
the prepossessions of childhood. From the 
worthy Yicar of Enfield he acknowledges a 
tithe contribution of extraordinary sapor. 
The ancients must have loved hares. Else 
why adopt the word lepores (obviously from 
lepus) but for some subtle analogy between 
the delicate flavour of the latter, and the 
finer relishes of wit in what we most poorly 
translate pleasantries. The fine madnesses 
of the poet are the very decoction of his diet. 
Thence is he hare-brained. Harum-scarum 
is a libellous unfounded phrase, of modern 
usage, 'Tis true the hare is the most cir-. 
cumspect of animals, sleeping with her eye 
open. Her ears, ever erect, keep them in 
that wholesome exercise, which conduces 
them to form the very tit-bit of the admirers 
of this noble animal. Noble will I call her, 
in spite of her detractors, who from occa- 
sional demonstrations of the principle of 
self-preservation (common to all animals), 
infer in her a defect of heroism. Half a 
hundred horsemen, with thrice the number 
of dogs, scour the country in pursuit of puss 
across three counties ; and because the well- 
flavoured beast, weighing the odds, is willing 
to evade the hue and cry, with her delicate 



LETTER TO CHILDS. 



177 



ears shrinking perchance from discord — 
comes the grave naturalist, Linnaeus per- 
chance, or Buffon, and gravely sets down the 
hare as a — timid animal. Why Achilles, or 
Bully Dawson, would have declined the 
preposterous combat. 

" In fact, how light of digestion we feel 
after a hare ! How tender its processes 
after swallowing ! What chyle it promotes ! 
How ethereal ! as if its living celerity were 
a type of its nimble coursing through the 
animal juices. The notice might be longer. 
It is intended less as a Natural History of 
the Hare, than a cursory thanks to the 
country 'good Unknown.' The hare has 
many friends, but none sincerer than 

"Elia." 



A short time only before Lamb's fatal 
illness, he yielded to my urgent importunity, 
and met a small party of his friends at dinner 
at my house, where we had provided for him 
some of the few articles of food which now 
seemed to hit his fancy, and among them the 
hare, which had supplanted pig in his just 
esteem, with the hope of exciting his very 
delicate appetite. We were not disappointed ; 
he ate with a relish not usual with him of 
late years, and passed the evening in his 
happiest mood. Among the four or five who 
met him on this occasion, the last on which 
I saw him in health, were his old friends 
Mr. Barron Field, Mr. Procter, and Mr. 
Forster, the author of the " Lives of Eminent 
English Statesmen," a friend of comparatively 
recent date, but one with whom Lamb found 
himself as much at home as if he had known 
him for years. Mr. Field, in a short but 
excellent memoir of Lamb, in the " Annual 
Biography and Obituary " of 1836, has 
brought this evening vividly to recollection ; 
and I have a melancholy satisfaction in 
quoting a passage from it as he has recorded 
it. After justly eulogising Lamb's sense of 
"The Virtue of Suppression in Writing," 
Mr. Field proceeds : — 

" We remember, at the very last supper 
we ate with him, he quoted a passage from 
Prior's ' Henry and Emma,' illustrative of 
this discipline ; and yet he said that he loved 
Prior as much as any man, but that his 
' Henry and Emma ' was a vapid paraphrase 



of the old poem of ' The Nutbrowne Mayde.' 
For example, at the denouement of the ballad 
Prior makes Henry rant out to his devoted 
Emma — 

' In me behold the potent Edgar's heir, 
Illustrious Earl ; him terrible in war. 
Let Loire confess, for she has felt his sword, 
And trembling fled before the British lord.' 

And so on for a dozen couplets, heroic, as 
they are called. And then Mr. Lamb made 
us mark the modest simplicity with which 
the noble youth discloses himself to his 
mistress in the old poem : — 

' Now, understand, 

To Westmoreland, 

Which is my heritage, 

(in a parenthesis, as it were,) 

I will you bring, 

And with a ring, 
By way of marriage, 

I will you take, 

And lady make, 
As shortly as I can. 

So have you won 

An Earless son, 
And not a banish'd man.' 

" How he loved these old rhymes, and with 
what justice ! " 



In December Mr. Lamb received a letter 
from a gentleman, a stranger to him, — 
Mr. Childs, of Bungay, whose copy of "Elia" 
had been sent on an oriental voyage, and 
who, in order to replace it, applied to Mr. 
Lamb. The following is his reply : — 

TO MR. CHILDS. 

"Monday. Church-street, Edmonton, 
(not Enfield, as you erroneously 
direct yours). 

" Dear Sir, — The volume which you seem 
to want, is not to be had for love or money. 
I with difficulty procured a copy for myself. 
Yours is gone to enlighten the tawny 
Hindoos. What a supreme felicity to the 
author (only he is no traveller) on the Ganges 
or Hydaspes (Indian streams) to meet a 
smutty Gentoo ready to burst with laughing 
at the tale of Bo-Bo ! for doubtless it hath 
been translated into all the dialects of the 
East. I grieve the less, that Europe should 
want it. I cannot gather from your letter, 
whether you are aware that a second series 
of the Essays is published by Moxon, in 



DEATH OF LAMB. 



Dover-street, Piccadilly, called 'The Last 
Essays of Elia,' and, I am told, is not inferior 
to the former. Shall I order a copy for yon, 
and will you accept it. Shall I lend you, at 
the same time, my sole copy of the former 
volume (Oh ! return it) for a month or two ? 
In return, you shall favour me with the loan 
of one of those Norfolk-bred grunters that 
you laud so highly ; I promise not to keep it 
above a day. What a funny name Bungay 
is ! I never dreamt of a correspondent 
thence. I used to think of it as some 
Utopian town, or borough in Gotham land. 
I now believe in its existence, as part of 
merry England. 

[Here are some lines scratched out.] 
The part I have scratched out is the best of 
the letter. Let me have your commands. 
" Ch. Lamb, alias Elia." 



A few days after this letter was written, 
an accident befel Mr. Lamb, which seemed 
trifling at first, but which terminated in a 
fatal issue. In taking his daily morning 
walk on the London road as far as the inn 
where John Gilpin's ride is pictured, he 
stumbled against a stone, fell, and slightly 
injured his face. The wounds seemed healing, 
when erysipelas in the head came on, and he 
sunk beneath the disease, happily without 
pain. On Friday evening Mr. Eyle, of the 
India House, who had been appointed co- 
executor with me of his will some years 
before, called on me, and informed me that 
he was in danger. I went over to Edmonton 
on the following morning, and found him 
very weak, and nearly insensible to things 
passing around him. Now and then a few 
words were audible, from which it seemed 
that his mind, in its feebleness, was intent 
on kind and hospitable thoughts. His last 
correspondent, Mr. Childs, had sent a present 
of a turkey, instead of the suggested pig ; 
and the broken sentences which could be 
heard, were of some meeting of friends to 
partake of it. I do not think he knew me ; 
and having vainly tried to engage his atten- 
tion, I quitted him, not believing his death 
so near at hand. In less than an hour 
afterwards, his voice gradually grew fainter, 
as he still murmured the names of Moxon, 
Procter, and some other old friends, and he 
sank into death as placidly as into sleep. On 



the following Saturday his remains were laid 
in a deep grave in Edmonton churchyard, 
made in a spot which, about a fortnight 
before, he had pointed out to his sister, on 
an afternoon wintry walk, as the place where 
he wished to be buried. 

So died, in the sixtieth year of his age, one 
of the most remarkable and amiable men 
who have ever lived. Few of his numerous 
friends were aware of his illness before they 
heard of his death ; and, until that illness 
seized him, he had appeared so little changed 
by time, so likely to continue for several 
years, and he was so intimately associated 
with every-day engagements and feelings, 
that the news was as strange as it was 
mournful. When the first sad surprise was 
over, several of his friends strove to do 
justice to their own recollections of him ; 
and articles upon his character and writings, 
all written out of the heart, appeared from 
Mr. Procter in the " Athenseum," from Mr. 
Forster in the " New Monthly Magazine, ' ' from 
Mr. Patmore in the " Court Magazine," and 
from Mr. Moxon in Leigh Hunt's " London 
Journal," besides others whose authors are 
unknown to me ; and subsequently many 
affectionate allusions, from pens which his 
own had inspired, have been gleaned out in 
various passages of " Blackwood," " Fraser," 
" Tait," and almost every periodical work of 
reputation. The " Eecollections of Coleridge " 
by Mr. Allsop, also breathed the spirit of 
admiration for his elevated genius, which 
the author — one whom Lamb held in the 
highest esteem for himself, and for his 
devotion to Coleridge — had for years ex- 
pressed both in his words and in deeds. But 
it is not possible for the subtlest character- 
istic power, even when animated by the 
warmest personal regard, to give to those 
who never had the privilege of his com- 
panionship an idea of what Lamb was. 
There was an apparent contradiction in him, 
which seemed an inconsistency between 
thoughts closely associated, and which was 
in reality nothing but the contradiction of 
his genius and his fortune, fantastically 
exhibiting itself in different aspects, which 
close intimacy could alone appreciate. He 
would startle you with the finest perception 
of truth, separating, by a phrase, the real 
from a tissue of conventional falsehoods, and 
the next moment, by some whimsical inven- 



CHARACTER OF LAMB. 



179 



tion, make you " doubt truth to be a liar." 
He would touch the inmost pulse of pro- 
found affection, and then break off in some 
jest, which would seem profane "to ears 
polite," but carry as profound a meaning to 
those who had the right key, as his most 
pathetic suggestions ; and where he loved 
and doted most, he would vent the over- 
flowing of his feelings in words that looked 
like rudeness. He touches on this strange 
resource of love in his " Farewell to Tobacco," 
in a passage which may explain some startling 
freedoms with those he himself loved most 
dearly. 

" Irony all, and feign' d abuse, 

Such as perplext lovers use, 
At a need, when in despair, 
To paint forth the fairest fair ; 
Or in part but to express 
Tbat exceeding comeliness 
Which their fancies doth so strike, 
They borrow language of dislike ; 
And, instead of ' dearest Miss,' 
Jewel, honey, sweetheart, bliss, 
And those forms of old admiring, 
Call her cockatrice and siren, 
Basilisk, and all that's evil, 
Witch, hyena, mermaid, devil, 
Ethiop, wench, and blackamoor, 
Monkey, ape, and twenty more ; 
Friendly traitress, loving foe, — 
Not that she is truly so, 
But no other way they know 
A contentment to express, 
Borders so upon excess, 
That they do not rightly wot 
Whether it be pain or not." 

Thus, in the very excess of affection to his 
sister, whom he loved above all else on earth, 
he would sometimes address to her some 
words of seeming reproach, yet so tinged 
with a humorous irony that none but an 
entire stranger could mistake his drift. His 
anxiety for her health, even in his most 
convivial moments, was unceasing. If, in 
company, he perceived she looked languid, he 
would repeatedly ask her, " Mary, does your 
head ache V "Don't you feel unwell 1 " and 
would be satisfied by none of her gentle 
assurances, that his fears were groundless. 
He was always afraid of her sensibilities ' 
being too deeply engaged, and if in her ! 
presence any painful accident or history was 
discussed, he would turn the conversation 
with some desperate joke. Miss Beetham, 
the author of the " Lay of Marie," which 
Lamb esteemed one of the most graceful and 
truly feminine works in a literature rich in 
female genius, who has reminded me of the 



trait in some recollections of Lamb, with 
which she has furnished me, relates, that 
once when she was speaking to Miss Lamb 
of Charles, and in her earnestness Miss Lamb 
had laid her hand kindly on the eulogist's 
shoulder, he came up hastily and interrupted 
them, saying, " Come, come, we must not 
talk sentimentally," and took up the conver- 
sation in his gayest strain. 

Many of Lamb's witty and curious sayings 
have been repeated since his death, which 
are worthy to be held in undying remem- 
brance ; but they give no idea of the general 
tenor of his conversation, which was far more 
singular and delightful in the traits, which 
could never be recalled, than in the epigram- 
matic turns which it is possible to quote. It 
was fretted into perpetual eddies of verbal 
felicity and happy thought, with little tranquil 
intervals reflecting images of exceeding ele- 
gance and grace. He sometimes poured out 
puns in startling succession ; sometimes 
curiously contrived a train of sentences to 
introduce the catastrophe of a pun, which, in 
that case, was often startling from its own 
demerit. At Mr. Cary's one day, he intro- 
duced and kept up an elaborate dissertation 
on the various uses and abuses of the word 
nice; and when its variations were exhausted, 
showed what he had been driving at by 
exclaiming, " Weil ! now we have held a 
Council of Nice." "A pun," said he in a 
letter to Coleridge, in which he eulogised 
the Odes and Addresses of his friends Hood 
and Beynolds, "is a thing of too much 
consequence to be thrown in as a make- 
weight. You shall read one of the Addresses 
twice over and miss the puns, and it shall be 
quite as good, or better, than when you 
discover them. A pun is a noble thing per 
se. O never bring it in as an accessory ! A 
pun is a sole digest of reflection (vide my 
' Aids ' to that awaking from a savage state) ; 
it is entire ; it fills the mind ; it is as perfect 
as a sonnet ; better. It limps ashamed in 
the train and retinue of humour. It knows 
it should have an establishment of its own. 
The one, for instance, I made the other day ; 
I forget which it was." Indeed, Lamb's 
choicest puns and humorous expressions 
could not be recollected. They were born of 
the evanescent feeling, and died with it ; 
" one moment bright, then gone for ever." 
The shocks of pleasurable surprise were so 



ISO 



CHARACTER OF LAMB. 



rapid in succession, and the thoughts suggested 
so new, that one destroyed the other, and left 
only the sense of delight behind. Frequently 
as I had the happiness of seeing him during 
twenty years, I can add nothing from my 
own store of recollection to those which 
have been collected by others, and those 
I will abstain from repeating, so vapid 
would be their effect when printed com- 
pared to that which they produced when, 
stammered out, they gave to the moment 
its victory. 

It cannot be denied or concealed that 
Lamb's excellences, moral and intellectual, 
were blended with a single frailty ; so inti- 
mately associating itself with all that was 
most charming in the one, and sweetest in 
the other, that, even if it were right to with- 
draw it wholly from notice, it would be 
impossible without it to do justice to his 
virtues. The eagerness with which he would 
quaff exciting liquors, from an early period 
of life, proved that to a physical peculiarity 
of constitution was to be ascribed, in the first 
instance, the strength of the temptation with 
which he was assailed. This kind of corporeal 
need ; the struggles of deep thought to over- 
come the bashfulness and the impediment of 
speech which obstructed its utterance ; the 
dull, heavy, irksome labours which hung 
heavy on his mornings, and dried up his 
spirits ; and still more, the sorrows which 
had environed him, and which prompted him 
to snatch a fearful joy ; and the unbounded 
craving after sympathy with human feelings, 
conspired to disarm his power of resisting 
when the means of indulgence were actually 
before him. Great exaggerations have been 
prevalent on this subject, countenanced, no 
doubt, by the "Confessions" which, in the 
prodigality of his kindness, he contributed to 
his friend's collection of essays and autho- 
rities against the use of spirituous liquors ; 
for, although he had rarely the power to 
overcome the temptation when presented, he 
made heroic sacrifices in flight. His final 
abandonment of tobacco, after many inef- 
fectual attempts, was one of these — a princely 
sacrifice. He had loved smoking, "not 
wisely, but too well," for he had been content 
to use the coarsest varieties of the " great 
plant." When Dr. Parr, — who took only the 
finest tobacco, used to half fill his pipe with 
salt, and smoked with a philosophic calmness, 



— saw Lamb smoking the strongest prepa- 
ration of the weed, puffing out smoke like 
some furious Enchanter, he gently laid down 
his pipe, and asked him, how he had acquired 
his power of smoking at such a rate ? Lamb 
replied, " I toiled after it, sir, as some men 
toil after virtue." Partly to shun the 
temptations of society, and partly to preserve 
his sister's health, he fled from London, 
where his pleasures and his heart were, and 
buried himself in the solitude of the country, 
to him always dismal. He would even deny 
himself the gratification of meeting Words- 
worth or Southey, or use it very sparingly 
during their visits to London, in order that 
the accompaniments of the table might not 
entice him to excess. And if sometimes, 
after miles of solitary communing with his 
own sad thoughts, the village inn did invite 
him to quaff a glass of sparkling ale ; and if 
when his retreat was lighted up with the 
presence of some old friend, he was unable to 
refrain from the small portion which was too 
much for his feeble frame, let not the stout- 
limbed and the happy exult over the conse- 
quence ! Drinking with him, except so far 
as it cooled a feverish thirst, was not a 
sensual, but an intellectual pleasure ; it 
lighted up his fading fancy, enriched his 
humour, and impelled the struggling thought 
or beautiful image into day ; and perhaps by 
requiring for him some portion of that 
allowance which he exteDded to all human 
frailties, endeared him the more to those 
who so often received, and were delighted to 
bestow it. 

Lamb's indulgence to the failings of others 
could hardly indeed be termed allowance ; 
the name of charity is too cold to suit it. 
He did not merely love his friends in spite of 
their errors, but he loved them errors and 
all ; so near to him was everything human. 
He numbered among his associates, men of 
all varieties of opinion — philosophical, reli- 
gious, and political — and found something to 
like, not only in the men themselves, but in 
themselves as associated with their theories 
and their schemes. In the high and calm, 
but devious speculations of Godwin ; in the 
fierce hatreds of Hazlitt ; in the gentle and 
glorious mysticism of Coleridge ; in the sturdy 
opposition of Thelwall to the government ; 
in Leigh Hunt's softened and fancy-streaked 
patriotism ; in the gallant Toryism of Stod- 



CHARACTER OF LAMB. 



181 



dart ; he found traits which made the indi- 
viduals more dear to him. When Leigh 
Hunt was imprisoned in Cold Bath Fields 
for a libel, Lamb was one of his most constant 
visitors — and when Thelwall was striving to 
bring the "Champion" into notice, Lamb 
was ready to assist him with his pen, and to 
fancy himself, for the time, a Jacobin.* In 
this large intellectual tolerance, he resembled 
Professor Wilson, who, notwithstanding his 
own decided opinions, has a compass of mind 
large enough to embrace all others which 
have noble alliances within its range.f But 
not only to opposite opinions, and devious 
habits of thought, was Lamb indulgent ; he 
discovered "the soul of goodness in things 
evil" so vividly, that the surrounding evil 
disappeared from his mental vision. Nothing 
— no discovery of error or of crime — could 
divorce his sympathy from a man who had 
once engaged it. He saw in the spendthrift, 
the outcast, only the innocent companion of 



* The following little poem — quite out of Lamb's 
usual style — was written for that journal. 

THE THREE GRAVES. 

Close by the ever-burning brimstone beds, 

Where Bedloe, Oates, and Judas hide their heads, 

I saw great Satan like a sexton stand, 

With his intolerable spade in hand, 

Digging three graves. Of coffin-shape they were, 

For those who, coffinless, must enter there, 

With unblest rites. The shrouds were of that cloth 

Which Clotho weaved in her blackest wrath ; 

The dismal tint oppress'd the eye, that dwelt 

"Upon it long, like darkness to be felt. 

The pillows to these baleful beds were toads, 

Large, living, livid, melancholy loads, 

Whose softness shock'd. Worms of all monstrous size 

Craw I'd. round ; and one upcoil'd, which never dies, 

A doleful bell, inculcating despair, 

Was always ringing in the heavy air. 

And all around the detestable pit 

Strange headless ghosts and quarter'd forms did flit ; 

Rivers of blood from living traitors spilt, 

By treachery stung from poverty to guilt. 

I ask'd the fiend, for whom those rites were meant ? 

"These graves," quoth he, "when life's brief oil is 
spent, 

When the dark night comes, and they're sinking bed- 
wards, 

I mean for Castles, Oliver, and Edwards." 

+ Lamb only once met that remarkable person, — who 
has probably more points of resemblance to him than 
any other living poet, — and was quite charmed with 
him. They walked out from Enfield together, and 
strolled happily a long summer's day, not omitting, 
however, a call for a refreshing draught. Lamb called 
for a pot of ale or porter — half of which would have 
been his own usual allowance; and was delighted to 
hear the Professor, on the appearance of the foaming 
tankard, say reproachfully to the waiter, " And one 
for me ! " 



his school-days or the joyous associate of his 
convivial hours, and he did not even make 
penitence or reform a condition of his regard. 
Perhaps he had less sympathy with phi- 
lanthropic schemers for the improvement 
of the world than with any other class of 
men ; but of these he numbered two of the 
greatest, Clarkson the destroyer of the 
slave-trade, and Basil Montague the con- 
stant opponent of the judicial infliction of 
death ; and the labours of neither have been 
in vain ! 

To those who were not intimately acquainted 
with Lamb, the strong disinclination to con- 
template another state of being, which he 
sometimes expressed in his serious conversa- 
tion, and which he has solemnly confessed in 
his " New Year's Eve," might cast a doubt 
on feelings which were essentially pious. 
The same peculiarity of nature which attached 
him to the narrow and crowded streets, in 
preference to the mountain and the glen — 
which made him loth to quit even painful 
circumstances and unpleasant or ill-timed 
company ; the desire to seize and grasp all 
that was nearest, bound him to earth, and 
prompted his sympathies to revolve within a 
narrow circle. Yet in that very power of 
adhesion to outward things, might be dis- 
cerned the strength of a spirit destined to 
live beyond them. Within the contracted 
sphere of his habits and desires, he detected 
the subtlest essences of Christian kindliness, 
shed over it a light from heaven, and peopled 
it with divine fancies and 

" Thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof 
That they were born for immortality." 

Although he numbered among his asso- 
ciates freethinkers and sceptics, he had a 
great dislike to any profane handling of 
sacred subjects, and always discouraged 
polemical discussion. One evening, when 
Irving and Coleridge were in company, and 
a young gentleman had spoken slightingly of 
religion, Lamb remained silent ; but when 
the party broke up, he said to the youth who 
had thus annoyed his guests, " Pray, did you 
come here in a hat, sir, or in a turban 1 " 

The range of Lamb's reading was varied, 
but yet peculiar. He rejoiced in all old 
English authors, but cared little for the 
moderns, except one or two ; and those whom 
he loved as authors because they were his 



182 



CHARACTER OF LAMB. 



friends. Attached always to things of flesh 
and blood rather than to "the bare earth 
and mountains bare, and grass in the green 
field," he chiefly loved the great dramatists, 
whose beauties he supported, and sometimes 
heightened, in his suggestive criticisms. 
While he enjoyed Wordsworth's poetry, 
especially "The Excursion," with a love 
which grew upon him from his youth, he 
would repeat some of Pope's divine compli- 
ments, or Dryden's lines, weighty with 
sterling sense or tremendous force of satire, 
with eyes trembling into tears. The come- 
dies of Wycherley, and Congreve, and 
Farquhar, were not to him gross and sensual, 
but airy, delicate creations, framed out of 
coarse materials it might be, but evaporating 
in wit and grace, harmless effusions of the 
intellect and the fancy. The ponderous 
dulness of old controversialists, the dead 
weight of volumes of once fierce dispute, of 
which time had exhausted the venom, did 
not appal him. He liked the massive reading 
of the old Quaker records, the huge density 
of old schoolmen, better than the flippancy 
of modern criticism. If you spoke of Lord 
Byron, he would turn the subject by quoting 
the lines descriptive of his namesake in 
Love's Labour Lost — "Oft have I heard of 
you, my Lord Byron," &c. — for he could find 
nothing to revere or love in the poetry of 
that extraordinary but most uncomfortable 
poet ; except the apostrophe to Parnassus, 
in which he exults in the sight of the real 
mountain instead of the mere poetic image. 
All the Laras, and Giaours, and Childe 
Harolds, were to him but "unreal mockeries," 
— the phantasms of a feverish dream, — forms 
which did not appeal to the sympathies of 
mankind, and never can find root among 
them. Shelley's poetry, too, was icy cold to 
him ; except one or two of the minor poems, 
in which he could not help admiring the 
exquisite beauty of the expression ; and the 
" Cenci," in which, notwithstanding the 
painful nature of the subject, there is a 
warmth and passion, and a correspondent 
simplicity of diction, which prove how 
mighty a poet the author would have become 
had he lived long enough for his feelings to 
have free discourse with his creative power. 
Responding only to the touch of human 
affection, he could not bear poetry which, 
instead of making the whole world kin, 



renders our own passions and frailties and 
virtues strange to us ; presents them at a 
distance in splendid masquerade ; exalts them 
into new and unauthorised mythology, and 
crystallises all our freshest loves and mant- 
ling joys into clusters of radiant fancies. He 
made some amends for his indifference to 
Shelley, by his admiration of Mrs. Shelley's 
" Frankenstein," which he thought the most 
extraordinary realisation of the idea of a 
being out of nature which had ever been 
effected. For the Scotch novels he cared 
very little, not caring to be puzzled with 
new plots, and preferring to read Fielding, 
and Smollett, and Richardson, whose stories 
were familiar, over and over again, to being 
worried with the task of threading the maze 
of fresh adventure. But the good-natured- 
ness of Sir Walter to all his contemporaries 
won his admiration, and he heartily rejoiced 
in the greatness of his fame, and the rich 
rewards showered upon him, and desired 
they might accumulate for the glory of 
literature and the triumph of kindness. He 
was never introduced to Sir Walter ; but he 
used to speak with gratitude and pleasure of 
the circumstances under which he saw him 
once in Fleet-street. A man, in the dress 
of a mechanic, stopped him just at Inner 
Temple-gate, and said, touching his hat, 
"I beg your pardon, sir, but perhaps you 
would like to see Sir Walter Scott ; that is 
he just crossing the road ;" and Lamb stam- 
mered out his hearty thanks to his truly 
humane informer. 

Of his own writings it is now superfluous 
to speak ; for, after having encountered long 
derision and neglect, they have taken their 
place among the classics of his language. 
They stand alone, at once singular and 
delightful. They are all carefully elaborated ; 
yet never were works written in a higher 
defiance to the conventional pomp of style. 
A sly hit, a happy pun, a humorous com- 
bination, lets the light into the intricacies 
of the subject, and supplies the place of 
ponderous sentences. As his serious con- 
versation was his best, so his serious writing 
is far preferable to his fantastical humours, 
— cheering as they are, and suggestive ever 
as they are of high and invigorating thoughts. 
Seeking his materials, for the most part, in 
the common paths of life, — often in the 
humblest, — he gives an importance to every- 



CHARACTER OF LAMB. 



183 



thing, and sheds a grace over all. The spirit 
of gentility seems to breathe around all his 
persons ; he detects the venerable and the 
excellent in the narrowest circumstances 
and humblest conditions, with the same 
subtilty which reveals the hidden soul of the 
greatest works of genius. In all things he 
is most human. Of all modern writers, his 
works are most immediately directed to give 
us heart-ease and to make us happy. 



Among the felicities of Lamb's chequered 
life, that which he esteemed most, was his 
intimate friendship with some of the greatest 
of our poets, — Coleridge, Southey, and 
Wordsworth ; the last and greatest of whom 
has paid a tribute to his memory, which may 
fitly close this memoir. 

"Toa good Man of most dear memory 
This Stone is sacred. Here he lies apart 
From the great city where he first drew breath, 
Was reared and taught ; and humbly earned his 

bread, 
To the strict labours of the merchant's desk 
By duty chained. Not seldom did those tasks 
Tease, and the thought of time so spent depress 
His spirit, but the recompense was high ; 
Firm Independence, Bounty's rightful sire ; 
Affections, warm as sunshine, free as air ; 
And when the precious hours of leisure came, 
Knowledge and wisdom, gained from converse sweet 
With books, or while he ranged the crowded streets 
With a keen eye, and overflowing heart : 
So genius triumphed over seeming wrong, 
And poured out truth in works by thoughtful love 
Inspired — works potent over smiles and tears. 
And as round mountain-tops the lightning plays, 
Thus innocently sported, breaking forth 
As from a cloud of some grave sympathy, 
Humour and wild instinctive wit, and all 
The vivid flashes of his spoken words. 
From the most gentle creature nursed in fields 
Had been derived the name he bore — a name, 
Wherever Christian altars have been raised, 
Hallowed to meekness and to innocence ; 
And if in him meekness at times gave way, 
Provoked out of herself by troubles strange, 
Many and strange, that hung about his life ; 
Still, at the centre of his being, lodged 
A soul by resignation sanctified : 
And if too often, self-reproached, he felt 
That innocence belongs not to our kind, 
A power that never ceased to abide in him, 
Charity, 'mid the multitude of sins 
That she can cover, left not his exposed 
To an unforgiving judgment from just Heaven. 
O, he was good, if e'er a good man lived ! 

***** 

From a reflecting mind and sorrowing heart 
Those simple lines flowed with an earnest wish, 
Though but a doubting hope, that they might serve 
Fitly to guard the precious dust of him 
Whose virtues called them forth. That aim is 

missed ; 
For much that truth most urgently required 



Had from a faltering pen been asked in vain : 
Yet, haply, on the printed page received, 
The imperfect record, there, may stand unblamed 
As long as verse of mine shall breathe the air 
Of memory, or see the light of love. 

Thou wert a scorner of the fields, my Friend, 
But more in show than truth ; and from the fields, 
And from the mountains, to thy rural grave 
Transported, my soothed spirit hovers o'er 
Its green untrodden turf, and blowing flowers ; 
And taking up a voice shall speak (though still 
Awed by the theme's peculiar sanctity, 
Which words less free presumed not even to touch) 
Of that fraternal love, whose heaven-lit lamp 
From infancy, through manhood, to the last 
Of threescore years, and to thy latest hour, 
Burnt on with ever-strengthening light, enshrined 
Within thy bosom. 

' Wonderful' hath been 
The love established between man and man, 
' Passing the love of women ; ' and between 
Man and his help-mate in fast wedlock joined 
Through God, is raised a spirit and soul of love 
Without whose blissful influence Paradise 
Had been no Paradise ; and earth were now 
A waste where creatures bearing human form, 
Direst of savage beasts, would roam in fear, 
Joyless and comfortless. Our days glide on ; 
And let him grieve who cannot choose but grieve 
That he hath been an Elm without his Vine, 
And her bright dower of clustering charities, 
That, round his trunk and branches, might have 

clung 
Enriching and adorning. Unto thee, 
Not so enriched, not so adorned, to thee 
Was given (say rather thou of later birth 
Wert given to her) a Sister — 'tis a word 
Timidly uttered, for she lives, the meek, 
The self-restraining, and the ever-kind ; 
In whom thy reason and intelligent heart 
Found — for all interests, hopes, and tender cares, 
All softening, humanising, hallowing powers, 
Whether withheld, or for her sake unsought — 
More than sufficient recompense ! 

Her love 

(What weakness prompts the voice to tell it here ?) 

Was as the love of mothers ; and when years, 

Lifting the boy to man's estate, had called 

The long-protected to assume the part 

Of a protector, the first filial tie 

Was undissolved ; and, in or out of sight, 

Remained imperishably interwoven 

With life itself. Thus, 'mid a shifting world, 

Did they together testify of time 

And seasons' difference — a double tree 

With two collateral stems sprung from one root ; 

Such were they — and such through life they might 

have been 
In union, in partition only such ; 
Otherwise wrought the will of the Most High ; 
Yet, through all visitations and all trials, 
Still they were faithful ; like two vessels launched 
From the same beach one ocean to explore 
With mutual help, and sailing — to their league 
True, as inexorable winds, or bars 
Floating or fixed of polar ice, allow. 

But turn we rather, let my spirit turn 
With thine, O silent and invisible Friend ! 
To those dear intervals, nor rare nor brief, 
When reunited, and by choice withdrawn 
From miscellaneous converse, ye were taught 
That the remembrance of foregone distress, 



184 



CHARACTER OF LAMB. 



And the worse fear of future ill (which oft 
Doth hang around it, as a sickly child 
Upon its mother) may he hoth alike 
Disarmed of power to unsettle present good 
So prized, and things inward and outward held 
In such an even balance, that the heart 
Acknowledges God's grace, his mercy feels, 
And in its depth of gratitude is still. 

gift divine of quiet sequestration ! 



The hermit, exercised in prayer and praise, 

And feeding daily on the hope of heaven, 

Is happy in his vow, and fondly cleaves 

To life-long singleness ; but happier far 

Was to your souls, and, to the thoughts of others, 

A thousand times more beautiful appeared, 

Your dual loneliness. The sacred tie 

Is broken ; yet why grieve ? for Time but holds 

His moiety in trust, till Joy shall lead 

To the blest world where parting is unknown." 






FINAL MEMORIALS 



CHARLES LAMB 



CONSISTING 



CHIEFLY OF HIS LETTERS NOT BEFORE PUBLISHED, WITH SKETCHES OF 
SOME OF HIS COMPANIONS. 



SIR THOMAS NOON TALFOURD, D.C.L. 



ONE OF HI3 EXECUTORS. 



TO 



WILLIAM WORDSWOETH, ESQ. D.C.L. 

POET LAUREATE, 

THESE FINAL MEMOEIALS 

OF ONE WHO CHERISHED HIS FRIENDSHIP AS A COMFORT AMIDST GRIEFS 

AND A GLORY AMIDST DEPRESSIONS, ARE, 

WITH AFFECTION AND RESPECT, 

INSCRIBED 

BY ONE WHOSE PRIDE IS TO HAVE BEEN IN OLD TIME HIS EARNEST ADMIRER, 

AND ONE OF WHOSE FONDEST WISHES IS 

THAT HE MAY BE LONG SPARED TO ENJOY FAME, RARELY ACCORDED 

TO THE LIVING. 



PREFACE. 



Nearly twelve years have elapsed since the Letters of Charles Lamb, accompanied 
by such slight sketch of his Life as might link them together, and explain the circum- 
stances to which they refer, were given to the world. In the Preface to that work, 
reference was made to letters yet remaining unpublished, and to a period when a 
more complete estimate might be formed of the singular and delightful character of 
the writer than was there presented. That period has arrived. Several of his friends, 
who might possibly have felt a moment's pain at the publication of some of those 
effusions of kindness, in which they are -sportively mentioned, have been removed by 
death ; and the dismissal of the last, and to him the dearest of all, his sister, while it 
has brought to her the repose she sighed for ever since she lost him, has released his 
biographer from a difficulty which has hitherto prevented a due appreciation of some 
of his noblest qualities. Her most lamentable, but most innocent agency in the event 
which consigned her for life to his protection, forbade the introduction of aDy letter, 
or allusion to any incident, which might ever, in the long and dismal twilight of 
consciousness which she endured, shock her by the recurrence of long past and terrible 
sorrows ; and the same consideration for her induced the suppression of every 
passage which referred to the malady with which she was through life at intervals 
afflicted. Although her death had removed the objection to a reference to her 
intermittent suffering, it still left a momentous question, whether even then, when no 
relative remained to be affected by the disclosure, it would be right to unveil the 
dreadful calamity which marked one of its earliest visitations, and which, though 
known to most of those who were intimate with the surviving sufferers, had never 
been publicly associated with their history. When, however, I reflected that the 
truth, while in no wise affecting the gentle excellence of one of them, casts new and 
solemn lights on the character of the other ; that while his frailties have received an 
ample share of that indulgence which he extended to all human weaknesses, their 
chief exciting cause has been hidden ; that his moral strength and the extent of his 
self-sacrifice have been hitherto unknown to the world ; I felt that to develope all 
which is essential to the just appreciation of his rare excellence, was due both to him 
and to the public. While I still hesitated as to the extent of disclosure needful for 
this purpose, my lingering doubts were removed by the appearance of a full statement 
of the melancholy event, with all the details capable of being collected from the 



188 PREFACE. 



newspapers of the time, in the " British Quarterly Keview," and the diffusion of the 
passage, extracted thence, through several other journals. After this publication, no 
doubt could remain as to the propriety of publishing the letters of Lamb on this 
event, eminently exalting the characters of himself and his sister, and enabling the 
reader to judge of the sacrifice which followed it. 

I have also availed myself of the opportunity of introducing some letters, the 
objection to publishing which has been obviated by the same great healer, Time ; and 
of adding others which I deemed too trivial for the public eye, when the whole wealth 
of his letters lay before me, collected by Mr. Moxon from the distinguished corre- 
spondents of Lamb, who kindly responded to his request for permission to make the 
public sharers in their choice epistolary treasures. The appreciation which the 
letters already published, both in this country and in America — perhaps even more 
remarkable in America than in England — have attained, and the interest which the 
lightest fragments of Lamb's correspondence, which have accidentally appeared in 
other quarters, have excited, convince me that some letters which I withheld, as 
doubting their worthiness of the public eye, will not now be unwelcome. There is, 
indeed, scarcely a note — a notelet — (as he used to call his very little letters) Lamb ever 
wrote, which has not some tinge of that quaint sweetness, some hint of that peculiar 
union of kindness and whim, which distinguish him from all other poets and humorists. 
I do not think the reader will complain that — with some very slight exceptions, which 
personal considerations still render necessary — I have made him a partaker of all 
the epistolary treasures which the generosity of Lamb's correspondents placed at 
Mr. Moxon's disposal. 

When I first considered the materials of this work, I purposed to combine them 
with a new edition of the former volumes ; but the consideration that such a course 
would be unjust to the possessors of those volumes induced me to present them to the 
public in a separate form. In accomplishing that object, I have felt the difficulty of 
connecting the letters so as to render their attendant circumstances intelligible, 
without falling into repetition of passages in the previous biography. My attempt has 
been to make these volumes subsidiary to the former, and yet complete in themselves ; 
but I fear its imperfection will require much indulgence from the reader. The italics 
and capitals used in printing the letters are always those of the writer ; and the little 
passages sometimes prefixed to letters, have been printed as in the originals. 

In venturing to introduce some notices of Lamb's deceased companions, I have 
been impelled partly by a desire to explain any allusion in the letters which might be 
misunderstood by those who are not familiar with the fine vagaries of Lamb's 
affection, and partly by the hope of giving some faint notion of the entire circle with 
which Lamb is associated in the recollection of a few survivors. 

T. N. T. 

London, July, 1848. 



FINAL MEMORIALS OF CHARLES LAMB. 



CHAPTER I. 

LETTERS OF LAMB TO COLERIDGE, IN THE SPRING AND 
SUMMER OF 1796. 

In the year 1795, Charles Lamb resided 
with his father, mother, and sister, in lodg- 
ings at No. 7, Little Queen-street, Holborn. 
The father was rapidly sinking into dotage ; 
the mother suffered under an infirmity which 
deprived her of the use of her limbs ; and 
the sister not only undertook the office of 
daily and nightly attendance on her mother, 
but sought to add by needle-work to their 
slender resources. Their income then con- 
sisted of an annuity which Mr. Lamb the 
elder derived from the old Bencher, Mr. Salt, 
whom he had faithfully served for many 
years ; Charles's salary, which, being that of 
a clerk of three years' standing in the India 
House, could have been but scanty ; and a 
small payment made for board by an old 
maiden aunt, who resided with them. In 
this year Lamb, being just twenty years of 
age, began to write verses — partly incited by 
the example of his old friend, Coleridge, 
whom he regarded with as much reverence 
as affection, and partly inspired by an attach- 
ment to a young lady residing in the neigh- 
bourhood of Islington, who is commemorated 
in his early verses as " the fair-haired maid." 
How his love prospered we cannot ascertain ; 
but we know how nobly that love, and all 
hope of the earthly blessings attendant on 
such an affection, were resigned on the catas- 
trophe which darkened the following year. 
In the meantime, his youth was lonely — 
rendered the more so by the recollection of 



the society of Coleridge, who had just left 
London — of Coleridge in the first bloom of 
life and genius, unshaded by the mysticism 
which it afterwards glorified — full of bound- 
less ambition, love, and hope ! There was a 
tendency to insanity in his family, which had 
been more than once developed in his sister ; 
and it was no matter of surprise that in 
the dreariness of his solitude it fell upon 
him ; and that, at the close of the year, he 
was subjected for a few weeks to the re- 
straint of the insane. The wonder is that, 
amidst all the difficulties, the sorrows, and 
the excitements of his succeeding forty years, 
it never recurred. Perhaps the true cause 
of this remarkable exemption — an exemption 
the more remarkable when his afflictions 
are considered in association with one single 
frailty — will be found in the sudden claim 
made on his moral and intellectual nature 
by a terrible exigency, and by his generous 
answer to that claim ; so that a life of self- 
sacrifice was rewarded by the preservation 
of unclouded reason. 

The following letter to Coleridge, then 
residing at Bristol, which is undated, but 
which is proved by circumstances to have 
been written in the spring of 1796, and which 
is probably the earliest of Lamb's letters 
which have been preserved, contains his own 
account of this seizure. Allusion to the 
same event will be perceived in two letters 
of the same year, after which no reference 
to it appears in his correspondence, nor can 
any be remembered in his conversations 
with his dearest friends. 



190 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

" 1796. 

" Dear C , make yourself perfectly easy 

about May. I paid his bill when I sent your 
clothes. I was flush of money, and am so still 
to all the purposes of a single life ; so give 
yourself no further concern about it. The 
money would be superfluous to me if I had it. 

" When Southey becomes as modest as 
his predecessor Milton, and publishes his 
Epics in duodecimo, I will read 'em ; a 
guinea a book is somewhat exorbitant, 
nor have I the opportunity of borrowing 
the work. The extracts from it in the 
Monthly Eeviews, and the short passages 
in your Watchman, seem to me much 
superior to anything in his partnership 
account with Lovell. Your poems T shall 
procure forthwith. There were noble lines 
in what you inserted in one of your numbers, 
from ' Eeligious Musings ; ' but I thought 
them elaborate. I am somewhat glad you 
have given up that paper ; it must have been 
dry, unprofitable, and of dissonant mood to 
your disposition. I wish you success in all 
your undertakings, and am glad to hear you 
are employed about the ' Evidences of Ee- 
ligion.' There is need of multiplying such 
books a hundredfold in this philosophical 
age, to prevent converts to atheism, for they 
seem too tough disputants to meddle with 
afterwards. 

" Le Grice is gone to make puns in Corn- 
wall. He has got a tutorship to a young boy 
living with his mother, a widow-lady. He 
will, of course, initiate him quickly in ' what- 
soever things are lovely, honourable, and of 
good report.' Coleridge ! I know not what 
suffering scenes you have gone through at 
Bristol. My life has been somewhat diver- 
sified of late. The six weeks that finished 
last year and began this, your very humble 
servant spent very agreeably in a madhouse, 
at Hoxton. I am got somewhat rational 
now, and don't bite any one. But mad I 
was ! And many a vagary my imagination 
played with me, enough to make a volume, if 
all were told. My sonnets I have extended 
to the number of nine since I saw you, and 
will some day communicate to you. I am 
beginning a poem in blank verse, which, if I 
finish, I publish. White is on the eve of 
publishing (he took the hint from Vortigern) 



' Original letters of Falstaff, Shallow,' &c, a 
copy you shall have when it comes out. 
They are without exception the best imita- 
tions I ever saw. Coleridge ! it may con- 
vince you of my regards for you when I tell 
you my head ran on you in my madness, as 
much almost as on another person, who I am 
inclined to think was the more immediate 
cause of my temporary frenzy. 

" The sonnet I send you has small merit 
as poetry ; but you will be curious to read it 
when I tell you it was written in my prison- 
house in one of my lucid intervals. 

TO MY SISTER. 

" If from my lips some angry accents fell, 

Peevish complaint, or harsh reproof unkind, 
'Twas but the error of a sickly mind 

And troubled thoughts, clouding the purer well, 
And waters clear, of Reason ; and for me 
Let this my verse the poor atonement be — 
My verse, which thou to praise wert e'er inclined 
Too highly, and with partial eye to see 

No blemish. Thou to me didst ever show 

Kindest affection ; and wouldst oft-times lend 
An ear to the desponding love-sick lay, 
Weeping my sorrows with me, who repay 

But ill the mighty debt of love I owe, 
Mary, to thee, my sister and my friend. 

" With these lines, and with that sister's 

kindest remembrances to C , I conclude. 

" Yours sincerely, Lamb." 

" Your ' Conciones ad Populum ' are the 
most eloquent politics that ever came in my 
way. 

" Write when convenient — not as a task, 
for here is nothing in this letter to answer. 

" We cannot send our remembrances to 
Mrs. C, not having seen her, but believe me 
our best good wishes attend you both. 

" My civic and poetic compliments to 
Southey if at Bristol ; — why, he is a 
very Leviathan of Bards — the small min- 
now, I ! " 



In the spring of this year, Coleridge pro- 
posed the association of those first efforts of 
the young clerk in the India House, which he 
had prompted and praised, with his own, in 
a new edition of his Poems, to which Mr. 
Charles Lloyd also proposed to contribute. 
The following letter comprises Sonnets trans- 
mitted to Coleridge for this purpose, accom- 
panied by remarks so characteristic as to 
induce the hope that the reader will forgive 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



191 



the introduction of these small gems of verse 
which were published in due course, for the 



sake of the original setting 



TO MR. COLERIDGE. 



1796. 



" I am in such violent pain with the head- 
ache, that I am fit for nothing but tran- 
scribing, scarce for that. When I get your 
poems, and the ' Joan of Arc,' I will exercise 
my presumption in giving you my opinion of 
'em. The mail does not come in before to- 
morrow (Wednesday) morning. The fol- 
lowing Sonnet was composed during a 
walk down into Hertfordshire early in last 
summer : — 

" The Lord of Light shakes off his drowsyhed.* 
Fresh from his couch up springs the lusty 'sun, 
And girds himself his mighty race to run ; 

Meantime, hy truant love of rambling led 

I turn my back on thy detested walls, 
Proud city, and thy sons I leave behind 
A selfish, sordid, money-getting kind, 

Who shut their ears when holy Freedom calls. 

I pass not thee so lightly, humble spire, 
That mindest me of many a pleasure gone, 
Of merriest days of Love and Islington, 

Kindling anew the flames of past desire ; 

And I shall muse on thee, slow journeying on, 

To the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire. 

" The last line is a copy of Bowles's, ' To 
the green hamlet in the peaceful plain.' 
Your ears are not so very fastidious ; many 
people would not like words so prosaic and 
familiar in a Sonnet as Islington and Hert- 
fordshire. The next was written within a 
day or two of the last, on revisiting a spot 
where the scene was laid of my first Sonnet 
c that mocked my step with many a lonely 
glade.' 

" When last I roved these winding wood- walks green, 
Green winding walks, and shady pathways sweet ; 

Oft-times would Anna seek the silent scene, 
Shrouding her beauties in the lone retreat. 

No more I hear her footsteps in the shade ; 
Her image only in these pleasant ways 
Meets me self- wandering, where in happier days 

I held free converse with my fair-haired maid. 
I passed the little cottage which she loved, 

The cottage which did once my all contain ; 

It spake of days that ne'er must come again ; 

Spake to my heart, and much my heart was moved. 

Now ' Fair befal thee, gentle maid,' said I ; 

And from the cottage turned me with a sigh. 

" The next retains a few lines from a 
Sonnet of mine which you once remarked 
had no ' body of thought ' in it. I agree with 

* " Drowsyhed " I have met with, I think, in Spenser. 
'Tis an old thing, but it rhymes with led, and rhyming 
covers a multitude of licences. — C. Lamb's Manuscripts. 



you, but have preserved a part of it, and it 
runs thus. I flatter myself you will like it : — 

" A timid grace sits trembling in her eye, 

As loth to meet the rudeness of men's sight ; 
Yet shedding a delicious lunar light, 
That steeps in kind oblivious ecstacy 
The care-crazed mind, like some still melody : 

Speaking most plain the thoughts which do possess 
Her gentle sprite, peace and meek quietness, 
And innocent loves,* and maiden purity : 

A look whereof might heal the cruel smart 
Of changed friends ; or Fortune's wrongs unkind ; 

Might to sweet deeds of mercy move the heart 
Of him, who hates his brethren of mankind : 
Turned are those beams from me, who fondly yet 
Past joys, vain loves, and buried hopes regret. 

" The next and last I value most of all. 
'Twas composed close upon the heels of the 
last, in that very wood I had in mind when 
I wrote — ' Methinks how dainty sweet.' 

" We were two pretty babes, the youngest she, 
The youngest, and the loveliest far, I ween, 
And Innocence her name. The time has been 
We two did love each other's company ; 

Time was, we two had wept to have been apart : 
But when, with show of seeming good beguil'd, 
I left the garb and manners of a child, 
And my first love for man's society, 

Defiling with the world my virgin heart — 
My loved companion dropt a tear, and fled, 
And hid in deepest shades her awful head. 

Beloved ! who can tell me where thou art — 
In what delicious Eden to be found — 
That I may seek thee the wide world around ? 

" Since writing it, I have found in a poem 
by Hamilton of Bangor, these two lines to 
' Happiness.' 

Nun, sober and devout, where art thou fled 
To hide in shades thy meek contented head ? 

Lines eminently beautiful ; but I do not re- 
member having read them previously, for the 
credit of my tenth and eleventh lines. Parnell 
has two lines (which probably suggested the 
above) to ' Contentment.' 

Whither, ah ! whither art thou fled 
To hide thy meek contented t head 1 

" Cowley's exquisite ' Elegy on the death 
of his friend Harvey,' suggested the phrase 
of ' we two.' 

Was there a tree that did not know 
The love betwixt us two ? 

" So much for acknowledged plagiarisms, 

* Cowley uses this phrase with a somewhat different 
meaning. I meant, loves of relatives, friends, &c. — 
C. Lamb's Manuscripts. 

+ An odd epithet for Contentment in a poet so poetical 
as Parnell. — C. Lamb's Manuscripts. 



192 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



the confession of which I know not whether 
it has more of vanity or modesty in it. As to 
my blank verse, I am so dismally slow and 
sterile of ideas (I speak from my heart) that 
I much question if it will ever come to any 
issue. I have hitherto only hammered out a 
few independent, unconnected snatches, not 
in a capacity to be sent. I am very ill, and 
will rest till I have read your poems, for 
which I am very thankful. I have one more 
favour to beg of you, that you never mention 
Mr. May's affair in any sort, much less think 
of repaying. Are we not flocci-nauci-what- 
d'ye-call-'em-ists ? We have just learned 
that my poor brother has had a sad accident, 
a large stone blown down by yesterday's 
high wind has bruised his leg in a most 
shocking manner ; he is under the care of 
Cruikshanks. Coleridge ! there are 10,000 
objections against my paying you a visit at 
Bristol ; it cannot be else ; but in this world 
'tis better not to think too much of pleasant 
possibles, that we may not be out of humour 
with present insipids. Should anything bring 
you to London, you will recollect No. 7, 
Little Queen Street, Holborn. 

" I shall be too ill to call on "Wordsworth 
myself, but will take care to transmit him 
his poem, when I have read it. I saw Le 
Grice the day before his departure, and men- 
tioned incidentally his ' teaching the young 
idea how to shoot.' Knowing him and the 
probability there is of people having a pro- 
pensity to pun in his company, you will not 
wonder that we both stumbled on the same 
pun at once, he eagerly anticipating me, — 
' he would teach him to shoot ! ' Poor Le 
Grice ! if wit alone could entitle a man to 
respect, &c., he has written a very witty little 
pamphlet lately, satirical upon college decla- 
mations. When I send White's book, I will 
add that. I am sorry there should be any 
difference between you and Southey. 'Be- 
tween you two there should be peace,' tho' 
I must say I have borne him no good will 
since he spirited you away from among us. 
What is become of Moschus 1 You sported 
some of his sublimities, I see, in your Watch- 
man. Very decent things. So much for to- 
night from your afflicted, headachey, sore- 
throatey, humble servant, C. Lamb." 

" Tuesday night. — Of your Watchman, the 
Be view of Burke was the best prose. I 



augured great things from the first number. 
There is some exquisite poetry interspersed. 
I have re-read the extract from the ' Beligious 
Musings,' and retract whatever invidious 
there was in my censure of it as elaborate. 
There are times when one is not in a disposi- 
tion thoroughly to relish good writing. I 
have re-read it in a more favourable mo- 
ment, and hesitate not to pronounce it 
sublime. If there be anything in it ap- 
proaching to tumidity (which I meant not 
to infer ; by elaborate I meant simply la- 
boured), it is the gigantic hyperbole by 
which you describe the evils of existing 
society; 'snakes, lions, hyenas, and behe- 
moths,' is carrying your resentment beyond 
bounds. The pictures of ' The Simoom,' of 
' "Frenzy and Bum,' of ' The Whore of 
Babylon,' and ' The Cry of Foul Spirits dis- 
herited of Earth,' and ' the strange beatitude ' 
which the good man shall recognise in heaven, 
as well as the particularising of the children 
of wretchedness (I have unconsciously in- 
cluded every part of it), form a variety of 
uniform excellence. I hunger and thirst to 
read the poem complete. That is a capital 
line in your sixth number. 

' This dark, frieze-coated, hoarse, teeth-chattering 
month.' 

They are exactly such epithets as Burns 
would have stumbled on, whose poem on the 
ploughed-up daisy you seem to have had in 
mind. Your complaint that of your readers 
some thought there was too much, some too 
little original matter in your numbers, 
reminds me of poor dead Parsons in the 
' Critic' ' Too little incident ! Give me leave 
to tell you, sir, there is too much incident.' I 
had like to have forgot thanking you for that 
exquisite little morsel, the first Sclavonian 
Song. The expression in the second, — 'more 
happy to be unhappy in hell ;' is it not very 
quaint ? Accept my thanks, in common 
with those of all who love good poetry, for 
'The Braes of Yarrow.' I congratulate you 
on the enemies you must have made by your 
splendid invective against the barterers in 
human flesh and sinews. Coleridge ! you 
will rejoice to hear that Cowper is recovered 
from his lunacy, and is employed on his 
translation of the Italian, &c, poems of 
Milton for an edition where Fuseli presides 
as designer. Coleridge ! to an idler like 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



193 



myself, to write and receive letters are both 
very pleasant, but I wish not to break in 
upon your valuable time by expecting to 
hear very frequently from you. Eeserve 
that obligation for your moments of lassitude, 
when you have nothing else to do ; for your 
loco-restive and all your idle propensities, of 
course, have given way to the duties of pro- 
viding for a family. The mail is come in, but 
no parcel ; yet this is Tuesday. Farewell, 
then, till to-morrow, for a niche and a nook I 
must leave for criticisms. By the way I 
hope you do not send your own only copy of 
Joan of Arc ; I will in that case return it 
immediately. 

" Your parcel is come ; you have been 
lavish of your presents. 

"Wordsworth's poem I have hurried 
through, not without delight. Poor Lovell ! 
my heart almost accuses me for the light 
manner I spoke of him above, not dreaming 
of his death. My heart bleeds for your 
accumulated troubles ; God send you through 
'em with patience. I conjure you dream not 
that I will ever think of being repaid ; the 
very word is galling to the ears. I have 
read all your ' Eeligious Musings' with unin- 
terrupted feelings of profound admiration. 
You may safely rest your fame on it. The 
best remaining things are what I have before 
read, and they lose nothing by my recollection 
of your manner of reciting 'em, for I too bear 
in mind 'the voice, the look,' of absent 
friends, and can occasionally mimic their 
manner for the amusement of those who 
have seen 'em. Your impassioned manner 
of recitation I can recall at any time to mine 
own heart and to the ears of the bystanders. 
I rather wish you had left the monody on 
Chatterton concluding as it did abruptly. It 
had more of unity. The conclusion of your 
' Eeligious Musings,' I fear will entitle you 
to the reproof of your beloved woman, who 
wisely will not suffer your fancy to run riot, 
but bids you walk humbly with your God. 
The very last words, ' I exercise my young 
noviciate thought in ministeries of heart- 
stirring song,' though not now new to me, 
cannot be enough admired. To speak 
politely, they are a well-turned compliment 
to Poetry. I hasten to read ' Joan of Arc,' 
&c. I have read your lines at the beginning 
of second book : they are worthy of Milton ; 
but in my mind yield to your ' Eeligious 



Musings.' I shall read the whole carefully, 
and in some future letter take the liberty to 
particularise my opinions of it. Of what is 
new to me among your poems next to the 
'Musings,' that beginning ' My Pensive Sara' 
gave me most pleasure: the lines in it I just 
alluded to are most exquisite; they made 
my sister and self smile, as conveying a 
pleasing picture of Mrs. C. checking your 
wild wanderings, which we were so fond of 
hearing you indulge when among us. It has 
endeared us more than anything to your 
good lady, and your own self-reproof that 
follows delighted us. 'Tis a charming poem 
throughout (you have well remarked that 
charming, admirable, exquisite are the words 
expressive of feelings more than conveying 
of ideas, else I might plead very well want of 
room in my paper as excuse for generalising). 
I want room to tell you how we are charmed 
with your verses in the manner of Spenser, 
&c. &c. &c. &c. &c. I am glad you resume 
the ' Watchman.' Change the name ; leave 
out all articles of news, and whatever things 
are peculiar to newspapers, and confine your- 
self to ethics, verse, criticism — or rather do 
not confine yourself. Let your plan be as 
diffuse as the 'Spectator,' and I'll answer 
for it the work prospers. If I am vain 
enough to think I can be a contributor, rely 
on my inclinations. Coleridge ! in reading 
your ' Eeligious Musings,' I felt a transient 
superiority over you. I have seen Priestly. 
I love to see his name repeated in your 
writings. I love and honour him almost 
profanely. You would be charmed with his 
Sermons, if you never read 'em. You have 
doubtless read his books illustrative of the 
doctrine of Necessity. Prefixed to a late 
work of his in answer to Paine, there is a 
preface giving an account of the man, and his 
services to men, written by Lindsey, his 
dearest friend, well worth your reading. 

" Tuesday eve. — Forgive my prolixity, 

which is yet too brief for all I could wish to 

say. God give you comfort, and all that are 

| of your household ! Our loves and best good 

wishes to Mrs. C. C. Lamb." 



The parcel mentioned in the last letter, 

brought the " Joan of Arc," and a request 

| from Coleridge, that Lamb would freely 

criticise his poems with a view to their 



194 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



selection and correction for the contemplated 
volume. The reply is contained in the fol- 
lowing letter which, written on several days, 
begins at the extreme top of the first page, 
without any ceremony of introduction, and 
is comprised in three sides and a bit of 
foolscap. 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

"With 'Joan of Arc' I have been de- 
lighted, amazed ; I had not presumed to 
expect anything of such excellence from 
Southey. Why the poem is alone sufficient 
to redeem the character of the age we live 
in from the imputation of degenerating in 
Poetry, were there no such beings extant as 

Burns, and Bowles, Cowper, and ; fill 

up the blank how you please ; I say nothing. 
The subject is well chosen. It opens well. 
To become more particular, I will notice in 
their order a few passages that chiefly struck 
me on perusal. Page 26, ' Fierce and terrible 
Benevolence ! ' is a phrase Ml of grandeur 
and originality. The whole context made 
me feel possessed, even like Joan herself. 
Page 28, ' It is most horrible with the keen 
sword to gore the finely-fibred human frame,' 
and what follows, pleased me mightily. In 
the 2nd Book, the first forty lines in par- 
ticular are majestic and high-sounding. 
Indeed the whole vision of the Palace of 
Ambition and what follows are supremely 
excellent. Your simile of the Laplander, 
'By Niemi's lake, or Balda Zhiok, or the 
mossy stone of Solfar-Kapper,' * will bear 
comparison with any in Milton for fulness of 
circumstance and lofty-pacedness of versifi- 
cation. Southey's similes, though many of 
'em are capital, are all inferior. In one of 
his books, the simile of the oak in the storm 
occurs, I think, four times. To return ; the 
light in which you view the heathen deities 
is accurate and beautiful. Southey's personi- 
fications in this book are so many fine and 
faultless pictures. I was much pleased with 
your manner of accounting for the reason 
why monarchs take delight in war. At the 
447th line you have placed Prophets and 
Enthusiasts cheek by jowl, on too intimate a 
footing for the dignity of the former. Neces- 
sarian-like-speaking, it is correct. Page 98, 

* Lapland mountains. The verses referred to are 
published in Mr. Coleridge's Poem entitled " The Destiny 
of Nations ; a Vision." 



' Dead is the Douglas ! cold thy warrior 
frame, illustrious Buchan,' &c, are of kindred 
excellence with Gray's ' Cold is Cadwallo's 
tongue,' &c. How famously the Maid baffles 
the Doctors, Seraphic and Irrefragable, 'with 
all their trumpery ! ' Page 126, the proces- 
sion, the appearances of the Maid, of the 
Bastard Son of Orleans and of Tremouille, 
are full of fire and fancy, and exquisite 
melody of versification. The personifications 
from line 303 to 309, in the heat of the 
battle, had better been omitted ; they are 
not very striking, and only encumber. The 
converse which Joan and Conrade hold on 
the banks of the Loire is altogether beau- 
tiful. Page 313, the conjecture that in dreams 
' all things are that seem,' is one of those 
conceits which the Poet delights to admit 
into his creed — a creed, by the way, more 
marvellous and mystic than ever Athanasius 
dreamed of. Page 315, I need only mention 
those lines ending with ' She saw a serpent 
gnawing at her heart ! ' They are good 
imitative lines, ' he toiled and toiled, of toil 
to reap no end, but endless toil and never- 
ending woe.' Page 347, Cruelty is such as 
Hogarth might have painted her. Page 361, 
all the passage about Love (where he seems 
to confound conjugal love with creating and 
preserving love) is very confused, and sickens 
me with a load of useless personifications ; 
else that ninth Book is the finest in the 
volume — an exquisite combination of the 
ludicrous and the terrible : I have never read 
either, even in translation, but such I con- 
ceive to be the manner of Dante or Ariosto. 
The tenth Book is the most languid. On the 
whole, considering the celerity wherewith 
the poem was finished, I was astonished at 
the unfrequency of weak lines. I had ex- 
pected to find it verbose. Joan, I think, 
does too little in battle ; Dunois perhaps the 
same ; Conrade too much. The anecdotes 
interspersed among the battles refresh the 
mind very agreeably, and I am delighted 
with the very many passages of simple 
pathos abounding throughout the poem, 
passages which the author of ' Crazy Kate ' 
might have written. Has not Master Southey 
spoke very slightingly, in his preface, and 
disparagingly of Cowper's Homer ? What 
makes him reluctant to give Cowper his 
fame ? And does not Southey use too often 
the expletives ' did,' and ' does 1 ' They have 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



19' 



a good effect at times, but are too incon- 
siderable, or rather become blemishes, when 
they mark a style. On the whole, I expect 
Southey one day to rival Milton : I already 
deem him equal to Cowper, and superior to 
all living poets besides. What says Cole- 
ridge 1 The ' Monody on Henderson ' is 
immense/}/ good, the rest of that little volume 
is readable, and above mediocrity. I proceed 
to a more pleasant task ; pleasant because 
the poems are yours ; pleasant because you 
impose the task on me ; and pleasant, let me 
add, because it will confer a whimsical im- 
portance on me, to sit in judgment upon your 
rhymes. First, though, let me thank you 
again and again, in my own and my sister's 
name, for your invitations ; nothing could 
give us more pleasure than to come, but 
(were there no other reasons) while my 
brother's leg is so bad it is out of the 
question. Poor fellow ! he is very feverish 
and light-headed, but Cruikshanks has pro- 
nounced the symptoms favourable, and gives 
us every hope that there will be no need of 
amputation : God send not ! "We are neces>- 
sarily confined with him all the afternoon 
and evening till very late, so that I am 
stealing a few minutes to write to you. 

" Thank you for your frequent letters ; you 
are the only correspondent, and, I might 
add, the only friend I have in the world. I 
go nowhere, and have no acquaintance. Slow 
of speech, and reserved of manners, no one 
seeks or cares for my society ; and I am left 
alone. Allen calls only occasionally, as 
though it were a duty rather, and seldom 
stays ten minutes. Then judge how thank- 
ful I am for your letters ! Do not, however, 
burthen yourself with the correspondence. 
I trouble you again so soon, only in obedience 
to your injunctions. Complaints apart, pro- 
ceed we to our task. I am called away to 
tea ; thence must wait upon my brother ; 
so must delay till to-morrow. Farewell. 
Wednesday. 

" Thursday. — I will first notice what is 
new to me. Thirteenth page ; ' The thrilling 
tones that concentrate the soul ' is a nervous 
line, and the six first lines of page 14 are very 
pretty ; the twenty-first effusion a perfect 
thing. That in the manner of Spenser is 
very sweet, particularly at the close : the 
thirty-fifth effusion is most exquisite ; that 
line in particular, ' And, tranquil, muse upon 



tranquillity.' It is the very reflex pleasure 
that distinguishes the tranquillity of a think- 
ing being from that of a shepherd, a modern 
one I would be understood to mean, a 
Damastas, one that keeps other people's 
sheep. Certainly, Coleridge, your letter from 
Shurton Bars has less merit than most 
things in your volume ; personally it may 
chime in best with your own feelings, and 
therefore you love it best. It has, however, 
great merit. In your fourth epistle that is 
an exquisite paragraph, and fancy-full, of ' A 
stream there is which rolls in lazy flow,' 
&c. &c. ' Murmurs sweet undersong 'mid 
jasmin bowers ' is a sweet line, and so are 
the three next. The concluding simile is 
far-fetched — ' tempest-honoured ' is a quaint- 
ish phrase. 

" Yours is a poetical family. I was much 
surprised and pleased to see the signature of 
Sara to that elegant composition, the fifth 
epistle. I dare not criticise the 'Religious 
Musings ; ' 1 like not to select any part, where 
all is excellent. I can only admire, and 
thank you for it in the name of a Christian, 
as well as a lover of good poetry ; only let 
me ask, is not that thought and those words 
in Young, ' stands in the sun,' — or is it only 
such as Young, in one of his better moments, 
might have writ ? — 

' Believe thou, O my soul, 
Life is a vision shadowy of truth ; 
And vice, and anguish, and the wormy grave, 
Shapes of a dream I ' 

I thank you for these lines in the name of a 
necessarian, and for what follows in next 
paragraph, in the name of a child of fancy. 
After all, you cannot, nor ever will, write 
anything with which I shall be so delighted 
as what I have heard yourself repeat. You 
came to town, and I saw you at a time when 
your heart was yet bleeding with recent 
wounds. Like yourself, I was sore galled 
with disappointed hope ; you had 



-' many an holy lay 



That, mourning, soothed the mourner on his way ; ' 

" I had ears of sympathy to drink them in, 
and they yet vibrate pleasant on the sense. 
When I read in your little volume, your 
nineteenth effusion, or the twenty-eighth or 
twenty-ninth, or what you call the ' Sigh,' I 
think I hear you again. I image to myself 
the little smoky room at the Salutation and 



o 2 



196 



LETTERS TO COLEEIDGE. 



Cat, where we heave sat together through the 
winter nights, beguiling the cares of life with 
Poesy. When you left London, I felt a 
dismal void in my heart. I found myself cut 
off, at one and the same time, from two most 
dear to me. ' How blest with ye the path 
could I have trod of quiet life ! ' In your 
conversation you had blended so many 
pleasant fancies that they cheated me of my 
grief. But in your absence the tide of 
melancholy rushed in again and did its worst 
mischief by overwhelming my reason. I 
have recovered, but feel a stupor that makes 
me indifferent to the hopes and fears of this 
life. I sometimes wish to introduce a 
religious turn of mind, but habits are strong- 
things, and my religious fervours are confined, 
alas ! to some fleeting moments of occasional 
solitary devotion. A correspondence, opening 
with you, has roused me a little from my 
lethargy and made me conscious of existence. 
Indulge me in it : I will not be very trouble- 
some ! At some future time I will amuse 
you with an account, as full as my memory 
will permit, of the strange turn my frenzy 
took. I look back upon it at times with a 
gloomy kind of envy ; for, while it lasted, I 
had many, many hours of pure happiness. 
Dream not, Coleridge, of having tasted all 
the grandeur and wildness of fancy till you 
have gone mad ! All now seems to me vapid, 
comparatively so. Excuse this selfish digres- 
sion. Your 'Monody' is so superlatively 
excellent, that I can only wish it perfect, 
which I can't help feeling it is not quite. 
Indulge me in a few conjectures ; what I am 
going to propose would make it more com- 
pressed, and, I think, more energetic, though 
I am sensible at the expense of many 
beautiful lines. Let it begin 'Is this the 
land of song-ennobled line ? ' and proceed to 
' Otway's famished form ; ' then, ' Thee 
Chatterton,' to ' blaze of Seraphim ; ' then, 
' clad in Nature's rich array,' to ' orient day ; ' 
then, ' but soon the scathing lightning,' to 
' blighted land ; ' then, ' sublime of thought,' 
to ' his bosom glows ; ' then 

' But soon upon his poor unsheltered head 
Did Penury her sickly mildew shed ; 
And soon are fled the charms of early grace, 
And joy's wild gleams that lightened o'er his face.' 

Then 'youth of tumultuous soul' to 'sigh,' 
as before. The rest may all stand down to 



' gaze upon the waves below.' What follows 
now may come next as detached verses, 
suggested by the Monody, rather than a part 
of it. They are, indeed, in themselves, very 
sweet : 

' And we, at soher eve, would round thee throng, 
Hanging enraptured on thy stately song ! ' 

in particular, perhaps. If I am obscure, you 
may understand me by counting lines : I 
have proposed omitting twenty-four lines : 
I feel that thus compressed it would gain 
energy, but think it most likely you will not 
agree with me ; for who shall go about to 
bring opinions to the bed of Procrustes, and 
introduce among the sons of men a monotony 
of identical feelings ? I only propose with 
diffidence. Reject you, if you please, with 
as little remorse as you would the colour of 
a coat or the pattern of a buckle, where our 
fancies differed. 

" The ' Pixies ' is a perfect thing, and so 
are the 'Lines on the Spring,' page 28. The 
'Epitaph on an Infant,' like a Jack-o'- 
lanthorn, has danced about (or like Dr. 
Forster's scholars) out of the Morning 
Chronicle into the Watchman, and thence 
back into your collection. It is very pretty, 
and you seem to think so, but, may be, 
o'erlooked its chief merit, that of filling up a 
whole page. I had once deemed sonnets of 
unrivalled use that way, but your Epitaphs, 
I find, are the more diffuse. ' Edmund ' still 
holds its place among your best verses. ' Ah ! 
fair delights ' to ' roses round,' in your Poem 
called ' Absence,' recall (none more forcibly) 
to my mind the tones in which you recited it. 
I will not notice, in this tedious (to you) 
manner, verses which have been so long 
delightful to me, and which you already 
know my opinion of. Of this kind are 
Bowles, Priestly, and that most exquisite 
and most Bowles-like of all, the nineteenth 
effusion. It would have better ended with 
' agony of care : ' the two last lines are 
obvious and unnecessary, and you need not 
now make fourteen lines of it ; now it is re- 
christened from a Sonnet to an Effusion. 
Schiller might have written the twentieth 
effusion: 'tis worthy of him in any sense. I 
was glad to meet with those lines you sent 
me, when my sister was so ill ; I had lost the 
copy, and I felt not a little proud at seeing 
my name in your verse. The complaint of 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



VJ7 



Ninathoma (first stanza in particular) is the 
best, or only good imitation, of Ossian I ever 
saw — your ' Restless Gale ' excepted. ' To 
an Infant ' is most sweet ; is not ' foodful,' 
though, very harsh 1 Would not ' dulcet ' 
fruit be less harsh, or some other friendly 
bi-syllable ? In ' Edmund,' ' Frenzy ! fierce- 
eyed child ' is not so well as ' frantic,' though 
that is an epithet adding nothing to the 
meaning. Slander couching was better than 
' squatting.' In the * Man of Ross ' it was a 
better line thus : 

' If 'neath this roof thy wine-cheered moments pass,' 

than as it stands now. Time nor nothing 
can reconcile me to the concluding five lines 
of ' Kosciusko : ' call it anything you will 
but sublime. In my twelfth effusion I had 
rather have seen what I wrote myself, though 
they bear no comparison with your exquisite 
lines — 

' On rose-leaf d-heds amid your faery bowers,' &c. 

"I love my sonnets because they are 
the reflected images of my own feelings- 
at different times. To instance, in the 
thirteenth — 

' How reason reeled,' &c, 

are good lines, but must spoil the whole with 
me, who know it is only a fiction of yours, 
and that the ' rude dashings ' did in fact not 
'rock me to repose.' I grant the same 
objection applies not to the former sonnet ; 
but still I love my own feelings ; they are 
dear to memory, though they now and then 
wake a sigh or a tear. ' Thinking on divers 
things foredone,' I charge you, Coleridge, 
spare my ewe-lambs ; and though a gentle- 
man may borrow six lines in an epic poem (I 
should have no objection to borrow five 
hundred, and without acknowledging), still, 
in a sonnet, a personal poem, I do not ' ask 
my friend the aiding verse ; ' I would not 
wrong your feelings, by proposing any 
improvements (did I think myself capable 
of suggesting 'em) in such personal poems as 
' Thou bleedest, my poor heart,' — 'od so, — I 
am caught — I have already done it ; but 
that simile I propose abridging, would not 
change the feeling or introduce any alien 
ones. Do you understand me 1 In the 
twenty-eighth, however, and in the ' Sigh,' 
and that composed at Clevedon, things that 



come from the heart direct, not by the 
medium of the fancy, I would not suggest an 
alteration. When my blank verse is finished, 
or any long fancy poem, ' propino tibi alter- 
andum, cut-up-andum, abridgandum,' just 
what you will with it ; but spare my ewe- 
lambs ! That to 'Mrs. Siddons,' now, you 
were welcome to improve, if it had been 
worth it ; but I say unto you again, Cole- 
ridge, spare my ewe-lambs ! I must confess 
were they mine, I should omit, in editione 
secundd, effusions two and three, because 
satiric, and below the dignity of the poet of 
'Religious Musings,' fifth, seventh, half of 
the eighth, that ' Written in early youth,' as 
far as ' thousand eyes,' — though I part not 
unreluctantly with that lively line — 

' Chaste joyance dancing in her bright blue eyes.' 

and one or two just thereabouts. But I 
would substitute for it that sweet poem 
called ' Recollection,' in the fifth number of 
the Watchman, better, I think, than the 
remainder of this poem, though not differing 
materially : as the poem now stands it looks 
altogether confused ; and do not omit those 
lines upon the ' Early Blossom,' in your 
sixth number of the Watchman ; and I 
would omit the tenth effusion, or what would 
do better, alter and improve the last four 
lines. In fact, I suppose, if they were mine, 
I should not omit 'em ; but your verse is, for 
the most part, so exquisite, that I like not 
to see aught of meaner matter mixed with it. 
Forgive my petulance, and often, I fear, ill- 
founded criticisms, and forgive me that I 
have, by this time, made your eyes and head 
ache with my long letter; but I cannot 
forego hastily the pleasure and pride of thus 
conversing with you. You did not tell me 
whether I was to include the ' Conciones ad 
Populum ' in my remarks on your poems. 
They are not unfrequently sublime, and I 
think you could not do better than to turn 
'em into verse — if you have nothing else to 

do. A , I am sorry to say, is a confirmed 

Atheist ; S , a cold-hearted, well-bred, 

conceited disciple of Godwin, does him no 
good. 

" How I sympathise with you on the dull 
duty of a reviewer, and heartily damn with 

you Ned E and the Prosodist. I shall, 

however, wait impatiently for the articles in 
the Critical Review, next month, because 



IDS 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



they are yours. Young Evans (W. Evans, a j 
branch of a family you were once so intimate I 
with) is come into our office, and sends his 
love to you ! Coleridge ! I devoutly wish 
that Fortune, who has made sport with you 
so long, may play one freak more, throw you 
into London, or some spot near it, and there ; 
snug-ify you for life. Tis a selfish, but 
natural wish for me, cast as I am ' on life's 
wide plain, friendless.' Are you acquainted 
with Bowles? I see, by his last Elegy, 
(written at Bath,) you are near neighbours. 
Thursday. 

" I do not know that I entirely agree with 
you in your stricture upon my sonnet ' To 
Innocence.' To men whose hearts are not 
quite deadened by their commerce with the 
world, innocence (no longer familiar) becomes 
an awful idea. So I felt when I wrote it. 
Your other censures (qualified and sweetened, 
though, with praises somewhat extravagant) 
I perfectly coincide with ; yet I choose to 
retain the world ' lunar ' — indulge a ' lunatic' 
in his loyalty to his mistress the moon ! I 
have just been reading a most pathetic copy 
of verses on Sophia Pringle, who was hanged 
and burnt for coining. One of the strokes of 
pathos (which are very many, all somewhat 
obscure), is ' She lifted up her guilty forger 
to heaven.' A note explains, by ' forger,' her 
right hand, with which she forged or coined 
the base metal. For pathos read bathos. 
You have put me out of conceit with my 
blank verse by your ' Religious Musings.' I 
think it will come to nothing. I do not like 
'em enough to send 'em. I have just been 
reading a book, which I may be too partial 
to, as it was the delight of my childhood ; 
but I wiU'recommend it to you ; — it is Izaak 
Walton's ' Complete Angler.' All the scien- 
tific part you may omit in reading. The 
dialogue is very simple, full of pastoral 
beauties, and will charm you. Many pretty 
old verses are interspersed. This letter, 
which would be a week's work reading only, 
I do not wish you to answer it in less than a 
month. I shall be richly content with a 
letter from you some day early in July ; 
though, if you get any how settled before then, 
pray let me know it immediately ; 'twould 
give me much satisfaction. Concerning the 
Unitarian chapel, the salary is the only 
scruple that the most rigid moralist would 
admit as valid. Concerning the tutorage, is 



not the salary low, and absence from your 
family unavoidable 1 London is the only 
fostering soil for genius. Nothing more 
occurs just now ; so I will leave you, in 
mercy, one small white spot empty below, 
to repose your eyes upon, fatigued as they 
must be, with the wilderness of words they 
have by this time painfully travelled through. 
God love you, Coleridge, and prosper you 
through life ; though mine will be loss if 
your lot is to be cast at Bristol, or at Notting- 
ham, or anywhere but London. Our loves 
to Mrs. C . C. L. 

" Friday, 10th June, 1796." 



Coleridge, settled in his melancholy cot- 
tage invited Lamb to visit him. The hope 
— the expectation — the disappointment, are 
depicted in the following letter, written in 
the summer of the eventful year 1796. 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

" July 1st, 1796. 

" The first moment I can come I will ; but 
my hopes of coming yet a while, yet hang on 
a ticklish thread. The coach I come by is 
immaterial, as I shall so easily, by your 
direction, find ye out. My mother is grown 
so entirely helpless (not having any use of 
her limbs) that Mary is necessarily confined 
from ever sleeping out, she being her bed- 
fellow. She thanks you though, and will 
accompany me- in spirit. Most exquisite 
are the lines from Withers. Your own lines, 
introductory to your poem on { Self,' run 
smoothly and pleasurably, and I exhort you 
to continue 'em. What shall I say to your 
' Dactyls ? ' They are what you would call 
good per se, but a parody on some of 'em is 
just now suggesting itself, and you shall have 
it rough and unlicked ; I mark with figures 
the lines parodied : — 

4. — Sorely your Dactyls do drag along limp-footed. 

5. — Sad is the measure that hangs a clog round 'em so. 

6. — Meagre and languid, proclaiming its "wretchedness. 

1 . — Weary, unsatisfied, not a little sick of 'em. 
1 1 . — Cold is my tired heart, I have no charity. 

2. — Painfully travelling thus over the rugged road. 

7 . — O hegone, measure, half Latin, half English, then. 
12. — Dismal your Dactyls are, God help ye, rhyming 
ones ! 

" I possibly may not come this fortnight ; 
therefore, all thou hast to do is not to look 
for me any particular day, only to write word 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



199 



immediately, if at any time you quit Bristol, 
lest I come and Taffy be not at home. I 
hope I can come in a day or two ; but young 

S , of my office, is suddenly taken ill in 

this very nick of time, and I must officiate 
for him till he can come to work again : had 
the knave gone sick, and died, and been 
buried at any other time, philosophy might 
have afforded one comfort, but just now I 
have no patience with him. Quarles I am as 
great a stranger to as I was to Withers. I 
wish you would try and do something to 
bring our elder bards into more general 
fame. I writhe witk indignation when, in 
books of criticism, wjjtere common-place quo- 
tation is heaped upon quotation, I find no 
mention of such men as Massinger, or Beau- 
mont and Fletcher, men with whom succeed- 
ing dramatic writers (Otway alone excepted)* 
can bear no manner of comparison. Stupid 
Knox hath noticed none of 'em among his 
extracts. 

" Thursday. — Mrs. C can scarce guess 

how she has gratified me by her very kind 
letter and sweet little poem. I feel that Ishould 
thank her in rhyme, but she must take my 
acknowledgment, at present, in plain honest 
prose. The uncertainty in which I yet 
stand, whether I can come or no, damps my 
spirits, reduces me a degree below prosaical, 
and keeps me in a suspense that fluctuates 
between hope and fear. Hope is a charming, 
lively, blue-eyed wench, and I am always 
glad of her company, but could dispense with 
the visitor she brings with her — her younger 
sister, Fear, a white-livered, lily-cheeked, 
bashful, palpitating, awkward hussy, that 
hangs, like a green girl, at her sister's apron- 
strings, and will go with her whithersoever 
she goes. For the life and soul of me, I could 
not improve those lines in your poem on the 
Prince and Princess, so I changed them to 

* An exception he certainly would not have made a 
few years afterwards ; for he used to mention two pretty 
lines in the " Orphan," 

" Sweet as the shepherd's pipe upon the mountains, 
With all his fleecy flock at feed beside him," 

as a redeeming passage amidst mere stage trickeries. 
The great merit which lies in the construction of 
" Venice Preserved," was not in his line of appreciation ; 
and he thought Thomson's reference to Otway's ladies — 

poor Monimia moans, 



And Belvidera pours her soul in love, 
worth both heroines. 



what you bid me, and left 'em at Perry's.t 
I think 'em altogether good, and do not see 
why you were solicitous about any alteration. 
I have not yet seen, but will make it my 
business to see, to-day's Chronicle, for your 
verses on Home Tooke. Dyer stanza'd him 
in one of the papers tother day, but, I think, 
unsuccessfully. Tooke's friends meeting was, 
I suppose, a dinner of condolence.^ I am 
not sorry to find you (for all Sara) immersed 
in clouds of smoke and metaphysics. You 
know I had a sneaking kindness for this last 
noble science, and you taught me some smat- 
tering of it. I look to become no mean pro- 
ficient under your tuition. Coleridge, hat 
do you mean by saying you wrote to me 
about Plutarch and Porphyry 1 I received 
no such letter, nor remember a syllable of 
the matter, yet am not apt to forget any part 
of your epistles, least of all, an injunction 
like that. I will cast about for 'em, tho' 
I am a sad hand to know what books are 
worth, and both these worthy gentlemen are 
alike out of my line. To-morrow 1 shall be 
less suspensive, and in better cue to write, so 
good bye at present. 

" Friday Evening. — That execrable aristo- 
crat and knave Br- — has given me an abso- 
lute refusal of leave. The poor man cannot 
guess at my disappointment. Is it not hard, 
'this dread dependence on the low-bred 
mind 1 ' Continue to write to me tho', and 
I must be content. Our loves and best good 
wishes attend upon you both. Lamb." 

" S did return, but there are two or 

three more ill and absent, which was the 
plea for refusing me. I shall never have 
heart to ask for holidays again. The man 

next him in office, C , furnished him with 

the objections. C. Lamb." 



The little copy of verses in which Lamb 
commemorated and softened his disappoint- 
ment, bearing date (a most unusual circum- 
stance with Lamb), 5th July, 1796, was in- 
closed in a letter of the following day, which 
refers to a scheme Coleridge had formed of 
settling in London on an invitation to share 



f Some " occasional" verses of Coleridge's written to 
order for the Morning Chronicle. 

+ This was just after the Westminster Election, in 
which Mr. Tooke was defeated. 



200 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



the Editorship of the Morning Chronicle. 
The poem includes a lamentation over a 
fantastical loss — that of a draught of the 
Avon " which Shakespeare drank ; " some- 
what strangely confounding the Avon of 
Stratford with that of Bristol. It may be 
doubted whether Shakespeare knew the 
taste of the waves of one Avon more than of 
the other, or whether Lamb would not have 
found more kindred with the world's poet 
in a glass of sack, than m the water of either 
stream. Coleridge must have enjoyed the 
misplaced sentiment of his friend, for he was 
singularly destitute of sympathy with local 
associations, which he regarded as interfering 
with the pure and simple impression of great 
deeds or thoughts ; denied a special interest 
to the Pass of Thermopylae : and instead of 
subscribing to purchase " Shakespeare's 
House," would scarcely have admitted the 
peculiar sanctity of the spot which enshrines 
his ashes. 

TO SARA AND HER SAMUEL. 

" Was it so hard a thing ? — I did hut ask 
A fleeting holiday. One little week, 
Or haply two, had hounded my request. 

What, if the jaded steer, who all day long 
Had home the heat and lahour of the plough, 
When evening came, and her sweet cooling hour, 
Should seek to trespass on a neighbour copse, 
Where greener herbage wared, or clearer streams 
Invited him to slake his burning thirst ? 
That man were crabbed, who should say him nay ; 
That man were churlish, who should drive him 

thence ! 
A blessing light upon your heads, ye good, 
Ye hospitable pair ! I may not come, 
To catch on Clifden's heights the summer gale ; 
I may not come, a pilgrim, to the banks 
Of Avon, lucid stream, to taste the wave 
Which Shakespeare drank, our British Helicon : 
Or with mine eye intent on Redcliffe towers, 
To muse in tears on that mysterious youth, 
Cruelly slighted, who to London walls, 
In evil hour, shaped his disastrous course. 

Complaint begone ; begone, unkind reproof: 
Take up, my song, take up a merrier strain, 
For yet again, and lo ! from Avon's vales 
Another ' minstrel ' cometh ! Youth endear'd, 
God and good angels guide thee on thy way, 
And gentler fortunes wait the friends I love. 

"C. L." 



The letter accompanying these verses 
begins cheerfully thus : 

" What can I do till you send word what 
priced and placed house you should like ? 



Islington, possibly, you would not like ; to 
me 'tis classical ground. Knightsbridge is a 
desirable situation for the air of the parks ; 
St. George's Fields is convenient for its con- 
tiguity to the Bench. Choose ! But are you 
really coming to town 1 The hope of it has 
entirely disarmed my petty disappointment 
of its nettles, yet I rejoice so much on my 
own account, that I fear I do not feel enough 
pure satisfaction on yours. Why, surely, the 
joint editorship of the Chronicle must be 
very comfortable and secure living for a man. 
But should not you read French, or do you ? 
and can you write with sufficient moderation, 
as 'tis called, when one suppresses the one 
half of what one feels or could say on a sub- 
ject, to chime in the better with popular 
lukewarmness ? White's ' Letters ' are near 
publication ; could you review 'em or get 'em 
reviewed 1 Are you not connected with the 
Critical Beview 1 His frontispiece is a good 
conceit — Sir John learning to dance to please 
Madam Page, in dress of doublet, &c, from 
the upper half, and modern pantaloons with 
shoes, &c, of the eighteenth century, from the 
lower half ; and the whole work is full of 
goodly quips and rare fancies, ' all deftly 
masqued like hoar antiquity' — much supe- 
rior to Dr. Kenrick's ' Falstaff's Wedding,' 

which you have seen. A sometimes 

laughs at superstition, and religion, and the 
like. A living fell vacant lately in the gift 
of the Hospital : White informed him that 
he stood a fair chance for it. He scrupled 
and scrupled about it, and at last, to use his 
own words, 'tampered' with Godwin to 
know whether the thing was honest or not. 

Godwin said nay to it, and A rejected 

the living ! Could the blindest poor papist 
have bowed more servilely to his priest or 
casuist 1 Why sleep the Watchman's an- 
swers to that Godwin 1 I beg you will not 
delay to alter, if you mean to keep those last 
lines I sent you. Do that and read these for 
your pains : — 

TO THE POET COWPER. 

" Cowper, I thank my God that thou art heal'd ! 
Thine was the sorest malady of all ; 
And I am sad to think that it should light 
Upon the worthy head ! But thou art heal'd, 
And thou art yet, we trust, the destined man, 
Born to reanimate the lyre, whose chords 
Have slumber'd, and have idle lain so long ; 
To the immortal sounding of whose strings 
Did Milton frame the stately-paced verse ; 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



201 



Among whose wires with light finger playing, 
Our elder bard, Spenser, a gentle name, 
The lady Muses' dearest darling child, 
Elicited the deftest tunes yet heard 
In hall or bower, taking the delicate ear 
Of Sidney and his peerless Maiden Queen. 

Thou, then, take up the mighty epic strain, 
Cowper, of England's Bards, the wisest and the 
best. 

1796. 

" I have read your climax of praises in 
those three Eeviews. These mighty spouters 
out of panegyric waters have, two of 'em, 
scattered their spray even upon me, and the 
waters are cooling and refreshing. Prosaically, 
the Monthly reviewers have made indeed a 
large article of it, and done you justice. The 
Critical have, in their wisdom, selected not 
the very best specimens, and notice not, 
except as one name on the muster-roll, the 
' Eeligious Musings.' I suspect Master Dyer 
to have been the writer of that article, as the 
substance of it was the very remarks and 
the very language he used to me one day. I 
fear you will not accord entirely with my 
sentiments of Cowper, as expressed above 
(perhaps scarcely just) ; but the poor gentle- 
man has just recovered from his lunacies, 
and that begets pity, and pity love, and love 
admiration ; and then it goes hard with 
people but they lie ! Have you read the 
Ballad called ' Leonora,' in the second number 
of the Monthly Magazine ! If you have ! ! ! ! 
There is another fine song, from the same 
author (Burger), in the third number, of 
scarce inferior merit ; and (vastly below 
these) there are some happy specimens of 
English hexameters, in an imitation of Ossian, 
in the fifth number. For your Dactyls — I 
am sorry you are so sore about 'em — a very 
Sir Fretful ! In good troth, the Dactyls are 
good Dactyls, but their measure is naught. 
Be not yourself ' half anger, half agony,' if I 
pronounce your darling lines not to be the 
best you ever wrote in all your life — you have 
written much. 

" Have a care, good Master Poet, of the 
Statute de Contumelid. What do you mean 
by calling Madame Mara, — harlot and 
naughty things ? * The goodness of the verse 

* " I detest 



These scented rooms, where, to a gaudy throng, 
Heaves the proud harlot her distended breast 
In intricacies of laborious song." 

Lines composed in a Concert Room, by S. T. C. 



would not save you in a court of justice. 
But are you really coming to town l Cole- 
ridge, a gentleman called in London lately 
from Bristol, and inquired whether there 
were any of the family of a Mr. Chambers 
living : this Mr. Chambers, he said, had been 
the making of a friend's fortune, who wished 
to make some return for it. He went away 
without seeing her. Now, a Mrs. Reynolds, 
a very intimate friend of ours, whom you 
have seen at our house, is the only daughter, 
and all that survives, of Mr. Chambers ; and 
a very little supply would be of service to 
her, for she married very unfortunately, and 
has parted with her husband. Pray find out 
this Mr. Pember (for that was the gentleman's 
friend's name) ; he is an attorney, and lives 
at Bristol. Find him out, and acquaint him 
with the circumstances of the case, and offer 
to be the medium of supply to Mrs. Reynolds, 
if he chooses to make her a present. She is 
in very distressed circumstances. Mr. Pember, 
attorney, Bristol. Mr. Chambers lived in 
the Temple ; Mrs. Reynolds, his daughter, 
was my schoolmistress, and is in the room at 
this present writing. This last circumstance 
induced me to write so soon again. I have 
not further to add. Our loves to Sara. 
Thursday. C. Lamb." 



CHAPTER II. 

LETTERS OF LAMB TO COLERIDGE, CHIEFLY RELATING TO 
THE DEATH OF MRS. LAMB, AND MISS LAMB'S SUBSE- 
QUENT CONDITION. 

The autumn of 1796 found Lamb engaged 
all the morning in task-work at the India 
House, and all the evening in attempting to 
amuse his father by playing cribbage ; some- 
times snatching a few minutes for his only 
pleasure, writing to Coleridge ; while Miss 
Lamb was worn down to a. state of extreme 
nervous misery, by attention to needlework 
by day, and to her mother by night, until the 
insanity, which had been manifested more 
than once, broke out into frenzy, which, on 
Thursday, 22nd of September, proved fatal 
to her mother. The following account of the 
proceedings on the inquest, copied from the 
"Times" of Monday, 26th September, 1796, 
supplies the details of this terrible calamity, 



202 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



doubtless with accuracy, except that it would 
seem, from Lamb's eusuing letter to Coleridge, 
that he, and not the landlord, took the knife 
from the unconscious hand. 

" On Friday afternoon, the coroner and a 
jury sat on the body of a lady in the neigh- 
bourhood of Holborn, who died in consequence 
of a wound from her daughter the preceding 
day. It appeared, by the evidence adduced, 
that, while the family were preparing for 
dinner, the young lady seized a case-knife 
lying on the table, and in a menacing manner 
pursued a little girl, her apprentice, round 
the room. On the calls of her infirm mother 
to forbear, she renounced her first object, 
and, with loud shrieks, approached her 
parent. The child, by her cries, quickly 
brought up the landlord of the house, but 
too late. The dreadful scene presented to 
him the mother lifeless, pierced to the heart, 
on a chair, her daughter yet wildly standing 
over her with the fatal knife, and the old 
man, her father, weeping by her side, himself 
bleeding at the forehead from the effects of a 
severe blow he received from one of the 
forks she had been madly hurling about the 
room. 

" For a few days prior to this, the family 
had observed some symptoms of insanity in 
her, which had so much increased on the 
Wednesday evening, that her brother, early 
the next morning, went to Dr. Pitcairn, but 
that gentleman was not at home. 

"It seems the young lady had been once 
before deranged. 

" The jury, of course, brought in their 
verdict — Lunacy.'"' * 



The following is Lamb's account of the 
event to Coleridge : — 

" September 27th, 1796. 

" My dearest Friend, — White, or some of 
my friends, or the public papers, by this time 
may have informed you of the terrible cala- 
mities that have fallen on our family. I will 

* A statement nearly similar to this will be found in 
several other journals of the day, and in the Annual 
Register for the year. The " True Briton" adds : — " It 
appears she had been before, in the earlier part of her 
life, deranged, from the harassing fatigues of too much 
business. As her carriage towards her mother had 
always been affectionate in the extreme, it is believed 
her increased attachment to her, as her infirmities called 



only give you the outlines : — My poor dear, 
dearest sister, in a fit of insanity, has been 
the death of her own mother. I was at 
hand only time enough to snatch the knife 
out of her grasp. She is at present in a 
madhouse, from whence I fear she must be 
moved to an hospital. God has preserved to 
me my senses, — I eat, and drink, and sleep, 
and have my judgment, I believe, very 
sound. My poor father was slightly wounded 
and I am left to take care of him and my 
aunt. Mr. Norris, of the Blue-coat School, 
has been very very kind to us, and we have 
no other friend ; but, thank God, I am very 
calm and composed, and able to do the best 
that remains to do. Write as religious a 
letter as possible, but no mention of what is 
gone and done with. With me ' the former 
things are passed away,' and I have some- 
thing more to do than to feel. 

" God Almighty have us well in his keep- 
ing. C. Lamb." 

"Mention nothing of poetry. I have 
destroyed every vestige of past vanities of 
that kind. Do as you please, but if you 
publish, publish mine (I give free leave) 
without name or initial, and never send me 
a book, I charge you. 

" Your own judgment will convince you 
not to take any notice of this yet to your 
dear wife. You look after your family, — I 
have my reason and strength left to take 
care of mine. I charge you, don't think of 
coming to see me. Write. I will not see 
you if you come. God Almighty love you 
and all of us. C. Lamb." 



After the inquest, Miss Lamb was placed 
in an Asylum, where she was, in a short 
time, restored to reason. The following is 
Lamb's next letter : — 



TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

" October 3rd, 1796. 
" My dearest Friend, — Your letter was an 
inestimable treasure to me. It will be a 

for it by day and by night, caused her loss of reason at 
this time. It has been stated in some of the morning 
papers that she has an insane brother in confinement ; 
but this is without foundation." None of the accounts 
give the names of the sufferers ; but in the index to the 
Annual Register, the anonymous account is referred to 
with Mrs. Lamb's name. 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



203 



comfort to you, I know, to know that our 
prospects are somewhat brighter. My poor 
dear, dearest sister, the unhappy and un- 
conscious instrument of the Almighty's judg- 
ments on our house, is restored to her senses ; 
to a dreadful sense and recollection of what 
has past, awful to her mind and impressive 
(as it must be to the end of life), but tem- 
pered .with religious resignation and the 
reasonings of a sound judgment, which, in 
this early stage, knows how to distinguish 
between a deed committed in a transient fit 
of frenzy, and the terrible guilt of a mother's 
murder. I have seen her. I found her, this 
morning, calm and serene ; far, very very 
far from an indecent forgetful serenity ; she 
has a most affectionate and tender concern 
for what has happened. Indeed, from the 
beginning, frightful and hopeless as her dis- 
order seemed, I had confidence enough in her 
strength of mind and religious principle, to 
look forward to a time when even she might 
recover tranquillity. God be praised, Cole- 
ridge, wonderful as it is to tell, I have never 
once been otherwise than collected and calm ; 
even on the dreadful day, and in the midst 
of the terrible scene, I preserved a tranquil- 
lity which bystanders may have construed 
into indifference — a tranquillity not of 
despair. Is it folly or sin in me to say that 
it was a religious principle that most sup- 
ported me ? I allow much to other favour- 
able circumstances. I felt that I had some- 
thing else to do than to regret. On that first 
evening, my aunt was lying insensible, to all 
appearance like one dying, — my father, with 
his poor forehead plaistered over, from a 
wound he had received from a daughter 
dearly loved by him, and who loved him no 
less dearly, — my mother a dead and murdered 
corpse in the next room — yet was I wonder- 
fully supported. I closed not my eyes in 
sleep that night, but lay without terrors and 
without despair. I have lost no sleep since. 
I had been long used not to rest in things of 
sense, — had endeavoured after a comprehen- 
sion of mind, unsatisfied with the 'ignorant 
present time,' and this kept me up. I had 
the whole weight of the family thrown on 
me ; for my brother, little disposed (I speak 
not without tenderness for him) at any time 
to take care Of old age and infirmities, had 
now, with his bad leg, an exemption from 
such duties, and I was now left alone. One 



little incident may serve to make you under- 
stand my way of managing my mind. Within 
a day or two after the fatal one, we dressed 
for dinner a tongue which we had had salted 
for some weeks in the house. As I sat down, 
a feeling like remorse struck me ; — this 
tongue poor Mary got for me, and can I par- 
take of it now, when she is far away 1 A 
thought occurred and relieved me, — if I give 
in to this way of feeling, there is not a chair, 
a room, an object in our rooms, that will not 
awaken the keenest griefs ; I must rise above 
such weaknesses. I hope this was not want 
of true feeling. I did not let this carry me, 
though, too far. On the very second day, 
(I date from the day of horrors,) as is usual 
in such cases, there were a matter of twenty 
people, I do think, supping in our room ; 
they prevailed on me to eat with them (for 
to eat I never refused). They were all making 
merry in the room ! Some had come from 
friendship, some from busy curiosity, and 
some from interest ; I was going to partake 
with them ; when my recollection came that 
my poor dead mother was lying in the next 
room — the very next room ; — a mother who, 
through life, wished nothing but her children's 
welfare. Indignation, the rage of grief, some- 
thing like remorse, rushed upon my mind. 
In an agony of emotion I found my way 
mechanically to the adjoining room, and fell 
on my knees by the side of her coffin, asking 
forgiveness of heaven, and sometimes of her, 
for forgetting her so soon. Tranquillity 
returned, and it was the only violent emotion 
that mastered me, and I think it did me 
good. 

" I mention these things because I hate 
concealment, and love to give a faithful 
journal of what passes within me. Our 
friends have been very good. Sam Le Grice, 
who was then in town, was with me the three 
or four first days, and was as a brother to 
me, gave up every hour of his time, to the 
very hurting of his health and spirits, in con- 
stant attendance and humouring my poor 
father ; talked with him, read to him, played 
at cribbage with him (for so short is the old 
man's recollection, that he was playing at 
cards, as though nothing had happened, 
while the coroner's inquest was sitting over 
the way !) Samuel wept tenderly when he 
went away, for his mother wrote him a very 
severe letter on his loitering so long in town, 



204 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



and he was forced to go. Mr. Norris, of 
Christ's Hospital, has been as a father to me 
— Mrs. Norris as a mother ; though we had 
few claims on them. A gentleman, brother 
to my godmother, from whom we never had 
right or reason to expect any such assist- 
ance, sent my father twenty pounds ; and to 
crown all these God's blessings to our family 
at such a time, an old lady, a cousin of my 
father and aunt's, a gentlewoman of fortune, 
is to take my aunt and make her comfortable 
for the short remainder of her days. My 
aunt is recovered, and as well as ever, and 
highly pleased at thoughts of going — and has 
generously given up the interest of her little 
money (which was formerly paid my father 
for her board) wholely and solely to my 
sister's use. Reckoning this, we have, Daddy 
and I, for our two selves and an old maid- 
servant to look after him, when I am out, 
which will be necessary, 1701. or 1801. rather 
a-year, out of which we can spare 501. or 601. 
at least for Mary while she stays at Islington, 
where she must and shall stay during her 
father's life, for his and her comfort. I know 
John will make speeches about it, but she 
shall not go into an hospital. The good lady 
of the madhouse, and her daughter, an elegant, 
sweet-behaved young lady, love her, and are 
taken with her amazingly ; and I know from 
her own mouth she loves them, and longs to 
be with them as much. Poor thing, they 
say she was but the other morning saying, 
she knew she must go to Bethlem for life ; 
that one of her brothers would have it so, but 
the other would wish it not, but be obliged 
to go with the stream ; that she had often as 
she passed Bethlem thought it likely, ' here 
it may be my fate to end my days,' conscious 
of a certain flightiness in her poor head 
oftentimes, and mindful of more than one 
severe illness of that nature before. A 
legacy of 1001., which my father will have 
at Christmas, and this 201. I mentioned 
before, with what is in the house, will much 
more than set us clear. If my father, an old 
servant-maid, and I, can't live, and live com- 
fortably, on 1301. or 1201. a-year, we ought to 
burn by slow fires ; and I almost would, 
that Mary might not go into an hospital. 
Let me not leave one unfavourable impres- 
sion on your mind respecting my brother. 
Since this has happened, he has been very 
kind and brotherly ; but I fear for his mind, 



— he has taken his ease in the world, and is 
not fit himself to struggle with difficulties, 
nor has much accustomed himself to throw 
himself into their way ; and I know his 
language is already, ' Charles, you must take 
care of yourself, you must not abridge your- 
self of a single pleasure you have been used 
to,' &c. &c, and in that style of talking. But 
you, a necessarian, can respect a difference of 
mind, and love what is amiable in a character 
not perfect. He has been very good, — but I 
fear for his mind. Thank God, I can uncon- 
nect myself with him, and shall manage all 
my father's moneys in future myself, if I take 
charge of Daddy, which poor John has not 
even hinted a wish, at any future time even, 
to share with me. The lady at this madhouse 
assures me that I may dismiss immediately 
both doctor and apothecary, retaining occa- 
sionally a composing draught or so for a 
while ; and there is a less expensive esta- 
blishment in her house, where she will only 
not have a room and nurse to herself, for 501. 
or guineas a-year — the outside would be 601. 
— you know, by economy, how much more 
even I shall be able to spare for her comforts. 
She will, I fancy, if she stays, make one of 
the family, rather than of the patients ; and 
the old and young ladies I like exceedingly, 
and she loves dearly ; and they, as the saying 
is, take to her very extraordinarily, if it is 
extraordinary that people who see my sister 
should love her. Of all the people I ever 
saw in the world, my poor sister was most 
and thoroughly devoid of the least tincture 
of selfishness. I will enlarge upon her 
qualities, poor dear, dearest soul, in a future 
letter, for my own comfort, for I understand 
her thoroughly ; and, if I mistake not, in 
the most trying situation that a human being 
can be found in, she will be found (I speak 
not with sufficient humility, I fear, but 
humanly and foolishly speaking), she will be 
found, I trust, uniformly great and amiable. 
God keep her in her present mind, to whom 
be thanks and praise for all His dispensations 
to mankind ! C. Lamb." 

"These mentioned good fortunes and 
change of prospects had almost brought my 
mind over to the extreme, the very opposite 
to despair. I was in danger of making my- 
self too happy. Your letter brought me back 
to a view of things which I had entertained 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



205 



from the beginning. I hope (for Mary 
I can answer) — but I hope that / shall 
through life never have less recollection, nor 
a fainter impression, of what has happened 
than I have now. Tis not a light thing, nor 
meant by the Almighty to be received 
lightly. I must be serious, circumspect, and 
deeply religious through life ; and by such 
means may both of us escape madness in 
future, if it so please the Almighty ! 

" Send me word how it fares with Sara. 
I repeat it, your letter was, and will be, an 
inestimable treasure to me. You have a 
view of what my situation demands of 
me, like my own view, and I trust a just 
one. 

" Coleridge, continue to write ; but do not 
for ever offend me by talking of sending me 
cash. Sincerely, and on my soul, we do not 
want it. God love you both. 

"I will write again very soon. Do you 
write directly." 



As Lamb recovered from the shock of his 
own calamity, he found comfort in gently 
admonishing his friend on that imbecility of 
purpose which attended the development of 
his mighty genius. His next letter, com- 
mencing with this office of friendship, soon 
reverts to the condition of that sufferer, who 
was endeared to him the more because others 
shrank from and forsook her. 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

" October 17th, 1796. 
" My dearest Friend, — I grieve from my 
very soul to observe you in your plans of 
life, veering about from this hope to the 
other, and settling nowhere. Is it an un- 
toward fatality (speaking humanly) that 
does this for you — a stubborn, irresistible 
concurrence of events — or lies the fault, as 
I fear it does, in your own mind ? You seem 
to be taking up splendid schemes of fortune 
only to lay them down again ; and your 
fortunes are an ignis fatuus that has been 
conducting you, in thought, from Lancaster- 
court, Strand, to somewhere near Matlock ; 
then jumping across to Dr. Somebody's, 
whose son's tutor you were likely to be ; 
and, would to God, the dancing demon may 
conduct you at last, in peace and comfort, to 
the 'life and labours of a cottager.' You 



see, from the above awkward playfulness of 
fancy, that my spirits are not quite depressed. 
1 should ill deserve God's blessings, which, 
since the late terrible event, have come down 
in mercy upon us, if I indulged regret or 
querulousness. Mary continues serene and 
cheerful. I have not by me a little letter 
she wrote to me ; for, though I see her 
almost every day, yet we delight to write to 
one another, for we can scarce see each other 
but in company with some of the people of 
the house. I have not the letter by me, but 
will quote from memory what she wrote in 
it: 'I have no bad terrifying dreams. At 
midnight, when I happen to awake, the nurse 
sleeping by the side of me, with the noise of 
the poor mad people around me, I have no 
fear. The spirit of my mother seems to 
descend and smile upon me, and bid me live 
to enjoy the life and reason which the 
Almighty has given me. I shall see her 
again in heaven ; she will then understand 
me better. My grandmother, too, will 
understand me better, and will then say no 
more, as she used to do, c Polly, what are 
those poor crazy moythered brains of yours 
thinking of always ? ' Poor Mary ! my 
mother indeed never understood her right. 
She loved her, as she loved us all, with a 
mother's love ; but in opinion, in feeling, 
and sentiment, and disposition, bore so 
distant a resemblance to her daughter, that 
she never understood her right ; never could 
believe how much she loved her; but met 
her caresses, her protestations of filial 
affection, too frequently with coldness and 
repulse. Still she was a good mother. God 
forbid I should think of her but most respect- 
fully, most affectionately. Yet she would 
always love my brother above Mary, who 
was not worthy of one-tenth of that affection 
which Mary had a right to claim. But it is 
my sister's gratifying recollection, that every 
act of duty and of love she could pay, every 
kindness, (and I speak true, when I say to 
the hurting of her health, and most probably 
in great part to the derangement of her 
senses) through a long course of infirmities 
and sickness, she could show her, she ever 
did. I will, some day, as I promised, enlarge 
to you upon my sister's excellences ; 'twill 
seem like exaggeration, but I will do it. At 
present, short letters suit my state of mind 
best. So take my kindest wishes for your 






LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



comfort and establishment in life, and for 
Sara's welfare and comforts with you. God 
love you. God love us all. 

" C. Lamb." 



Miss Lamb's gradual restoration to com- 
fort, and her brother's earnest watchfulness 
over it, are illustrated in the following frag- 
ment of a letter : — 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

" October 28th, 1796. 

" I have satisfaction in being able to bid 
you rejoice with me in my sister's continued 
reason, and composedness of mind. Let us 
both be thankful for it. I continue to visit 
her very frequently, and the people of the 
house are vastly indulgent to her ; she is 
likely to be as comfortably situated in all 
respects as those who pay twice or thrice 
the sum. They love her, and she loves them, 
and makes herself very useful to them. 
Benevolence sets out on her journey with a 
good heart, and puts a good face on it, but 
is apt to limp and grow feeble, unless she 
calls in the aid of self-interest, by way of 
crutch. In Mary's case, as far as respects 
those she is with, 'tis well that these prin- 
ciples are so likely to co-operate. I am 
rather at a loss sometimes for books for her, 
— our reading is somewhat confined, and we 
have nearly exhausted our London library. 
She has her hands too full of work to read 
much, but a little she must read, for reading 
was her daily bread." 



Two months, though passed by Lamb in 
anxiety and labour, but cheered by Miss 
Lamb's continued possession of reason, so 
far restored the tone of his mind, that his 
interest in the volume which had been con- 
templated to introduce his first verses to the 
world, in association with those of his friend, 
was enkindled anew. While cherishing the 
hope of reunion with his sister, and painfully 
wresting his leisure hours from poetry and 
Coleridge to amuse the dotage of his father, 
he watched over his own returning sense of 
enjoyment with a sort of holy jealousy, 
apprehensive lest he should forget too soon 
the terrible visitation of Heaven. At this 
time he thus writes : — 



TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

" December 2nd, 1796. 
"I have delayed writing thus long, not 
having by me my copy of your poems, which 
I had lent. I am not satisfied with all your 
intended omissions. Why omit 40, 63, 84 ? 
above all, let me protest strongly against 
your rejecting the 'Complaint of Ninathoma,' 
86. The words, I acknowledge, are Ossian's, 
but you have added to them the ' music of 
CariL' If a vicarious substitute be wanting, 
sacrifice (and 'twill be a piece of self-denial 
too), the ' Epitaph on an Infant,' of which its 
author seems so proud, so tenacious. Or, if 
your heart be set on perpetuating the four- 
line wonder, I'll tell you what do ; sell the 
copyright of it at once to a country statuary ; 
commence in this manner Death's prime 
poet-laureate ; and let your verses be adopted 
in every village round, instead of those 
hitherto famous ones : — 

' Afflictions sore long time I bore, 
Physicians were in vain.' * 

" I have seen your last very beautiful poem 
in the Monthly Magazine : write thus, and 
you most generally have written thus, and 
I shall never quarrel with you about simpli- 
city. With regard to my lines — 

' Laugh all that weep,' &c. 

I would willingly sacrifice them ; but my 
portion of the volume is so ridiculously little, 
that, in honest truth, I can't spare them : as 
things are, I have very slight pretensions to 
participate in the title-page. White's book 
is at length reviewed in the Monthly ; was 
it your doing, or Dyer's, to whom I sent 4 
him ? — or, rather, do you not write in the 
Critical 1 — for I observed, in an article of 
this month's, a line quoted out of that sonnet 
on Mrs. Siddons, 

' With eager wondering, and perturb'd delight.' 

And a line from that sonnet would not readily 
have occurred to a stranger. That sonnet, 
Coleridge, brings afresh to my mind the time 

* This epitaph, wbich, notwithstanding Lamb's gentle 
banter, occupied an entire page in tbe book, is curious — 
" a miracle instead of wit " — for it is a common-place 
of Coleridge, who, investing ordinary things with a 
dreamy splendour, or weighing them down with accu- 
mulated thought, has rarely if ever written a stanza so 
smoothly vapid — so devoid of merit or offence — (unless 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



207 



when you wrote those on Bowles, Priestly, 
Burke ; — 'twas two Christmases ago, and in 
that nice little smoky room at the Salutation, 
which is ever now continually presenting 
itself to my recollection, with all its asso- 
ciated train of pipes, tobacco, egg-hot, welsh- 
rabbits, metaphysics, and poetry. — Are we 
never to meet again 1 How differently I am 
circumstanced now ! I have never met with 
any one — never shall meet with any one — 
who could or can compensate me for the loss 
of your society. I have no one to talk all 
these matters about to ; I lack friends, I 
lack books to supply their absence : but these 
complaints ill become me. Let me compare 
my present situation, prospects, and state of 
mind, with what they were but two .months 
back — but two months ! O my friend, I am 
in danger of forgetting the awful lessons then 
presented to me ! Eemind me of them ; 
remind me of my duty ! Talk seriously with 
me when you do write ! I thank you, from 
my heart I thank you, for your solicitude 
about my sister. She is quite well, but must 
not, I fear, come to live with us yet a good- 
while. In the first place, because, at present, 
it would hurt her, and hurt my father, for 
them to be together : secondly, from a regard 
to the world's good report, for, I fear, tongues 
will be busy whenever that event takes place. 
Some have hinted, one man has pressed it 
on me, that she should be in perpetual con- 
finement: what she hath done to deserve, 
or the necessity of such an hardship, I see 
not ; do you 1 I am starving at the India 
House, — near seven o'clock without my 
dinner, and so it has been, and will be, 
almost all the week. I get home at night 
o'erwearied, quite faint, and then to cards 
with my father, who will not let me enjoy 
a meal in peace ; but I must conform to my 
situation, and I hope I am, for the most part, 
not unthankful. 

" I am got home at last, and, after repeated 
games at cribbage, have got my father's 
leave to write awhile ; with difficulty got it, 
for when I expostulated about playing any 
more, he very aptly replied, ' If you won't 

it be an offence to make fade do duty as a verb active) 
as the following : — 

" Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade, 
Death came with friendly care ; 
The opening bud to Heaven convey'd, 
And bade it blossom there." 



play with me, you might as well not come 
home at all.' The argument was unanswer- 
able, and I set to afresh. I told you I do 
not approve of your omissions, neither do 
I quite coincide with you in your arrange- 
ments. I have not time to point out a better, 
and I suppose some self-associations of your 
own have determined their place as they 
now stand. Your beginning, indeed, with 
the 'Joan of Arc' lines I coincide entirely 
with. I love a splendid outset — a magnificent 
portico, — and the diapason is grand. When 
I read the ' Eeligious Musings,' I think how 
poor, how unelevated, unoriginal, my blank 
verse is — ' Laugh all that weep,' especially, 
where the subject demanded a grandeur of 
conception ; and I ask what business they 
have among yours ? but friendship covereth 
a multitude of defects. I want some loppings 
made in the ' Chatterton ; ' it wants but a 
little to make it rank among the finest 
irregular lyrics I ever read. Have you time 
and inclination to go to work upon it — or is 
it too late — or do you think it needs none ? 
Don't reject those verses in one of your 
Watchmen, ' Dear native brook,' &c. ; nor I 
think those last lines you sent me, in which 
' all effortless ' is without doubt to be pre- 
ferred to ' inactive.' If I am writing more 
than ordinarily dully, 'tis that I am stupified 
with a tooth-ache. Hang it ! do not omit 
48, 52, and 53 : what you do retain, though, 
call sonnets, for heaven's sake, and not 
effusions. Spite of your ingenious anticipa- 
tion of ridicule in your preface, the five last 
lines of 50 are too good to be lost, the rest 
is not much worth. My tooth becomes 
importunate — I must finish. Pray, "pray, 
write to me : if you knew with what an 
anxiety of joy I open such a long packet as 
you last sent me, you would not grudge 
giving a few minutes now and then to this 
intercourse (the only intercourse I fear we 
two shall ever have) — this conversation with 
your friend — such I boast to be called. God 
love you and yours ! Write me when you 
move, lest I direct wrong. Has Sara no 
poems to publish ? Those lines, 129, are 
probably too light for the volume where the 
'Eeligious Musings' are, but I remember 
some very beautiful lines, addressed by some- 
body at Bristol to somebody in London. 
God bless you once more. Thursday-night. 

" C. Lamb." 



208 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



In another letter, about this time (De- 
cember, 1796), Lamb transmitted to Cole- 
ridge two Poems for the volume — one a 
copy of verses " To a Young Lady going out 
to India," which were not inserted, and are 
not worthy of preservation ; the other, en- 
titled, " The Tomb of Douglas," which was 
inserted, and which he chiefly valued as a 
memorial of his impression of Mrs. Siddons' 
acting in Lady Eandolph. The following 
passage closes the sheet. 

" At length I have done with verse- 
making ; not that I relish other people's 
poetry less ; their's comes from 'em without 
effort, mine is the difficult operation of a 
brain scanty of ideas, made more difficult by 
disuse. I have been reading 'The Task' 
with fresh delight. I am glad you love 
Cowper : I could forgive a man for not en- 
joying Milton, but I would not call that man 
my friend who should be offended with the 
' divine chit-chat of Cowper.' Write to me. 
God love you and yours. C. L." 



The following, of 10th December, 1796, 
illustrates Lamb's almost wayward admira- 
tion of his only friend, and a feeling — how 
temporary with him ! — of vexation with the 
imperfect sympathies of his elder brother. 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

" You sent me some very sweet lines rela- 
tive to Burns, but it was at a time when in 
my highly agitated and perhaps distorted 
state of mind, I thought it a duty to read 'em 
hastily and burn 'em. I burned all my own 
verses ; all my book of extracts from Beau- 
mont and Fletcher and a thousand sources : 
I burned a little journal of my foolish pas- 
sion which I had a long time kept — 

' Noting ere they past away 
The little lines of yesterday.' 

I almost burned all your letters, — I did as bad, 
I lent 'em to a friend to keep out of my brother's 
sight, should he come and make inquisition 
into our papers, for much as he dwelt upon 
your conversation, while you were among us, 
and delighted to be with you, it has been his 
fashion ever since to depreciate and cry you 
down, — you were the cause of my madness — 
you and your damned foolish sensibility and 
melancholy — and he lamented with a true 



brotherly feeling that we ever met, even as 
the sober citizen, when his son went astray 
upon the mountains of Parnassus, is said to 
have ' cursed wit and Poetry and Pope.' I 
quote wrong, but no matter. These letters 
I lent to a friend to be out of the way, for 
a season, but I have claimed them in vain, 
and shall not cease to regret their loss. Your 
packets, posterior to the date of my misfor- 
tunes, commencing with that valuable conso- 
latory epistle, are every day accumulating — 
they are sacred things with me." 



The following long letter, bearing date on 
the outside, 5th January, 1797, is addressed to 
Mr. Coleridge at Stowey, near Bridgewater, 
whither he had removed from Bristol, to 
enjoy the society and protection of his friend 
Mr. Poole. The original is a curious speci- 
men of clear compressed penmanship ; being 
contained in three sides of a sheet of fools- 
cap. 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

" Sunday morning. — You cannot surely 
mean to degrade the Joan of Arc into a pot- 
girl. You are not going, I hope, to annex 
to that most splendid ornament of Southey's 
poem all this cock-and-a-bull story of Joan, 
the publican's daughter of Neufchatel, with 
the lamentable episode of a waggoner, his 
wife, and six children. The texture will be 
most lamentably disproportionate. The first 
forty or fifty lines of these addenda are, no 
doubt, in their way, admirable, too ; but 
many would prefer the Joan of Southey. 

' On mightiest deeds to brood 
Of shadowy vastness, such as made my heart 
Throb fast ; anon I paused, and in a state 
Of half expectance listened to the wind ; ' 

' They wondered at me, who had known me once 
A cheerful careless damsel ; ' 

' The eye, 

That of the circling throng and of the visible 

world 
Unseeing, saw the shapes of holy phantasy ; ' 

I see nothing in your description of the Maid 
equal to these. There is a fine originality 
certainly in those lines — 

1 For she had lived in this bad world 
As in a place of tombs, 
And touched not the pollutions of the dead ; ' 

but your ' fierce vivacity ' is a faint copy of 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



209 



the 'fierce and terrible benevolence' of 
Southey ; added to this, that it will look like 
rivalship in you, and extort a comparison 
with Southey, — I think to your disadvantage. 
And the lines, considered in themselves as an 
addition to what you had before written, 
(strains of a far higher mood,) are but such 
as Madame Fancy loves in some of her more 
familiar, moods, at such times as she has met 
Noll Goldsmith, and walked and talked with 
him, calling him ' old acquaintance.' Southey 
certainly has no pretensions to vie with you 
in the sublime of poetry ; but he tells a plain 
tale better than you. I will enumerate some 
woful blemishes, some of 'em sad deviations 
from that simplicity which was your aim. 
'Hailed who might be near' (the '.canvas- 
coverture moving,' by the by, is laughable) ; 
' a woman and six children ' (by the way, — 
why not nine children 1 It would have been 
just half as pathetic again) : ' statues of sleep 
they seemed ' : ' frost-mangled wretch ' : 
' green putridity ' : ' hailed him immortal ' 
(rather ludicrous again) : ' voiced a sad and 
simple tale ' (abominable !) : 'improvendered' : 
' such his tale ' : 'Ah ! suffering to the height 
of what was suffered ' (a most insufferable 
line) : ' amazements of affright ' : ' the hot 
sore brain attributes its own hues of ghastli- 
ness and torture ' (what shocking confusion 
of ideas) ! 

"In these delineations of common and 
natural feelings, in the familiar walks of 
poetry, you seem to resemble Montauban 
dancing with Roubigne's tenants, ' much of 
his native loftiness remained in the execution? 

" I was reading your ' Religious Musings ' 
the other day, and sincerely I think it the 
noblest poem in the language, next after the 
' Paradise Lost,' and even that was not made 
the vehicle of such grand truths. ' There is 
one mind,' &c, down to ' Almighty's throne,' 
are without a rival in the whole compass of 
my poetical reading. 

' Stands in the sun, and with no partial gaze, 
Views all creation.' 

I wish I could have written those lines. I 
rejoice that I am able to relish them. The 
loftier walks of Pindus are your proper 
region. There you have no compeer in 
modern times. Leave the lowlands, unenvied, 
in possession of such men as Cowper and 
Southey. Thus am I pouring balsam into 



the wounds I may have becm inflicting on 
my poor friend's vanity. 

"In your notice of Southey's new volume 
you omit to mention the most pleasing of all, 
the 'Miniature' — 

1 There were 
Who formed high hopes and flattering ones of thee, 
Young Robert ! ' 

' Spirit of Spenser ! — was the wanderer wrong ? ' 

" Fairfax I have been in quest of a long 
time. Johnson, in his ' Life of Waller,' gives 
a most delicious specimen of him, and adds, 
in the true manner of that delicate critic, as 
well as amiable man, ' It may be presumed 
that this old version will not be much read 
after the elegant translation of my friend, 
Mr. Hoole.' I endeavoured — I wished to 
gain some idea of Tasso from this Mr. Hoole, 
the great boast and ornament of the India 
House, but soon desisted. I found him more 
vapid than smallest small beer ' sun- 
vinegared.' Your 'Dream,' down to that 
exquisite line — 

' I can't tell half his adventures,' 

is a most happy resemblance of Chaucer. 
The remainder is so so. The best line, I 
think, is, ' He belong'd, I believe, to the witch 
Melancholy.' By the way, when will our 
volume come out 1 Don't delay it till you 
have written a new Joan of Arc. Send 
what letters you please by me, and in any 
way you choose, single or double. The India 
Company is better adapted to answer the 
cost than the generality of my friend's cor- 
respondents — such poor and honest dogs as 
John Thelwall, particularly. I cannot say I 
know Colson, at least intimately ; I once 
supped with him and Allen ; I think his 
manners very pleasing. I will not tell you 
what I think of Lloyd, for he may by chance 
come to see this letter, and that thought 
puts a restraint on me. I cannot think what 
subject would suit your epic genius ; some 
philosophical subject, I conjecture, in which 
shall be blended the sublime of poetry and 
of science. Your proposed ' Hymns ' will be 
a fit preparatory study wherewith ' to dis- 
cipline your young noviciate soul.' I grow 
dull ; I'll go walk myself out of my 
dulness. 

" Sunday night. — You and Sara are very 
good to think so kindly and so favourably of 



210 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



poor Mary ; I would to God all did so too. 
But I very much fear she must not think of 
coming home in my father's lifetime. It is 
very hard upon her ; but our circumstances 
are peculiar, and we must submit to them. 
God be praised she is so well as she is. She 
bears her situation as one who has no right 
to complain. My poor old aunt, whom you 
have seen, the kindest, goodest creature to 
me when I was at school ; who used to 
toddle there to bring me good things, when I, 
school-boy like, only despised her for it, and 
used to be ashamed to see her come and sit 
herself down on the old coal-hole steps as you 
went into the old grammar-school, and open 
her apron, and bring out her bason, with 
some nice thing she had caused to be saved 
for me ; the good old creature is now lying 
on her death-bed. I cannot bear to think 
on her deplorable state. To the shock she 
received on that our evil day, from which 
she never completely recovered, I impute 
her illness. She says, poor thing, she is glad 
she is come home to die with me. I was 
always her favourite : 

' No after friendship e'er can raise 
The endearments of our early days ; 
Nor e'er the heart such fondness prove, 
As when it first began to love.' 

" Lloyd has kindly left me, for a keep-sake, 
' John Woolman.' You have read it, he says, 
and like it. Will you excuse one short ex- 
tract ? I think it could not have escaped 
you. — ' Small treasure to a resigned mind is 
sufficient. How happy is it to be content 
with a little, to live in humility, and feel that 
in us, which breathes out this language — 

A bba ! Father ! ' I am almost ashamed 

to patch up a letter in this miscellaneous sort 
— but I please myself in the thought, that 
anything from me will be acceptable to you. 
I am rather impatient, childishly so, to see 
our names affixed to the same common 
volume. Send me two, when it does come 
out ; two will be enough — or indeed one — 
but two better. I have a dim recollection 
that, when in town, you were talking of the 
Origin of Evil as a most prolific subject for a 
long poem ; — why not adopt it, Coleridge % 
— there would be room for imagination. Or 
the description (from a Vision or Dream, 
suppose) of an Utopia in one of the planets 
(the moon for instance.) Or a Five Days' 
Dream, which shall illustrate, in sensible 



imagery, Hartley's five Motives to Conduct : 
— 1. Sensation ; 2. Imagination ; 3. Ambi- 
tion ; 4. Sympathy ; 5. Theopathy : — First. 
Banquets, music, &c, effeminacy, — and their 
insufficiency. Second. - Beds of hyacinth and 
roses, where young Adonis oft reposes ; ' 
' Fortunate Isles ; ' ' The pagan Elysium,' 
&c. ; poetical pictures ; antiquity as pleasing 
to the fancy ; — their emptiness ; madness, 
&c. Third. Warriors, Poets ; some famous 
yet, more forgotten ; their fame or oblivion 
now alike indifferent ; pride, vanity, &c. 
Fourth. All manner of pitiable stories, in 
Spenser-like verse ; love ; friendship, rela- 
tionship, &c. Fifth. Hermits ; Christ and 
his apostles ; martyrs ; heaven, &c. An 
imagination like yours, from these scanty 
hints, may expand into a thousand great 
ideas, if indeed you at all comprehend my 
scheme, which I scarce do myself. 

"Monday morn. — ' A London letter — Nine- 
pence half-penny ! ' Look you, master poet, 
I have remorse as well as another man, and 
my bowels can sound upon occasion. But I 
must put you to this charge, for I cannot 
keep back my protest, however ineffectual, 
against the annexing your latter lines to 
those former — this putting of new wine into 
old bottles. This my duty done, I will cease 
from writing till you invent some more 
reasonable mode of conveyance. Well may 
the ' ragged followers of the Nine ! ' set up 
for flocci-nauci-what-do-you-call-'em-ists ! and 
I do not wonder that in their splendid visions 
of Utopias in America, they protest against 
the admission of those 3/^ow-complexioned, 
I copper-coloured, white-livered gentlemen, who 
never prove themselves their friends ! Don't 
you think your verses on a ' Young Ass ' 
too trivial a companion for the ' Eeligious 
; Musings 1 ' — ' scoundrel monarch,' alter that ; 
; and the ' Man of Boss ' is scarce admissible, 
! as it now stands, curtailed of its fairer half : 
reclaim its property from the ' Chatterton,' 
which it does but encumber, and it will be 
' a rich little poem. I hope you expunge 
' great part of the old notes in the new edi- 
tion : that, in particular, most barefaced, 
unfounded, impudent assertion, that Mr. 
Kogers is indebted for his story to Loch 
Lomond, a poem by Bruce ! I have read 
I the latter. I scarce think you have. Scarce 
anything is common to them both. The 
author of the 'Pleasures of Memory' was 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



211 



somewhat hurt, Dyer says, by the accusation 
of unoriginality. He never saw the poem. 
I long to read your poem on Burns — I retain 
so indistinct a memory of it. In what shape 
and how does it come into public ? As you 
leave off writing poetry till you finish your 
Hymns, I suppose you print, now, all you 
have got by you. You have scarce enough 
unprinted to make a second volume with 
Lloyd 1 Tell me all about it. What is 
become of Cowper ? Lloyd told me of some 
verses on his mother. If you have them by 
you, pray send 'em me. I do so love him ! 
Never mind their merit. May be / may 
like 'em, as your taste and mine do not 
always exactly identify. Yours, 

" C. Lamb." 



Soon after the date of this letter, death 
released the father from his state of imbe- 
cility and the son from his wearisome duties. 
With his life, the annuity he had derived 
from the old bencher he had served so faith- 
fully, ceased ; while the aunt continued to 
linger still with Lamb in his cheerless 
lodging. His sister still remained in con- 
finement in the asylum to which she had 
been consigned on her mother's death — per- 
fectly sensible and calm, — and he was pas- 
sionately desirous of obtaining her liberty. 
The surviving members of the family, espe- 
cially his brother John, who enjoyed a fair 
income in the South Sea House, opposed her 
discharge ; — and painful doubts were sug- 
gested by the authorities of the parish, where 
the terrible occurrence happened, whether 
they were not bound to institute proceedings, 
which must have placed her for life at the 
disposition of the Crown, especially as no 
medical assurance could be given against the 
probable recurrence of dangerous frenzy. 
But Charles came to her deliverance ; he 
satisfied all the parties who had power to 
oppose her release, by his solemn engagement 
that he would take her under his care for 
life ; and he kept his word. Whether any 
communication with the Home Secretary 
occurred before her release, I have been 
unable to ascertain ; it was the impression 
of Mr. Lloyd, from whom my own knowledge 
of the circumstances, which the letters do 
not ascertain, was derived, that a communi- 
cation took place, on which a similar pledge 



was given ; at all events, the result was, that 
she left the asylum and took up her abode 
for life with her brother Charles. For her 
sake, at the same time, he abandoned all 
thoughts of love and marriage ; and with an 
income of scarcely more than 100?. a-year, 
derived from his clerkship, aided for a little 
while by the old aunt's small annuity, set 
out on the journey of life at twenty-two 
years of age, cheerfully, with his beloved 
companion, endeared to him the more by her 
strange calamity, and the constant appre- 
hension of a recurrence of the malady which 
had caused it ! 



CHAPTEE III. 

LETTERS TO COLERIDGE AND MANNING IX I.AMIi's FIRST 
YEARS OF LIFE "WITH HIS SISTER. 

[1797 to 1800.] 

The anxieties of Lamb's new position were 
assuaged during the spring of 1797, by fre- 
quent communications with Coleridge re- 
specting the anticipated volume, and by some 
additions to his own share in its pages. He 
I was also cheered by the company of Lloyd, 
who, having resided for a few months with 
I Coleridge, at Stowey, came to London in 
' some perplexity as to his future course. Of 
j this visit Lamb speaks in the following letter, 
probably written in January. It contains 
some verses expressive of his delight at 
; Lloyd's visit, which, although afterwards 
inserted in the volume, are so well fitted to 
their frame-work of prose, and so indicative 
of the feelings of the writer at this crisis of 
his life, that I may be excused for presenting 
them with the context. 



TO MR. COLERIDGE. 



1797 



"Dear Col, — You have learned by this 
time, with surprise, no doubt, that Lloyd is 
with me in town. The emotions I felt on his 
coming so unlooked-for, are not ill expressed 
in what follows, and what, if you do not 
object to them as too personal, and to the 
world obscure, or otherwise wanting in 
worth, I should wish to make a part of 
our little volume. I shall be sorry if that 
volume comes out, as it necessarily must do, 



r 2 



212 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



unless you print those very schoolboy-ish 
verses I sent you on not getting leave to 
come down to Bristol last summer. I say I 
shall be sorry that I have addressed you in 
nothing which can appear in our joint 
volume ; so frequently, so habitually, as you 
dwell in my thoughts, 'tis some wonder those 
thoughts came never yet in contact with a 
poetical mood. But you dwell in my heart 
of hearts, and I love you in all the naked 
honesty of prose. God bless you, and all 
your little domestic circle — my tenderest 
remembrances to your beloved Sara, and a 
smile and a kiss from me to your dear dear 
little David Hartley. The verses I refer to 
above, slightly amended, I have sent (for- 
getting to ask your leave, tho' indeed I gave 
them only your initials), to the Monthly 
Magazine, where they may possibly appear 
next month, and where I hope to recognise 
your poem on Burns. 



CHARLES LLOYD, AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR. 

Alone, obscure, without a friend, 

A cheerless, solitary thing, 
Why seeks my Lloyd the stranger out ? 

What offering can the stranger bring 

Of social scenes, home-bred delights, 
That him in aught compensate may 

For Stowey's pleasant -winter nights, 
For loves and friendships far away, 

In brief oblivion to forego 

Friends, such as thine, so justly dear, 
And be awhile with me content 

To stay, a kindly loiterer, here ? 

For this a gleam of random joy 

Hath flush'd my unaccustom'd cheek ; 

And, with an o'er-eharged bursting heart, 
I feel the thanks, I cannot speak. 

O ! sweet are all the Muse's lays, 

And sweet the charm of matin bird — 

'Twas long, since these estranged ears 
The sweeter voice of friend had heard. 

The voice hath spoke : the pleasant sounds 

In memory's ear, in after time 
Shall live, to sometimes rouse a tear, 

And sometimes prompt an honest rhyme. 

For when the transient charm is fled, 

And when the little week is o'er, 
To cheerless, friendless solitude 

When I return, as heretofore — 

Long, long, within my aching heart 
The grateful sense shall cherish'd be ; 

I'll think less meanly of myself, 

That Lloyd will sometimes think on me. 

" O Coleridge, would to God you were in 
London with us, or we two at Stowey with 



you all. Lloyd takes up his abode at the 
Bidl and Mouth Inn ; the Cat and Salutation 
would have had a charm more forcible for 
me. nodes coenceque Beam / Anglice — 
Welch rabbits, punch, and poesy. Should 
you be induced to publish those very school- 
boy-ish verses, print 'em as they will occur, 
if at all, in the Monthly Magazine ; yet I 
should feel ashamed that to you I wrote 
nothing better : but they are too personal, 
and almost trifling and obscure withal. 
Some lines of mine to Cowper were in last 
Monthly Magazine ; they have not body of 
thought enough to plead for the retaining of 
'em. My sister's kind love to you all. 

" C. Lamb." 



It would seem, from the following frag- 
ment of a letter of 7th April, 1797, that 
Lamb, at first, took a small lodging for his 
sister apart from his own — but soon to be 
for life united. 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

" By the way, Lloyd may have told you 
about my sister. I told him. If not, I have 
taken her out of her confinement, and taken 
a room for her at Hackney, and spend my 
Sundays, holidays, &c. with her. She boards 
herself. In one little half year's illness, and 
in such an illness of such a nature and of 
such consequences ! to get her out into the 
world again, with a prospect of her never 
being so ill again — this is to be ranked not 
among the common blessings of Providence." 



The next letter to Coleridge begins with a 
transcript of Lamb's Poem, entitled "A 
Vision of Eepentance," which was inserted 
in the Addenda to the volume, and is pre- 
served among his collected poems, and thus 
proceeds : 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

" April 15th, 1797. 

" The above you will please to print imme- 
diately before the blank verse fragments. 
Tell me if you like it. I fear the latter half 
is unequal to the former, in parts of which 
I think you will discover a delicacy of 
pencilling not quite un-Spenser-like. The 
latter half aims at the measure, but has 
failed to attain the poetry of Milton in his 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



213 



' Comus,' and Fletcher in that exquisite 
thing ycleped the 'Faithful Shepherdess,' 
where they both use eight-syllable lines. 
But this latter half was finished in great 
haste, and as a task, not from that impulse 
which affects the name of inspiration. 

"By the way, I have lit upon Fairfax's 
'Godfrey of Bullen,' for half-a-crown. Re- 
joice with me. 

" Poor dear Lloyd ! I had a letter from 
him yesterday ; his state of mind is truly 
alarming. He has, by his own confession, 
kept a letter of mine unopened three weeks, 
afraid, he says, to open it, lest I should speak 
upbraidingly to him ; and yet this very 
letter of mine was in answer to one, wherein 
he informed me that an alarming illness had 
alone prevented him from writing. You will 
pray with me, I know, for his recovery, for 
surely, Coleridge, an exquisiteness of feeling 
like this must border on derangement. But 
I love him more and more, and will not give 
up the hope of his speedy recovery, as he 
tells me he is under Dr. Darwin's regimen.* 

" God bless us all, and shield us from in- 
sanity, which is ' the sorest malady of all.' 

" My kind love to your wife and child. 

" C. Lamb. 

" Pray write now," 



As summer advanced, Lamb discerned a 
hope of compensation for the disappointment 
of last year, by a visit to Coleridge, and thus 
expressed his wishes. 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

" I discern a possibility of my paying you 
a visit next week. May I, can I, shall I, 
come as soon 1 Have you room for me, 
leisure for me, and are you all pretty well 1 
Tell me all this honestly — immediately. And 
by what ^ay-coach could I come soonest and 
nearest to Stowey ? A few months hence 
may suit you better ; certainly me, as well. 

* Poor Charles Lloyd! These apprehensions were 
sadly realised. Delusions of the most melancholy kind 
thickened over his latter days — yet left his admirable 
intellect free for the finest processes of severe reasoning. 
At a time when, like Cowper, he believed himself the 
especial subject of Divine wrath, he could bear his part 
in the most subtle disquisition on questions of religion, 
morals, and poetry, with the nicest accuracy of percep- 
tion and the most exemplary candour ; and, after an 
argument of hours, revert, with a faint smile, to his 
own despair ! 



If so, say so. I long, I yearn, with all the 
longings of a child do I desire to see you, to 
come among you — to see the young philo- 
sopher, to thank Sara for her last year's 
invitation in person — to read your tragedy 
— to read over together our little book — to 
breathe fresh air — to revive in me vivid 
images of ' Salutation scenery.' There is a 
sort of sacrilege in my letting such ideas slip 
out of my mind and memory. Still that 

R remaineth — a thorn in the side of 

Hope, when she would lean towards Stowey. 
Here I will leave off, for I dislike to fill up 
this paper, which involves a question so con- 
nected with my heart and soul, with meaner 
matter or subjects to me less interesting. 
I can talk, as I can think, nothing else. 
Thursday. C. Lamb." 



The visit was enjoyed ; the book was 
published ; and Lamb was once more left to 
the daily labours of the India House and the 
unceasing anxieties of his home. His feelings, 
on the recurrence of the season, which had, 
last year, been darkened by his terrible 
calamity, will be understood from the first 
of two pieces of blank verse, which fill the 
two first sheets of a letter to Coleridge, 
written under an apprehension of some 
neglect on the part of his friend, which had 
its cause in no estrangement of Coleridge's 
affections, but in the vicissitudes of the 
imaginative philosopher's fortune and the 
constancy of his day-dreamings. 



WRITTEN A TWELVEMONTH AFTER THE 
EVENTS. 

[Friday next, Coleridge, is the day on which my mother 
died.] 

Alas ! how am I chang'd ! where be the tears, 

The sobs, and fore'd suspensions of the breath, 

And all the dull desertions of the heart 

With which I hung o'er my dear mother's corse ? 

Where be the blest subsidings of the storm 

Within ; the sweet resignedness of hope 

Drawn heavenward, and strength of filial love, 

In which I bow'd me to my Father's -will ? 

My God and my Redeemer, keep not thou 

My heart in brute and sensual thanklessness 

Seal'd up, oblivious ever of that dear grace, 

And health restor'd to my long-loved friend. 

Long lov'd, and worthy known ! Thou didst not keep 

Her soul in death. O keep not now, my Lord, 

Thy servants in far worse — in spiritual death 

And darkness — blacker than those feared shadows 

O' the valley all must tread. Lend us thy balms, 

Thou dear Physician of the sin-sick soul, 

And heal our cleansed bosoms of the wounds 

With which the world hath piere'd us thro' and thro' : 



214 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



Give us new flesh, new birth ; Elect of heaven 
May we become, in thine election sure 
Contain'd, and to one purpose stedfast drawn — 
Our souls' salvation. 

Thou and I, dear friend, 
"With filial recognition sweet, shall know 
One day the face of our dear mother in heaven, 
And her remember'd looks of love shall greet 
With answering looks of love, her placid smiles 
Meet with a smile as placid, and her hand 
With drops of fondness wet, nor fear repulse.* 

Be witness for me, Lord, I do not ask 
Those days of vanity to return again, 
(Nor fitting me to ask, nor thee to give) , 
Vain loves, and " wanderings with a fair-hair'd maid :" 
(Child of the dust as I am,) who so long 
My foolish heart steep'd in idolatry, 
And creature-loves. Forgive it,» O my Maker ! 
If in a mood of grief, I sin almost 
In sometimes brooding on the days long past, 
(And from the grave of time wishing them back,) 
Days of a mother's fondness to her child — 
Her little one ! Oh, where be now those sports 
And infant play-games 1 Where the joyous troops 
Of children, and the haunts I did so love 1 

my companions ! O ye loved names 

Of friend, or playmate dear, gone are ye now. 
Gone divers ways ; to honour and credit some ; 
And some, I fear, to ignominy and shame ! | 

1 only am left, with unavailing grief 

One parent dead to mourn, and see one live 
Of all life's joys bereft, and desolate : 
Am left, with a few friends, and one above 
The rest, found faithful in a length of years, 
Contented as I may, to bear me on, 
T' the not unpeaceful evening of a day 
Made black by morning storms. 

" The following I wrote when I had re- ! 
turned from C. Lloyd, leaving him behind at 
Burton, with Southey. To understand some 
of it, you must remember that at tha,t time 
he was very much perplexed in mind. 

A stranger, and alone, I past those scenes 

We past so late together ; and my heart 

Felt something like desertion, as I look'd 

Around me, and the pleasant voice of friend 

Was absent, and the cordial look was there 

No more, to smile on me. I thought on Lloyd — 

All he had been to me ! And now I go 

Again to mingle with a world impure ; 

With men who make a mock of holy things, 

Mistaken, and of man's best hope think scorn. 

The world does much to warp the heart of man ; 

And I may sometimes join its idiot laugh : 

Of this I now complain not. Deal with me, 

Omniscient Father, as thou judgest best, 

And in thy season soften thou my heart. 

I pray not for myself : I pray for him 

Whose soul is sore perplexed. Shine thou on him, 

Father of lights ! and in the difficult paths 

Make plain his way before him : his own thoiights 

May he not think — his own ends not pursue — 

So shall he best perform thy will on earth. 

Greatest and Best, Thy will be ever ours ! 



* [Note in the margin of MS.] " This is almost 
literal from a letter of my sister's — less than a year 
ago." 

t [Note in the margin of MS.] " Alluding to some 
of my old play-fellows being, literally, 'on the town,' 
and some otherwise wretched." 



" The former of these poems I wrote with 
unusual celerity t'other morning at office. 
I expect you to like it better than anything 
of mine ; Lloyd does, and I do myself. 

" You use Lloyd very ill, never writing to 
him. I tell you again that his is not a mind 
with which you should play tricks. He 
deserves more tenderness from you. 

" For myself, I must spoil a little passage 
of Beaumont and Fletcher to adapt it to my 
feelings : — 

' I am prouder 
That I was once your friend, tho' now forgot, 
Than to have had another true to me.' 

If you don't write to me now, as I told 
Lloyd, I shall get angry, and call you hard 
names — Manchineel and I don't know what 
else. I wish you would send me my great- 
coat. The snow and the rain season is at 
hand, and I have but a wretched old coat, 
once my father's, to keep 'em off, and that is 
transitory. 

' When time drives flocks from field to fold, 
When ways grow foul and blood gets cold,' 

I shall remember where I left my coat. 
Meet emblem wilt thou be, old Winter, of a 
friend's neglect — cold, cold, cold ! 

" C. Lamb." 



The following lines, which Lamb trans- 
mitted to his new friend Southey, bespeak 
the remarkable serenity with which, when 
the first shock was over and the duties 
of life-long love arranged, Lamb was able 
to contemplate the victim of his sister's 
frenzy : * 

Thou should'st have longer lived, and to the grave 
Have peacefully gone down in full old age ; 
Thy children would have tended thy gray hairs. 
We might have sat, as we have often done, 
By our fire-side, and talk'd whole nights away, 
Old time, old friends, and old events recalling, 
With many a circumstance of trivial note, 
To memory dear, and of importance grown. 
How shall we tell them in a stranger's ear ! 

A wayward son oft-times was I to thee 
And yet, in all our little bickerings, 



* These lines are now first introduced in this Edition ; 
— becoming known to the Editor by their publication in 
the first volume of " Southey's Life and Correspondence," 
p. 325, where they appear in a letter from Southey to 
Mr. Wynn. The Biographer courteously adds, that they 
would have been sent to the Editor, but that they were 
not observed till after the publication of the First Edition 
of these Memorials. 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



215 



Domestic jars, there was I know not what 

Of tender feeling that were ill exchang'd 

For this world's chilling friendships, and their smiles 

Familiar, whom the heart calls strangers still. 

A heavy lot hath he, most wretched man, 

Who lives the last of all his family ! 

He looks around him, and his eye discerns 

The face of the stranger ; and his heart is sick. 

Man of the world, what can'st thou do for him .' 

Wealth is a hurthen which he could not hear ; 

Mirth a strange crime, the which he dares not act ; 

And generous wines no cordial to his soul. 

For wounds like his, Christ is the only cure. 

Go ! preach thou to him of a world to come, 

Where friends shall meet and know each other's face ! 

Say less than this, and say it to the winds. 



An addition to Lamb's household-cares is 
thus mentioned in a letter 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

" December 10th, 1797. 
" In truth, Coleridge, I am perplexed, and 
at times almost cast down. I am beset with 
perplexities. The old hag of a wealthy rela- 
tion, who took my aunt off our hands in the 
beginning of trouble, has found out that she 
is 'indolent and mulish,' I quote her own 
words, and that her attachment to us is so 
strong that she caai never be happy apart. 
The lady, with delicate irony, remarks, that 
if I am not an hypocrite, I shall rejoice to 
receive her again ; and that it will be a 
means of making me more fond of home to 
have so dear a friend to come home to ! The 
fact is, she is jealous of my aunt's bestowing 
any kind recollections on us, while she enjoys 
the patronage of her roof. She says she 
finds it inconsistent with her own ' ease and 
tranquillity,' to keep her any longer ; and, 
in fine, summons me to fetch her home. 
Now, much as I should rejoice to transplant 
the poor old creature from the chilling air 
of such patronage, yet I know how straitened 
we are already, how unable already to answer 
any demand which sickness or any extra- 
ordinary expense may make. I know this, 
and all unused as I am to struggle with per- 
plexities, I am somewhat nonplussed, to say 
no worse. This prevents me from a thorough 
relish of what Lloyd's kindness and your's 
have furnished me with. I thank you though 
from my heart, and feel myself not quite 
alone in the earth." 



In 1798, Coleridge seemed to attain a 
settled home by accepting an invitation to 



become the minister of a Unitarian congre- 
gation at Shrewsbury ; a hope of short 
duration. The following letter was addressed 
by Lamb to him at this time as " S. T. Cole- 
ridge " — as if the Mr. were dropped and the 
" Reverend " not quite adopted — " at the 
Reverend A. Rowe's, Shrewsbury, Shrop- 
shire." The tables are turned here ; — Lamb, 
instead of accusing Coleridge of neglect, 
takes the charge to himself, in deep humility 
of spirit, and regards the effect of Miss 
Lamb's renewed illnesses on his mind us 
inducing indifference, with an affecting self- 
jealousy. 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

" January 28th, 1798. 

'•'You have writ me many kind letters, 
and I have answered none of them. I don't 
deserve your attentions. An unnatural in- 
difference has been creeping on me since my 
last misfortunes, or I should have seized the 
first opening of a correspondence with you. 
To you I owe much, under God. In my 
brief acquaintance with you in London, your 
conversations won me to the better cause, 
and rescued me from the polluting spirit of 
the world. I might have been a worthless 
character without you ; as it is, I do possess 
a certain improvable portion of devotional 
feelings, tho' when I view myself in the light 
of divine truth, and not according to the 
common measures of human judgment, I am 
altogether corrupt and sinful. This is no 
cant. I am very sincere. 

"These last afflictions, Coleridge, have 
failed to soften and bend my will. They 
found me unprepared. My former calamities 
produced in me a spirit of humility and a 
spirit of prayer. I thought they had suffi- 
ciently disciplined me ; but the event ought 
to humble me ; if God's judgments now fail 
to take away from me the heart of stone, 
what more grievous trials ought I not to 
expect ? I have been very querulous, im- 
patient under the rod — full of little jealousies 
and heart burnings. — I had well nigh quar- 
relled with Charles Lloyd — and for no other 
reason, I believe, than that the good creature 
did all he could to make me happy. The 
truth is, I thought he tried to force my mind 
from its natural and proper bent ; he con- 
tinually wished me to be from home, he was 
drawing me from the consideration of my 



216 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE AND SOUTHEY. 



poor dear Mary's situation, rather than 
assisting me to gain a proper view of it with 
religious consolations. I wanted to be left 
to the tendency of my own mind, in a solitary 
state, which, in times past, I knew had led 
to quietness and a patient bearing of the 
yoke. He was hurt that I was not more 
constantly with him, but he was living with 
White, a man to whom I had never been 
accustomed to impart my dearest feelings, 
tho' from long habits of friendliness, and 
many a social and good quality, I loved him 
very much. I met company there sometimes 
— indiscriminate company. Any society 
almost, when I am in affliction, is sorely 
painful to me. I seem to breathe more freely, 
to think more collectedly, to feel more pro- 
perly and calmly, when alone. All these 
things the good creature did with the kindest 
intentions in the world, but they produced in 
me nothing but soreness and discontent. I 
became, as he complained, ' jaundiced ' to- 
wards him . . . but he has forgiven me — and 
his smile, I hope, will draw all such humours 
from me. I am recovering, God be praised 
for it, a healthiness of mind, something like 
calmness — but I want more religion — I am 
jealous of human helps and leaning-places. 
I rejoice in your good fortunes. May God 
at the last settle you ! — You have had many 
and painful trials ; humanly speaking they 
are going to end ; but we should rather pray 
that discipline may attend us thro' the whole 

of our lives A careless and a dissolute 

spirit has advanced upon me with large 
strides — pray God that my present afflictions 
may be sanctified to me ! Mary is recovering ; 
but I see no opening yet of a situation for 
her ; your invitation went to my very heart, 
but you have a power of exciting interest, of 
leading all hearts captive, too forcible to 
admit of Mary's being with you. I consider 
her as perpetually on the brink of madness. 
I think, you would almost make her dance 
within an inch of the precipice ; she must be 
with duller fancies, and cooler intellects. 
I know a young man of this description, who 
has suited her these twenty years, and may 
live to do so still, if we are one clay restored 
to each other. In answer to your suggestions 
of occupation for me, I must say that I do 
not think my capacity altogether suited for 

disquisitions of that kind I have read 

little, I have a very weak memory, and 



retain little of what I read ; am unused to 
compositions in which any methodising is 
required ; but I thank you sincerely for the 
hint, and shall receive it as far as I am able, 
that is, endeavour to engage my mind in 
some constant and innocent pursuit. I know 
my capacities better than you do. 

" Accept my kindest love, and believe me 
yours, as ever. C. L." 



At this time, the only literary man whom 
Lamb knew in London was George Dyer, 
who had been noted as an accomplished 
scholar, in Lamb's early childhood, at Christ's 
Hospital. For him Lamb cherished all the 
esteem that his guileless simplicity of charac- 
ter and gentleness of nature could inspire ; 
in these qualities the friends were akin ; but 
no two men could be more opposite than 
they were to each other, in intellectual quali- 
fications and tastes — Lamb, in all things 
original, and rejoicing in the quaint, the 
strange, the extravagant ; Dyer, the quint- 
essence of learned commonplace ; Lamb 
wildly catching the most evanescent spirit of 
wit and poetry ; Dyer, the wondering dis- 
ciple of their established forms. Dyer offi- 
ciated as a revering High Priest at the 
Altar of the Muses — such as they were in 
the staid, antiquated trim of the closing years 
of the eighteenth century, before they formed 
sentimental attachments in Germany, or 
flirted with revolutionary France, or renewed 
their youth by drinking the Spirit of the 
Lakes. Lamb esteemed and loved him so 
well, that he felt himself entitled to make 
sport with his peculiarities ; but it was as 
Fielding might sport with his own idea of 
Parson Adams ; or Goldsmith with his 
Dr. Primrose. The following passage occurs 
in a letter of 28th November, 1798, ad- 
dressed — 

TO MR. SOUTHEY. 

" I showed my 'Witch,' and 'Dying Lover,' 
to Dyer last night, but George could not 
comprehend how that could be poetry which 
did not go upon ten feet, as George and his 
predecessors had taught it to do ; so George 
read me some lectures on the distinguishing 
qualities of the Ode, the Epigram, and the 
Epic, and went home to illustrate his doctrine, 
by correcting a proof sheet of his own Lyrics. 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



217 



George writes odes where the rhymes, like 
fashionable man and wife, keep a comfortable 
distance of six or eight lines apart, and calls 
that ' observing the laws of verse.' George 
tells you, before he recites, that you must 
listen with great attention, or you'll miss the 
rhymes. I did so, and found them pretty 
exact. George, speaking of the dead Ossian, 
exclaimeth, 'Dark are the poet's eyes.' I 
humbly represented to him that his own eyes 
were dark, and many a living bard's besides, 
and recommended ' Clos'd are the poet's eyes.' 
But that would not do. I found there was 
an antithesis between the darkness of his 
eyes and the splendour of his genius ; and I 
acquiesced." 



The following passage on the same subject 
occurs in a letter about the same time, 
addressed 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

"Now I am on the subject of poetry, I 
must announce to you, who, doubtless, in 
your remote part of the island, have not 
heard tidings of so great a blessing, that 
George Dyer hath prepared two ponderous 
volumes full of poetry and criticism. They 
impend over the town and are threatened to 
fall in the winter. The first volume contains 
every sort of poetry, except personal satire, 
which George, in his truly original prospectus, 
renounceth for ever, whimsically foisting the 
intention in between the price of his book 
and the proposed number of subscribers. (If 
I can, I will get you a copy of his handbill) 
He has tried his vein in every species besides 
— the Spenserian, Thomsonian, Masonic and 
Akensidish more especially. The second 
volume is all criticism ; wherein he demon- 
strates to the entire satisfaction of the literary 
world, in a way that must silence all reply 
for ever, that the Pastoral was introduced by 
Theocritus and polished by Virgil and Pope 
— that Gray and Mason (who always hunt in 
couples in George's brain) have a good deal 
of poetical fire and true lyric genius — that 
Cowley was ruined by excess of wit (a 
warning to all moderns) — that Charles Lloyd, 
Charles Lamb, and William Wordsworth, in 
later days, have struck the true chords of 
poesy. O George, George ! with a head 
uniformly wrong, and a heart uniformly 



right, that I had power and might equal to 
my wishes : then would I call the gentry of 
thy native island, and they should come in 
troops, flocking at the sound of thy pros- 
pectus-trumpet, and crowding who shall be 
first to stand in thy list of subscribers ! I 
can only put twelve shillings into thy pocket 
(which, I will answer for them, will not stick 
there long), out of a pocket almost as bare 
as thine. Is it not a pity so much fine 
writing should be erased ? But, to tell the 
truth, I began to scent that I was getting 
into that sort of style which Longinus and 
Dionysius Halicarnassus fitly call 'the 
affected.' " 



Lamb's apprehensions of the recurrence of 
his sister's malady were soon realised. An 
old maid-servant who assisted her in the 
lodging became ill ; Miss Lamb incessantly 
watched the death-bed ; and just as the poor 
creature died, was again seized with mad- 
ness. Lamb placed her under medical care ; 
and, left alone, wrote the following short 
and miserable letter : — 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

"May 12th, 1800. 
" My dear Coleridge, — I don't know why 
I write, except from the propensity misery 
has to tell her griefs. Hetty died on Friday 
night, about eleven o'clock, after eight days' 
illness ; Mary, in consequence of fatigue and 
anxiety, is fallen ill again, and I was obliged 
to remove her yesterday. I am left alone in 
a house with nothing but Hetty's dead body 
to keep me company. To-morrow I bury 
her, and then I shall be quite alone, with 
nothing but a cat, to remind me that the 
house has been full of living beings like my- 
self. My heart is quite sunk, and I don't 
know where to look for relief. Mary will 
get better again, but her constantly being 
liable to such relapses is dreadful ; nor is it 
the least of our evils that her case and all 
our story is so well known around us. We are 
in a manner marked. Excuse my troubling 
you, but I have nobody by me to speak to 
me. I slept out last night, not being able to 
endure the change and the stillness. But I 
did not sleep well, and I must come back to 
my own bed. I am going to try and get a 
friend to come and be with me to-morrow. 



218 



LETTEES TO MANNING AND COLERIDGE. 



I am completely shipwrecked. My head is 
quite bad. I almost wish that Mary were 
dead. — God bless you. Love to Sara and 
Hartley. — Monday. C. Lamb." 



The prospect of obtaining a residence more 
suited to the peculiar exigencies of his 
situation than that which he then occupied 
at Pentonville, gave Lamb comfort, which 
he expressed in the following short letter : — 

TO MR. MANNING. 

" 1800. 

" Dear Manning, — I feel myself unable to 
thank you sufficiently for your kind letter. 
It was doubly acceptable to me, both for the 
choice poetry and the kind honest prose 
which it contained. It was just such a letter 
as I should have expected from Manning. 

" I am in much better spirits than when I 
wrote last. I have had a very eligible offer to 
lodge with a friend in town. He will have 
rooms to let at midsummer, by which time I 
hope my sister will be well enough to join me. 
It is a great object to me to live in town, where 
we shall be much more private, and to quit a 
house and a neighbourhood where poor 
Mary's disorder, so frequently recurring, has 
made us a sort of marked people. We can 
be nowhere private except in the midst of 
London. We shall be in a family where we 
visit very frequently ; only my landlord and 
I have not yet come to a conclusion. He has 
a partner to consult. I am still on the 
tremble, for I do not know where we could 
go into lodgings that would not be, in many 
respects, highly exceptionable. Only God 
send Mary well again, and I hope all will be 
well ! The prospect, such as it is, has made 
me quite happy. I have just time to tell you 
of it, as I know it will give you pleasure. — 
Farewell. C. Lamb." 



This hope was accomplished, as appears 
from the following letter : — 



TO MR. COLERIDGE. 



" 1800. 



" Dear Coleridge, — Soon after I wrote to 
you last, an offer was made me by Gutch (you 
must remember him, at Christ's, — you saw 
him, slightly, one day with Thomson at our 



house) — to come and lodge with him, at his 
house in Southampton Buildings, Chancery- 
lane. This was a very comfortable offer to 
me, the rooms being at a reasonable rent, and 
including the use of an old servant, besides 
being infinitely preferable to ordinary lodg- 
ings in our case, as you must perceive. As 
Gutch knew all our story and the perpetual 
liability to a recurrence in my sister's dis- 
order, probably to the end of her life, I 
certainly think the offer very generous and 
very friendly. I have got three rooms (in- 
cluding servant) under 34£. a year. Here I 
soon found myself at home ; and here, in six 
weeks after, Mary was well enough to join 
me. So we are once more settled. I am 
afraid we are not placed out of the reach of 
future interruptions. But I am determined 
to take what snatches of pleasure we can 
between the acts of our distressful drama. 
.... I have passed two days at Oxford, on 
a visit which I have long put off, to Gutch's 
family. The sight of the Bodleian Library, 
and, above all, a fine bust of Bishop Taylor, 
at All Souls', were particularly gratifying to 
me ; unluckily, it was not a family where I 
could take Mary with me, and I am afraid 
there is something of dishonesty in any 
pleasures I take without her. She never 
goes anywhere. I do not know what I can 
add to this letter. I hope you are better by 
this time ; and I desire to be affectionately 
remembered to Sarah and Hartley. 

" I expected before this to have had tidings 
of another little philosopher. Lloyd's wife 
is on the point of favouring the world. 

" Have you seen the new edition of Burns ? 
his posthumous works and letters ? I have 
only been able to procure the first volume, 
which contains his life — very confusedly and 
badly written, and interspersed with dull 
pathological and medical discussions. It is 
written by a Dr. Currie. Do you know the 
well-meaning doctor ? Alas, ne sutor ultra 
cre-pidam ! 

" I hope to hear again from you very soon. 
Godwin is gone to Ireland on a visit to 
Grattan. Before he went I passed much 
time with him, and he has showed me par- 
ticular attention : N.B. A thing I much 
like. Your books are all safe : only I have 
not thought it necessary to fetch away your 
last batch, which I understand are at John- 
son's, the bookseller, who has got quite as 



LETTERS TO MANNING. 



219 



much room, and will take as much care of 
them as myself — and you can send for them 
immediately from him. 

" I wish you would advert to a letter I 
sent you at Grassmere about Christabel, and 
comply with my request contained therein. 

" Love to all friends round Skiddaw. 

" C. Lamb." 



CHAPTER IV. 

MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS TO MANNING, COLERIDGE, 
AND WORDSWORTH. 

[1800 to 1805.] 

It would seem from the letters of 1800, 
that the natural determination of Lamb " to 
take what pleasure he could between the 
acts of his distressful drama," had led him 
into a wider circle of companionship, and had 
prompted sallies of wilder and broader mirth, 
which afterwards softened into delicacy, re- 
taining all its whim. The following passage, 
which concludes a letter to Manning, else 
occupied with merely personal details, proves 
that his apprehensions for the diminution of 
his reverence for sacred things were not 
wholly unfounded ; while, amidst its grotesque 
expressions, may be discerned the repugnance 
to the philosophical infidelity of some of his 
companions he retained through life. The 
passage, may, perhaps, be regarded as a sort 
of desperate compromise between a wild 
gaiety and religious impressions obscured 
but not effaced ; and intimating his disap- 
probation of infidelity, with a melancholy 
sense of his own unworthiness seriously to 
express it. 

TO MR. MANNING. 

" Coleridge inquires after you pretty often. 
I wish to be the pandar to bring you to- 
gether again once before I die. "When we 
die, you and I must part ; the sheep, you 
know, take the right hand, and the goats the 
left. Stripped of its allegory, you must know, 
the sheep are I, and the Apostles and the 
Martyrs, and the Popes, and Bishop Taylor 
and Bishop Horsley, and Coleridge, &c. &c. ; 
the goats are the Atheists and the Adulterers, 

and dumb dogs, and Godwin and M g, 

and that Thyestsean crew — yaw ! how my 
saintship sickens at the idea ! 



" You shall have my play and the Falstaff 
letters in a day or two. I will write to Lloyd 
by this day's post. 

" God bless you, Manning. Take my 
trifling as trifling — and believe me seriously 
and deeply your well-wisher and friend, 

" C. Lamb." 

In the following letter Lamb's fantastic 
spirits find scope freely, though in all kind- 
ness, in the peculiarities of the learned and 
good George Dyer : — 

' TO MR. MANNING. 

" August 22nd, 1800. 

" Dear Manning, — You needed not imagine 
any apology necessary. Your fine hare and 
fine birds (which just now are dangling by 
our kitchen blaze), discourse most eloquent 
music in your justification. You just nicked 
my palate. For, with all due decorum and 
leave may it be spoken, my worship hath 
taken physic to-day, and being low and 
puling, requireth to be pampered. Foh ! how 
beautiful and strong those buttered onions 
come to my nose. For you must know we 
extract a divine spirit of gravy from those 
materials, which, duly compounded with a 
consistence of bread and cream (y'clept bread- 
sauce), each to each, giving double grace, do 
mutually illustrate and set off (as skilful gold- 
foils to rare jewels) your partridge, pheasant, 
woodcock, snipe, teal, widgeon, and the other 
lesser daughters of the ark. My friendship, 
struggling with my carnal and fleshly pru- 
dence (which suggests that a bird a man is 
the proper allotment in such cases), yearneth 
sometimes to have thee here to pick a wing 
or so. I question if your Norfolk sauces 
match our London culinaric. 

" George Dyer has introduced me to the 
table of an agreeable old gentleman, Dr. 

A , who gives hot legs of mutton and 

grape pies at his sylvan lodge at Isleworth ; 
where, in the middle of a street, he has shot 
up a wall most preposterously before his 
small dwelling, which, with the circumstance 
of his taking several panes of glass out of 
bedroom windows (for air) causeth his 
neighbours to speculate strangely on the 
state of the good man's pericranicks. Plainly, 
he lives under the reputation of being de- 
ranged. George does not mind this circum- 
stance ; he rather likes him the better for it. 



220 



LETTER TO COLERIDGE. 



The Doctor, in his pursuits, joins agricultural 
to poetical science, and has set George's 
brains mad about the old Scotch writers, 
Barbour, Douglas's iEneid, Blind Harry, &c. 
We returned home in a return postchaise 
(having dined with the Doctor), and George 
kept wondering and wondering, for eight or 
nine turnpike miles, what was the name, and 
striving to recollect the name of a poet an- 
terior to Barbour. I begged to know what 
was remaining of his works. i There is no- 
thing extant of his works, Sir, but by all 
accounts he seems to have been a fine 
genius ! ' This fine genius, without anything 
to show for it, or any title beyond George's 
courtesy, without even a name ; and Barbour, 
and Douglas, and Blind Harry, now are the 
predominant sounds in George's pia mater, 
and their buzzings exclude politics, criticism, 
and algebra — the late lords of that illustrious 
lumber-room. Mark, he has never read any 
of these bucks, but is impatient till he reads 
them all at the Doctor's suggestion. Poor 
Dyer ! his friends should be careful what 
sparks they let fall into such inflammable 
matter. 

" Could I have my will of the heathen, I 
would lock him up from all access of new 
ideas ; I would exclude all critics that would/ 
not swear me first (upon their Virgil) that 
they would feed him with nothing but th§ 
old, safe, familiar notions and sounds (th§ 
rightful aborigines of his brain) — Grayj 
Akenside, and Mason. In these sounds^ 
reiterated as often as possible, there could 
be nothing painful, nothing distracting. 

" God bless me, here are the birds, smoking 1 
hot ! 

" All that is gross and unspiritual in me 
rises at the sight ! 

" Avaunt friendship, and all memory of 



absent friends ! 



C. Lamb." 



In the following letter, the exciting sub- 
jects of Dr. A and Dyer are further 

played on : — 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

" August 2Gth, 1800. 

" George Dyer is the only literary cha- 
racter I am happily acquainted with ; the 
oftener I see him, the more deeply I admire 
him. He is goodness itself. If I could but 



calculate the precise date of his death, I would 
write a novel on purpose to make George the 
hero. I could hit him off to a hair.* George 

brought a Dr. A to see me. The Doctor 

is a very pleasant old man, a great genius for 
agriculture, one that ties his breeches-knees 
with packthread, and boasts of having had 
disappointments from ministers. The Doctor 
happened to mention an epic poem by one 
Wilkie, called the 'Epigoniad,' in which he 
assured us there is not one tolerable line from 
beginning to end, but all the characters, 
incidents, &c., verbally copied from Homer. 
George, who had been sitting quite inatten- 
tive to the Doctor's criticism, no sooner heard 
the sound of Homer strike his pericranicks, 
than up he gets, and declares he must see 
that poem immediately : where was it to be 
had 1 An epic poem of 8000 lines, and he 
not hear of it ! There must be some things 
good in it, and it was necessary he should 
see it, for he had touched pretty deeply upon 
that subject in his criticisms on the Epic. 
George has touched pretty deeply upon the 
Lyric, I find ; he has also prepared a disser- 
tation on the Drama and the comparison of 
ithe English and German theatres. As I 
/rather doubted his competency to do the 
latter, knowing that his peculiar turn lies in 
the lyric species of composition, I questioned 
George what English plays he had read. I 
found that he had read Shakspeare (whom 
he calls an original, but irregular, genius) ; 
but it was a good while ago ; and he has 
dipped into Rowe and Otway, I suppose 
having found their names in 'Johnson's 
Lives ' at full length ; and upon this slender 
ground he has undertaken the task. He 
never seemed even to have heard of Fletcher, 
Ford, Marlowe, Massinger, and the worthies 
of Dodsley's Collection ; but he is to read all 
these, to prepare him for bringing out his 
' Parallel ' in the winter. I find he is also 
determined to vindicate Poetry from the 
shackles which Aristotle and some others 
have imposed upon it, which is very good- 
natured of him, and very necessary just 
now ! Now I am. touching so deeply 
upon poetry, can I forget that I have just 



* This passage, thus far, is printed in the former 
volumes ; the remainder -was then suppressed (with other 
passages now for the first time published) relating to 
Mr. Dyer, lest they should give pain to that excellent 
person then living. 



LETTERS TO MANNING. 



221 



received from D a magnificent copy of 

his Guinea Epic. Four-and-twenty Books to 
read in the dog-days ! I got as far as the 
Mad Monk the first day, and fainted. Mr. 

D 's genius strongly points him to the 

Pastoral, but his inclinations divert him 
perpetually from his calling. He imitates 
Southey, as Rowe did Shakspeare, with his 
1 Good morrow to ye ; good master Lieu- 
tenant.' Instead of a man, a woman, a 
daughter, he constantly writes one a man, 
one a woman, one his daughter. Instead of 
the king, the hero, he constantly writes, he 
the king, he the hero ; two flowers of rhetoric, 

palpably from the ' Joan.' But Mr. D 

soars a higher pitch : and when he is original, 
it is in a most original way indeed. His 
terrific scenes are indefatigable. Serpents, 
asps, spiders, ghosts, dead bodies, staircases 
made of nothing, with adders' tongues for 
bannisters — Good Heaven ! what a brain he 
must have. He puts as many plums in his 
pudding as my grandmother used to do ; — 
and then his emerging from Hell's horrors 
into light, and treading on pure flats of this 
earth — for twenty-three Books together ! 

" C. L." 



The following letter, obviously written 
about the same time, pursues the same 
theme. There is some irritation in it ; but 
even that is curious enough to prevent the 
excision of the reproduced passages : — 



TO MR. MANNING. 



1800. 



"Dear Manning, — I am going to ask a 
favour of you, and am at a loss how to do it in 
the most delicate manner. For this purpose 
I have been looking into Pliny's Letters, 
who is noted to have had the best grace in 
begging of all the ancients (I read him in the 
elegant translation of Mr. Melmoth), but 
not finding any case there exactly similar 
with mine, I am constrained to beg in my 
own barbarian way. To come to the point 
then, and hasten into the middle of things ; 
have you a copy of your Algebra to give 
away 1 I do not ask it for myself ; I have 
too much reverence for the Black Arts, ever 
to approach thy circle, illustrious Trismegist ! 
But that worthy man, and excellent Poet, 
George Dyer, made me a visit yesternight, 



on purpose to borrow one, supposing, ration- 
ally enough, I must say, that you had made 
me a present of one before this ; the omission 
of which I take to have proceeded only from 
negligence ; but it is a fault. I could lend 
him no assistance. You must know he is 
just now diverted from the pursuit of the 
Bell Letters by a paradox, which he has 
heard his friend Frend,* (that learned ma- 
thematician) maintain, that the negative 
quantities of mathematicians were mera? 
mtgos, things scarcely in rerum naturd, and 
smacking too much of mystery for gentlemen 
of Mr. Frend's clear Unitarian capacity. 
However, the dispute once set a-going, has 
seized violently on George's pericranick ; 
and it is necessary for his health that he 
should speedily come to a resolution of his 
doubts. He goes about teasing his friends 
with his new mathematics ; he even fran- 
tically talks of purchasing Manning's Algebra, 
which shows him far gone, for, to my know- 
ledge, he has not been master of seven 
shillings a good time. George's pockets and 

's brains are two things in nature which 

do not abhor a vacuum. . . . Now, if you 
could step in, in this trembling suspense of 
his reason, and he should find on Saturday 
morning, lying for him at the Porter's Lodge, 
Clifford's Inn, — his safest address — Man- 
ning's Algebra, with a neat manuscription 
in the blank leaf, running thus, ' From the 
Author ! ' it might save his wits and 
restore the unhappy author to those studies 
of poetry and criticism, which are at present 
suspended, to the infinite regret of the whole 
literary world. N.B. — Dirty books, smeared 
leaves, and dogs' ears, will be rather a 
recommendation than otherwise. N.B. — He 
must have the book as soon as possible, or 
nothing can withhold him from madly pur- 
chasing the book on tick. . . . Then shall 
we see him sweetly restored to the chair of 
Longinus — to dictate in smooth and modest 
phrase the laws of verse ; to prove that 
Theocritus first introduced the Pastoral, and 
Virgil and Pope brought it to its perfection ; 
that Gray and Mason (who always hunt in 
couples in George's brain) have shown a 



* Mr. Frend, many years the Actuary of the Rock 
Insurance Office, in early life the champion of Unitarian- 
ism at Cambridge ; the object of a great University's 
displeasure; in short, the "village Hampden" of the 
day. 



222 



LETTERS TO MANNING. 



great deal of poetical fire in their lyric 
poetry ; that Aristotle's rules are not to be 
servilely followed, which George has shown 
to have imposed great shackles upon modern 
genius. His poems, I find, are to consist of 
two vols. — reasonable octavo ; and a third 
book will exclusively contain criticisms, in 
which he asserts he has gone pretty deeply 
into the laws of blank verse and rhyme — 
epic poetry, dramatic and pastoral ditto — 
all which is to come out before Christmas. 
But above all he has touched most deeply upon 
the Drama, comparing the English with the 
modern German stage, their merits and 
defects. Apprehending that his studies (not 
to mention his turn, which I take to be 
chiefly towards the lyrical poetry) hardly 
qualified him for these disquisitions, I 
modestly inquired what plays he had read 1 
I found by George's reply that he had read 
Shakspeare, but that was a good while 
since : he calls him a great but irregular 
genius, which I think to be an original 
and just remark. (Beaumont and Fletcher, 
Massinger, Ben Jonson, Shirley, Marlowe, 
Ford, and the worthies of Dodsley's Collec- 
tion — he confessed he had read none of them, 
but professed his intention of looking through 
them all, so as to be able to touch upon them 
in his book.) So Shakspeare, Otway, and I 
believe Bowe, to whom he was naturally 
directed by Johnson's Lives, and these not 
read lately, are to stand him in stead of a 
general knowledge of the subject. God 
bless his dear absurd head ! 

" By the by, did I not write you a letter 
with something about an invitation in it ? 
— but let that pass ; I suppose it is not 
agreeable. 

" N.B. It would not be amiss if you were 
to accompany your present with a dissertation 
on negative quantities. C. L." 



The " Algebra " arrived ; and Lamb wrote 
the following invitation, in hope to bring the 
author and the presentee together. 



TO MR. MANNING- 



1800. 



" George Dyer is an Archimedes, and an 
Archimagus, and a Tycho Brah6, and a 
Copernicus ; and thou art the darling of the 
Nine, and midwife to their wandering babe 



also ! We take tea with that learned poet 
and critic on Tuesday night, at half-past five, 
in his neat library ; the repast will be light 
and Attic, with criticism. If thou couldst 
contrive to wheel up thy dear carcase on 
the Monday, and after dining with us on 
tripe, calves' kidneys, or whatever else the 
Cornucopia of St. Clare may be willing to 
pour out on the occasion, might we not 
adjourn together to the Heathen's — thou with 
thy Black Backs, and I with some innocent 
volume of the Bell Letters, Shenstone or the 
like : it would make him wash his old flannel 
gown (that has not been washed to my 
knowledge since it has been his — Oh the long 
time !) with tears of joy. Thou shouldst 
settle his scruples and unravel his cobwebs, 
and sponge off" the sad stuff that weighs upon 
his dear wounded pia mater ; thou shouldst 
restore light to his eyes, and him to his 
friends and the public ; Parnassus should 
shower her civic crowns upon thee for saving 
the wits of a citizen ! I thought I saw a 
lucid interval in George the other night — 
he broke in upon my studies just at tea-time, 

and brought with him Dr. A , an old 

gentleman who ties his breeches' knees with 
packthread, and boasts that he has been 
disappointed by ministers. The Doctor 
wanted to see me; for I being a Poet, he 
thought I might furnish him with a copy of 
verses to suit his Agricultural Magazine. 
The Doctor, in the course of the conversation, 
mentioned a poem called the ' Epigoniad ' 
by one Wilkie, an epic poem, in which there 
is not one tolerable good line all through, 
but every incident and speech borrowed from 
Homer. George had been sitting inattentive, 
seemingly, to what was going on— hatching 
of negative quantities — when, suddenly, the 
name of his old friend, Homer, stung his 
pericranicks, and, jumping up, he begged to 
know where he could meet with Wilkie's 
works. l It was a curious fact that there 
should be such an epic poem and he not know 
of it ; and he must get a copy of it, as he was 
going to touch pretty deeply upon the subject 
of the Epic — and he was sure there must be 
some things good in a poem of 8000 lines ! ' 
I was pleased with this transient return of 
his reason and recurrence to his old ways of 
thinking : it gave me great hopes of a 
recovery, which nothing but your book can 
completely insure. Pray come on Monday, 



LETTERS TO MANNING. 



223 



if you can, and stay your own time. I have 
a good large room, with two beds in it, in 
the handsomest of which thou shalt repose 
a-nights, and dream of Spheroides. I hope 
you will understand by the nonsense of this 
letter that I am not melancholy at the 
thoughts of thy coming : I thought it neces- 
sary to add this, because you love precision. 
Take notice that our stay at Dyer's will not 
exceed eight o'clock, after which our pursuits 
will be our own. But indeed, I think a little 
recreation among the Bell Letters and poetry 
will do you some service in the interval of 
severer studies. I hope we shall fully discuss 
with George Dyer what I have never yet 
heard done to my satisfaction, the reason of 
Dr. Johnson's malevolent strictures .on the 
higher species of the Ode." 



Manning could not come ; and Dyer's 
subsequent symptoms are described in the 
following letter : — 

TO MR. MANNING. 

" December 27th, 1800. 

"At length George Dyer's phrenesis has 
come to a crisis ; he is raging and furiously 
mad. I waited upon the Heathen, Thursday 
was a se'nnight ; the first symptom which 
struck my eye and gave me incontrovertible 
proof of the fatal truth was a pair of nankeen 
pantaloons four times too big for him, which 
the said Heathen did pertinaciously afiirm 
to be new. 

" They were absolutely ingrained with the 
accumulated dirt of ages ; but he affirmed 
them to be clean. He was going to visit a 
lady that was nice about those things, and 
that's the reason he wore nankeen that day. 
And then he danced, and capered, and 
fidgeted, and pulled up his pantaloons, and 
hugged his intolerable flannel vestment closer 
about his poetic loins ; anon he gave it loose 
to the zephyrs which plentifully insinuate 
their tiny bodies through every crevice, door, 
window or wainscot, expressly formed for 
the exclusion of such impertinents. Then 
he caught at a proof sheet, and catched up a 
laundress's bill instead — made a dart at 
Bloomfield's Poems and threw them in agony 
aside. I could not bring him to one direct 
reply ; he could not maintain his jumping 
mind in a right line for the tithe of a 



moment by Clifford's Inn clock. He must 
go to the printer's immediately — the most 
unlucky accident — he had struck off five 
hundred impressions of his Poems, which 
were ready for delivery to subscribers, and 
the Preface must all be expunged ; there 
were eighty pages of Preface, and not till 
that morning had he discovered that in the 
very first page of said Preface he had set out 
with a principle of Criticism fundamentally 
wrong, which vitiated all his following 
reasoning ; the Preface must be expunged, 
although it cost him 30£., the lowest calcu- 
lation, taking in paper and printing ! In 
vain have his real friends remonstrated 
against this Midsummer madness. George 
is as obstinate as a Primitive Christian — and 
wards and parries off all our thrusts with 
one unanswerable fence ; — ' Sir, it's of great 
consequence that the world is not misled ! ' 

" I've often wished I lived in the Golden 
Age, before doubt, and propositions, and 
corollaries, got into the world. Now, as 

Joseph D , a Bard of Nature, sings, going 

up Malvern Hills. 

' How steep ! how painful the ascent ; 
It needs the evidence of close deduction 
To know that ever I shall gain the top.' 

You must know that Joe is lame, so that he 
had some reason for so singing. These two 
lines, I assure you, are taken totidem Uteris 
from a very popular poem. Joe is also an 
Epic Poet as well as a Descriptive, and has 
written a tragedy, though both his drama 
and epopoiea are strictly descriptive, and 
chiefly of the Beauties of Nature, for Joe 
thinks man with all his passions and frailties 
not a proper subject of the Drama. Joe's 
tragedy hath the following surpassing speech 
in it. Some king is told that his enemy has 
engaged twelve archers to come over in a 
boat from an enemy's country and way-lay 
him ; he thereupon pathetically exclaims — 

1 Twelve, dost thou say 1 Curse on those dozen villains ! ' 

D read two or three acts out to us, very 

gravely on both sides till he came to this 
heroic touch, — and then he asked what we 
laughed at 1 I had no more muscles that 
day. A poet that chooses to read out his 
own verses has but a limited power over 
you. There is a bound where his authority 
ceases." 



224 



LETTEKS TO MANNING AND WILSON. 



The following letter, written sometime in 
1801, shows that Lamb had succeeded in 
obtaining occasional employment as a writer 
of epigrams for newspapers, by which he 
added something to his slender income. The 
disparaging reference to Sir James Mackin- 
tosh must not be taken as expressive of 
Lamb's deliberate opinion of that distin- 
guished person. Mackintosh, at this time, 
was in great disfavour, for his supposed 
apostasy from the principles of his youth, 
with Lamb's philosophic friends, whose 
minds were of temperament less capable 
than that of the author of the Vindicice 
Gallicce of being diverted from abstract 
theories of liberty by the crimes and sufferings 
which then attended the great attempt to 
reduce them to practice. Lamb, through 
life, utterly indifferent to politics, was always 
ready to take part with his friends, and 
probably scouted, with them, Mackintosh as 
a deserter. 



" I will close my letter of simple inquiry 
with an epigram on Mackintosh, the Vindicice 
Gallicce-mdja — who has got a place at last — 
one of the last I did for the Albion : — 

' Though thou'rt like Judas, an apostate black, 
In the resemblance one thing thou dost lack ; 
When he had gotten his ill-purchas'd pelf, 
He went away, and wisely hang'd himself : 
This thou may do at last, yet much I doubt, 
If thoU hast any Bowels to gush out ! ' 



"Yours, as ever, 



C. Lamb. 



TO MR. MANNING. 



1801. 



" Dear Manning, — I have forborne writing 
so long (and so have you for the matter of 
that), until I am almost ashamed either to 
write or to forbear any longer. But as your 
silence may proceed from some worse cause 
than neglect — from illness, or some mishap 
which may have befallen you, I begin to be 
anxious. You may have been burnt out, or 
you may have married, or you may have 
broken a limb, or turned country parson ; 
any of these would be excuse sufficient for 
not coming to my supper. I am not so 
unforgiving as the nobleman in Saint Mark. 
For me, nothing new has happened to me, 
unless that the poor Albion died last Saturday 
of the world's neglect, and with it the 
fountain of my puns is choked up for ever. 

" All the Lloyds wonder that you do not 
write to them. They apply to me for the 
cause. Eelieve me from this weight of 
ignorance, and enable me to give a truly 
oracular response. 

"I have been confined some days with 
swelled cheek and rheumatism — they divide 
and govern me with a viceroy-headache in 
the middle. I can neither write nor read 
without great pain. It must be something 
like obstinacy that I choose this time to 
write to you in after many months inter- 
ruption. 



Some sportive extravagance which, how- 
ever inconsistent with Lamb's early senti- 
ments of reverent piety, was very far from 
indicating an irreligious purpose, seems to 
have given offence to Mr. Walter Wilson, 
and to have induced the following letter, 
illustrative of the writer's feelings at this 
time, on the most momentous of all sub- 
jects : — 

TO MR. WALTER WILSON. 

" August 14th, 1801. 

" Dear Wilson, — I am extremely sorry that 
any serious difference should subsist between 
us, on account of some foolish behaviour of 
mine at Eichmond ; you knew me well 
enough before, that a very little liquor will 
cause a considerable alteration in me. 

" I beg you to impute my conduct solely 
to that, and not to any deliberate intention 
of offending you, from whom I have received 
so many friendly attentions. I know that 
you think a very important difference in 
opinion with respect to some more serious 
subjects between us makes me a dangerous 
companion ; but do not rashly infer, from 
some slight and light expressions which I 
may have made use of in a moment of levity, 
in your presence, without sufficient regard 
to your feelings — do not conclude that I am 
an inveterate enemy to all religion. I have 
had a time of seriousness, and I have known 
the importance and reality of a religious 
belief. Latterly, I acknowledge, much of 
my seriousness has gone off, whether from 
new company, or some other new associa- 
tions ; but I still retain at bottom a convic- 
tion of the truth, and a certainty of the 
usefulness of religion. I will not pretend to 
more gravity or feeling than I at present 
possess ; my intention is not to persuade 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



225 



you that any great alteration is probable in 
me ; sudden converts are superficial and 
transitory ; I only want you to believe that 
I have stamina of seriousness within me, and 
that I desire nothing more than a return of 
that friendly intercourse which used to 
subsist between us, but which my folly has 
suspended. 
" Believe me, very affectionately, yours, 

"C.Lamb." 



In 1803 Coleridge visited London, and at 
his departure left the superintendence of a 
new edition of his poems to Lamb. The fol- 
lowing letter, written in reply to one of 
Coleridge's, giving a mournful account of his 
journey to the north with an old man and 
his influenza, refers to a splendid smoking- 
cap which Coleridge had worn at their even- 



TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

" April 13th, 1803. 

" My dear Coleridge, — Things have gone 
on better with me since you left me. I 
expect to have my old housekeeper home 
again in a week or two. She has mended most 
rapidly. My health too has been better 
since you took away that Montero cap. I 
have left off cayenned eggs and such bolsters 
to discomfort. There was death in that cap. 
I mischievously wished that by some inau- 
spicious jolt the whole contents might be 
shaken, and the coach set on fire ; for you 
said they had that property. How the old 
gentleman, who joined you at Grantham, 
would have clapt his hands to his knees, and 
not knowing but it was an immediate visita- 
tion of heaven that burnt him, how pious it 
would have made him ; him, I mean, that 
brought the influenza with him, and only 
took places for one — an old sinner ; he must 
have known what he had got with him ! 
However, I wish the cap no harm for the 
sake of the head it fits, and could be content 
to see it disfigure my healthy side-board 
again. 

" What do you think of smoking 1 I want 
your sober, average, noon opinion of it. I 
generally am eating my dinner about the 
time I should determine it. 

" Morning is a girl, and can't smoke — 
she's no evidence one way or the other ; and 



Night is so bought over, that he can't be a 
very upright judge. May be the truth is, 
that one pipe is wholesome ; two pipes tooth- 
some ; three pipes noisome ; four pipes ful- 
! some ; five pipes quarrelsome, and that's the 
smwi on't. But that is deciding rather upon 
rhyme than reason. . . . After all, our in- 
stincts may be best. Wine, I am sure, good, 
mellow, generous Port, can hurt nobody, 
unless those who take it to excess, which 
they may easily avoid if they observe the 
rules of temperance. 

" Bless you, old sophist, who next to 
human nature taught me all the corruption 
I was capable of knowing ! And bless your 
Montero cap, and your trail (which shall 
come after you whenever -you appoint), and 
your wife and children — Pipos especially. 

" When shall we two smoke again ? Last 
night I had been in a sad quandary of spirits, 
in what they call the evening, but a pipe, 
and some generous Port, and Bang Lear 
(being alone), had their effects as solacers. 
I went to bed pot-valiant. By the way, may 
not the Ogles of Somersetshire be remotely 
descended from King Lear. C. L." 



The next letter is prefaced by happy 
news. 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 



" Mary sends love from home. 



1803. 



" Dear C, — I do confess that I have not 
sent your books as I ought to have done ; 
but you know how the human free-will is 
tethered, and that we perform promises to 
ourselves no better than to our friends. A 
watch is come for you. Do you want it soon, 
or shall I wait till some one travels your 
way % You, like me, I suppose, reckon the 
lapse of time from the waste thereof, as boys 
let a cock run to waste ; too idle to stop it, 
and rather amused with seeing it dribble. 
Your poems have begun printing ; Longman 
sent to me to arrange them, the old and the 
new together. It seems you have left it to 
him ; so I classed them, as nearly as I could, 
according to dates. First, after the Dedica- 
tion, (which must march first,) and which I 
have transplanted from before the Preface, 
(which stood like a dead wall of prose be- 
tween,) to be the first poem — then comes ' The 



226 



LETTERS TO COLEEIDGE. 



Pixies,' and the things most juvenile — then 
on 'To Chatterton,' &c. — on, lastly, to the 
' Ode on the Departing Year,' and ' Musings,' 
— which finish. Longman wanted the Ode 
first, but the arrangement I have made is 
precisely that marked out in the Dedication, 
following the order of time. I told Long- 
man I was sure that you would omit a good 
portion of the first edition. I instanced 
several sonnets, &c. — but that was not his 
plan, and, as you have done nothing in it, all 
I could do was to arrange 'em on the sup- 
position that all were to be retained. A few 
I positively rejected ; such as that of ' The 
Thimble,' and that of ' Flicker and Flicker's 
wife,' and that not in the manner of Spenser, 
which you yourself had stigmatised — and 
' The Man of Boss,' — I doubt whether I 
should this last. It is not too late to save it. 
The first proof is only just come. I have 
been forced to call that Cupid's Elixir, 
' Kisses.' It stands in your first volume, as 
an Effusion, so that, instead of prefixing 
The Kiss to that of ' One Kiss, dear Maid,' 
&c, I have ventured to entitle it ' To Sara.' 
I am aware of the nicety of changing even 
so mere a trifle as a title to so short a piece, 
and subverting old associations ; but two 
called " Kisses ' would have been absolutely 
ludicrous, and ' Effusion ' is no name, and 
these poems come close together. I promise 
you not to alter one word in any poem what- 
ever, but to take your last text, where two 
are. Can you send any wishes about the 
book ? Longman, I think, should have 
settled with you ; but it seems you have left 
it to him. Write as soon as you possibly 
can; for, without making myself responsible, 
I feel myself, in some sort, accessary to the 
selection, which I am to proof -correct ; but I 
decidedly said to Biggs that I was sure you 
would omit more. Those I have positively 
rubbed off, I can swear to individually, 
(except the ' Man of Boss,' which is too 
familiar in Pope,) but no others — you have 
your cue. For my part, I had rather all the 
Juvenilia were kept — memories causa. 

" Bobert Lloyd has written me a masterly 
letter, containing a character of his father ; 
— see how different from Charles he views 
the old man ! (Literatim) ' My father 
smokes, repeats Homer in Greek, and Virgil, 
and is learning, when from business, with all 
the vigour of a young man, Italian. He is, 



really, a wonderful man. He mixes public 
and private business, the intricacies of dis- 
ordering life with his religion and devotion. 
No one more rationally enjoys the romantic 
scenes of nature, and the chit-chat and little 
vagaries of his children ; and, though sur- 
rounded with an ocean of affairs, the very 
neatness of his most obscure cupboard in the 
house passes not unnoticed. I never knew 
any one view with such clearness, nor so 
well satisfied with things as they are, and 
make such allowance for things which must 
appear perfect Syriac to him.' By the last 
he means the Lloydisms of the younger 
branches. His portrait of Charles (exact as 
far as he has had opportunities of noting 
him) is most exquisite. ' Charles is become 
steady as a church, and as straightforward 
as a Boman Boad. It would distract him to 
mention anything that was not as plain as 
sense ; he seems to have run the whole 
scenery of life, and now rests as the formal 
precisian of non-existence.' Here is genius 
I think, and 'tis seldom a young man, a 
Lloyd, looks at a father (so differing) with 
such good nature while he is alive. Write — 
" I am in post-haste, C. Lamb. 

" Love, &c, to Sara, P. and H." 



The next letter, containing a further ac- 
count of Lamb's superintendence of the new 
edition, bears the date of Saturday, 27th May, 
1803. 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

" My dear Coleridge, — The date of my 
last was one day prior to the receipt of your 
letter, full of foul omens. I explain, lest you 
should have thought mine too light a reply 
to such sad matter. I seriously hope by this 
time you have given up all thoughts of jour- 
neying to the green Islands of the Blest — 
voyages in time of war are very precarious 
— or at least, that you will take them in your 
way to the Azores. Pray be careful of this 
letter till it has done its duty, for it is to in- 
form you that I have booked off your watch 
(laid in cotton like an untimely fruit), 
and with it Condillac, and all other books 
of yours which were left here. These will 
set out on Monday next, the 29th May, 
by Kendal waggon, from White Horse, 



LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. 



227 



Cripplegate. You will make seasonable in- 
quiries, for a watch mayn't come your way 
again in a hurry. I have been repeatedly 
after Tobin, and now hear that he is in the 
country, not to return till middle of June. 
I will take care and see him with the earliest. 
But cannot you write pathetically to him, 
enforcing a speedy mission of your books for 
literary, purposes ? He is too good a retainer 
to Literature, to let her interests suffer 
through his default. And why, in the name 
of Beelzebub, are your books to travel from 
Barnard's Inn to the Temple, and thence 
circuitously to Cripplegate, when their busi- 
ness is to take a short cut down Holborn- 
hill, up Snow do., on to Wood-street, &c. ? 
The former mode seems a sad superstitious 
subdivision of labour. Well ! the 'Man of 
Ross ' is to stand ; Longman begs for it ; the 
printer stands with a wet sheet in one hand, 
and a useless Pica in the other, in tears, 
pleading for it ; I relent. Besides, it was a 
Salutation poem, and has the mark of the 
beast ' Tobacco ' upon it. Thus much I have 
done ; I have swept off the lines about 
widows and orphans in second edition, which 
(if you remember) you most awkwardly and 
illogically caused to be inserted between two 
Ifs, to the great breach and disunion of said 
Jfs, which now meet again (as in first 
edition), like two clever lawyers arguing a 
case. Another reason for subtracting the 
pathos was, that the ' Man of Ross ' is too 
familiar, to need telling what he did, espe- 
cially in worse lines than Pope told it, and it 
now stands simply as ' Reflections at an Inn 
about a known Character,' and sucking an 
old story into an accommodation with pre- 
sent feelings. Here is no breaking spears 
with Pope, but a new, independent, and 
really a very pretty poem. In fact 'tis as I 
used to admire it in the first volume, and I 
have even dared to restore 

' If 'neath this roof thy wine-cheer 'd moments pass,' 
for 
' Beneath this roof if thy cheer'd moments pass.' 

'Cheer'd' is a sad general word, ' 'wine-cheer "oV 
I'm sure you'd give me, if I had a speaking- 
trumpet to sound to you 300 miles. But I 
am your factotum, and that save in this 
instance, which is a single case, and I can't 
get at you, shall be next to a fac-nihil — at 
most, a, facsimile. I have ordered ' Imitation 



of Spenser ' to be restored on Wordsworth's 
authority; and now, all that you will miss 
will be ' Flicker and Flicker's Wife,' ' The 
Thimble,' 'Breathe, dear harmonist] and / 
believe, 'The Child that was fed with Manna.' 
Another volume will clear off all your 
Anthologic Morning- Postian Epistolary 
Miscellanies ; but pray don't put ' Christabel ' 
therein ; don't let that sweet maid come 
forth attended with Lady Holland's mob at 
her heels. Let there be a separate volume of 
Tales, Choice Tales, ' Ancient Mariners,' &c. 

" C. Lamb." 



The following is the fragment of a letter 
(part being lost), on the. re-appearance of 
the Lyrical Ballads, in two volumes, and 
addressed 

TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 

" Thanks for your letter and present. I 
had already borrowed your second volume. 
What most please me are, ' The Song of 
Lucy;' Simon's sickly daughter, in 'The 
Sexton' made me cry. Next to these are 
the description of the continuous echoes in 
the story of ' Joanna's Laugh,' where the 
mountains, and all the scenery absolutely 
seem alive ; and that fine Shakspearian 
character of the ' happy man,' in the 
' Brothers ' 



' that creeps about the fields, 

Following his fancies by the hour, to bring 
Tears down his cheek, or solitary smiles 
Into his face, until the setting sun 
Write Fool upon his forehead ! ' 

I will mention one more — the delicate and 
curious feeling in the wish for the 
'Cumberland Beggar,' that he may have 
about him the melody of birds, altho' he 
hear them not. Here the mind knowingly 
passes a fiction upon herself, first substituting 
her own feelings for the Beggar's, and in the 
same breath detecting the fallacy, will not 
part with the wish. The ' Poet's Epitaph ' 
is disfigured, to my taste, by the common 
satire upon parsons and lawyers in the 
beginning, and the coarse epithet of 'pin- 
point,' in the sixth stanza. All the rest is 
eminently good, and your own. I will just 
add that it appears to me a fault in the 
'Beggar,' that the instructions conveyed in 
it are too direct, and like a lecture: they 



22S 



LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. 



don't slide into the mind of the reader while 
he is imagining no such matter. An intelli- 
gent reader finds a sort of insult in being 
told, ' I will teach you how to think upon 
this subject.' This fault, if I am right, is 
in a ten-thousandth worse degree to be found 
in Sterne, and many many novelists and 
modern poets, who continually put a sign- 
post up to show where you are to feel. They 
set out with assuming their readers to be 
stupid ; very different from ' Robinson 
Crusoe,' 'The Vicar of Wakefield,' 'Koderick 
Random,' and other beautiful, bare narratives. 
There is implied an unwritten compact 
between author and reader ; " I will tell you 
a story, and I suppose you will understand 
it.' Modern novels, 'St. Leons' and the 
like, are full of such flowers as these — ' Let 
not my reader suppose,' ' Imagine, if you can, 
modest ! ' &c. I will here have done with 
praise and blame. I have written so much, 
only that you may not think I have passed 

over your book without observation 

I am sorry that Coleridge has christened his 
'Ancient Marinere' ' a Poet's Reverie ;' it is 
as bad as Bottom the Weaver's declaration 
that he is not a lion, but only the scenical 
representation of a lion. What new idea is 
gained by this title but one subversive of all 
credit — which the tale should force upon us, 
— of its truth ! 

For me, I was never so affected with any 
human tale. After first reading it, I was 
totally possessed with it for many days. I 
dislike all the miraculous part of it, but the 
feelings of the man under the operation of 
such scenery, dragged me along like Tom 
Pipes's magic whistle. I totally differ from 
your idea that the 'Marinere' should have 
had a character and profession. This is a 
beauty in 'Gulliver's Travels,' where the mind 
is kept in a placid state of little wonder- 
ments ; but the 'Ancient Marinere' under- 
goes such trials as overwhelm and bury all 
individuality or memory of what he was — 
like the state of a man in a bad dream, one 
terrible peculiarity of which is, that all 
consciousness of personality is gone. Your 
other observation is, I think as well, a little 
unfounded : the ' Marinere,' from being con- 
versant in supernatural events, has acquired 
a supernatural and strange cast of phrase, 
eye, appearance, &c, which frighten the 
' wedding-guest. ' You will excuse my 



remarks, because I am hurt and vexed that 
you should think it necessary, with a prose 
apology, to open the eyes of dead men that 
cannot see. 

"To sum up a general opinion of the second 
volume, I do not feel any one poem in it so 
forcibly as the 'Ancient Marinere,' the 'Mad 
Mother,' and the ' Lines at Tintern Abbey ' 
in the first." 



The following letter was addressed, on 
28th September, 1805, when Lamb was 
bidding his generous farewell to Tobacco, to 
Wordsworth, then living in noble poverty 
with his sister in a cottage by Grasmere, 
which is as sacred to some of his old admirers 
as even Shakspeare's House. 

TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 

"My dear Wordsworth (or Dorothy rather, 
for to you appertains the biggest part of this 
answer by right), I will not again deserve 
reproach by so long a silence. I have kept 
deluding myself with the idea that Mary 
would write to you, but she is so lazy (or I 
believe the true state of the case, so diffident), 
that it must revert to me as usual : though 
she writes a pretty good style, and has some 
notion of the force of words, she is not always 
so certain of the true orthography of them ; 
and that, and a poor handwriting (in this 
age of female calligraphy), often deters her, 
where no other reason does.* 

"We have neither of us been very well 
for some weeks past. I am very nervous, 
and she most so at those times when I am ; 
so that a merry friend, adverting to the 
noble consolation we were able to afford each 
other, denominated us, not unaptly, Gum- 
Boil and Tooth- Ache, for they used to say 
that a gum-boil is a great relief to a tooth- 
ache. 

" We have been two tiny excursions this 
summer for three or four days each, to a 
place near Harrow, and to Egham, where 
Cooper's Hill is : and that is the total history 
of our rustications this year. Alas ! how 
poor a round to Skiddaw and Helvellyn, and 
Borrowdale, and the magnificent sesquipe- 
dalia of the year 1802. Poor old Molly ! to 
have lost her pride, that ' last infirmity of 

* This is mere banter ; Miss Lamb wrote a very good 



LETTER TO HAZLITT. 



229 



noble minds,' and her cow. Fate need not 
have set her wits to such an old Molly. I 
am heartily sorry for her. Remember us 
lovingly to her ; and in particular remember 
us to Mrs. Clarkson in the most kind manner. 

" I hope, by ' southwards,' you mean that 
she will be at or near London, for she is a 
great favourite of both of us, and we feel for 
her health as much as possible for any one 
to do. She is one of the friendliest, com- 
fortablest women we know, and made our 
little stay at your cottage one of the 
pleasantest times we ever past. We were 
quite strangers to her. Mr, C. is with you 
too ; our kindest separate remembrances to 
him. As to our special affairs, I am looking 
about me. I have done nothing since the 
beginning of last year, when I lost my 
newspaper job, and having had a long idle- 
ness, I must do something, or we shall get 
very poor. Sometimes I think of a farce, 
but hitherto all schemes have gone off ; an 
idle brag or two of an evening, vapouring 
out of a pipe, and going off in the morning ; 
but now I have bid farewell to my ' sweet 
enemy,' Tobacco, as you will see in my next 
page,* I shall perhaps set nobly to work. 
Hang work ! 

" I wish that all the year were holiday ; I 
am sure that indolence — indefeasible indo- 
lence — is the true state of man, and business 
the invention of the old Teazer, whose inter- 
ference doomed Adam to an apron and set 
him a hoeing. Pen and ink, and clerks and 
desks, were the refinements of this old 
torturer some thousand years after, under 
pretence of ' Commerce allying distant shores, 
Promoting and diffusing knowledge, good,' 
&c. &c. Yours truly, 

" C. Lamb." 



CHAPTER V. 

LETTERS TO HAZLITT, ETC. 
[1805 to 1810.] 

About the year 1805 Lamb was introduced 
to one, whose society through life was one of 
his chief pleasures — the great critic and 
thinker, William Hazlitt — who, at that time, 

* The " Farewell to Tobacco" was transcribed on the 
next page ; but the actual sacrifice was not completed 
till some years after. 



scarcely conscious of his own literary powers, 
was striving hard to become a painter. At 
the period of the following letter (which is 
dated 15th March, 180(5) Hazlitt was residing 
with his father, an Unitarian minister, at 
Wem. 

TO MR. HAZLITT. 

" Dear H. — I am a little surprised at no letter 
from you. This day week, to wit, Saturday, 
the 8th of March, 1806, 1 book'd off by the 
Wem coach, Bull and Mouth Inn, directed 
to you, at the Rev. Mr. Hazlitt's, Wem, 
Shropshire, a parcel containing, besides a 
book, &c, a rare print, which I take to be a 
Titian ; begging the said W. H. to acknow- 
ledge the receipt thereof; which he not 
having done, I conclude the said parcel to be 
lying at the inn, and may be lost ; for which 
reason, lest you may be a Wales-hunting at 
this instant, I have authorised any of your 
family, whosoever first gets this, to open it, 
that so precious a parcel may not moulder 
away for want of looking after. What do 
you in Shropshire when so many fine pictures 
are a-going a-going every day in London ? 
Monday I visit the Marquis of Lansdowne's, 
in Berkeley Square. Catalogue 2s. 6d. 
Leonardos in plenty. Some other day this 
week, I go to see Sir Wm. Young's, in 
Stratford Place. Hulse's, of Blackheath, are 
also to be sold this month, and in May, the 
first private collection in Europe, Welbore 
Ellis Agar's. And there are you perverting 
Nature in lying landscapes, filched from old 
rusty Titians, such as I can scrape up here 
to send you, with an additament from Shrop- 
shire nature thrown in to make the whole 
look unnatural. I am afraid of your mouth 
watering when I tell you that Manning and I 
got into Angerstein's on Wednesday. Hon 
Dieu / Such Claudes ! Four Claudes bought 
for more than 10,000£. (those who talk of 
Wilson being equal to Claude are either 
mainly ignorant or stupid) ; one of these was 
perfectly miraculous. What colours short 
of bond fide sunbeams it could be painted in, 
I am not earthly colourman enough to say ; 
but I did not think it had been in the 
possibility of things. Then, a music-piece 
by Titian — a thousand-pound picture — five 
figures standing behind a piano, the sixth 
playing ; none of the heads, as M. observed, 
indicating great men, or affecting it, but so 



230 



LETTERS TO MRS. HAZLITT AND WORDSWORTH. 



sweetly disposed ; all leaning separate ways, 
but so easy, like a flock of some divine 
shepherd ; the colouring, like the economy 
of the picture, so sweet and harmonious — as 
good as Shakspeare's 'Twelfth Night,' — 
almost, that is. It will give you a love of 
order, and cure you of restless, fidgetty 
passions for a week after — more musical 
than the music which it would, but cannot, 
yet in a manner does, show. I have no room 
for the rest. Let me say, Angerstein sits in 
a room — his study (only that and the library 
are shown), when he writes a common letter, 
as I am doing, surrounded with twenty 
pictures worth 60,000?. What a luxury ! 
Apicius and Heliogabalus, hide your dimi- 
nished heads ! 

" Yours, my dear painter, 

" C. Lamb." 



Hazlitt married Miss Sarah Stoddart, 
sister of the present Sir John Stoddart, who 
became very intimate with Lamb and his 
sister. To her Lamb, on the 11th December, 



"Mr. H. 



TO MRS. HAZLITT. 



" Don't mind this being a queer letter. I 
am in haste, and taken up by visitors, 
condolers, &c. God bless you. 

"Dear Sarah, — Mary is a little cut at 
the ill success of ( Mr. H.' which came out 
last night, and failed. I know you'll be 
sorry, but never mind. We are determined 
not to be cast down. I am going to leave off 
tobacco, and then we must thrive. A 
smoking man must write smoky farces. 

" Mary is pretty well, but I persuaded her 
to let me write. We did not apprise you of 
the coming out of ' Mr. H.' for fear of ill- 
luck. You were much better out of the 
house. If it had taken, your partaking of 
our good luck would have been one of our 
greatest joys. As it is, we shall expect you 
at the time you mentioned. But whenever 
you come you shall be most welcome. 
" God bless you, dear Sarah, 

" Yours, most truly, C. L. 

" Mary is by no means unwell, but I made 
her let me write." 



The following is Lamb's account of the 
same calamity, addressed 

TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 

"Mary's love to all of you — I wouldn't 
let her write. 

" Dear Wordsworth, — e Mr. H.' came out 
last night, and failed. I had many fears ; 
the subject was not substantial enough. 
John Bull must have solider fare tha,n a 
letter. We are pretty stout about it ; have 
had plenty of condoling friends ; but, after 
all, we had rather it should have succeeded. 
You will see the prologue in most of 
the morning papers. It was received with 
such shouts as I never witnessed to a 
prologue. It was attempted to be encored. 
How hard ! — a thing I did merely as a task, 
because it was wanted, and set no great 
store by ; and 'Mr. H.' ! ! The quantity of 
friends we had in the house — my brother 
and I being in public offices, &c. — was 
astonishing, but they yielded at last to a few 



"A hundred hisses ! (Hang the word, I 
write it like kisses — how different !) — a 
hundred hisses outweigh a thousand claps. 
The former come more directly from the 
heart. Well, 'tis withdrawn, and there is 
an end. 

" Better luck to us, C. Lamb. 

[Turn over.] 

" P.S. Pray, when any of you write to the 
Clarksons, give our kind loves, and say we 
shall not be able to come and see them at 
Christmas, as I shall have but a day or two, 
and tell them we bear our mortification 
pretty well." 



About this time Miss Lamb sought to 
contribute to her brother's scanty income 
by presenting the plots of some of Shaks- 
peare's plays in prose, with the spirit of the 
poet's genius interfused, and many of his 
happiest expressions preserved, in which 
good work Lamb assisted her ; though he 
always insisted, as he did in reference to 
" Mrs. Leicester's School," that her portions 
were the best. The following letter refers to 
some of those aids, and gives a pleasant 
instance of that shyness in Hazlitt, which he 



LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH AND HAZLITT. 



233 



never quite overcame, and which afforded 
a striking contrast to the boldness of his 
published thoughts. 



TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 



1806. 



" Mary is just stuck fast in ' Alt's Well 
that Ends Well.' She complains of having 
to set forth so many female characters in 
boys' clothes. She begins to think Shaks- 
peare must have wanted — Imagination. I, 
to encourage her, for she often faints in the 
prosecution of her great work, flatter her 
with telling her how well such a play and 
such a play is done. But she is stuck fast, 
and I have been obliged to promise to assist 
her. To do this, it will be necessary to 
leave off tobacco. But I had some thoughts of 
doing that before, for I sometimes think it does 
not agree with me. W. Hazlitt is in town. I 
took him to see a very pretty girl, professedly, 
where there were two young girls — the very 
head and sum of the girlery was two young 
girls — they neither laughed, nor sneered, 
nor giggled, nor whispered — but they were 
young girls — and he sat and frowned blacker 
and blacker, indignant that there should be 
such a thing as youth and beauty, till he 
tore me away before supper, in perfect 
misery, and owned he could not bear young- 
girls ; they drove him mad. So I took him 
home to my old nurse, where he recovered 
perfect tranquillity. Independent of this, 
and as I am not a young girl myself, he is a 
great acquisition to us. He is, rather 
imprudently I think, printing a political 
pamphlet on his own account, and will have 
to pay for the paper, &c. The first duty of 
an author, I take it, is never to pay anything. 
But non cuivis contigit adire Corinthum. The 
managers, I thank my stars, have settled 
that question for me. 

"Yours truly, C.Lamb." 



Hazlitt, coming to reside in town, became 
a frequent guest of Lamb's, and a brilliant 
ornament of the parties which Lamb now 
began to collect on Wednesday evenings. 
He seems, in the beginning of 1808, to have 
sought solitude in a little inn on Salisbury 
Plain, to which he became deeply attached, 
and which he has associated with some of 
his profoundest meditations ; and some 



fantastic letter, in the nature of a hoax, 
having puzzled liis father, who expected him 
at Wem, caused some inquiries of Lamb 
respecting the painter's retreat, to which he 
thus replied in a letter to 

THE REV. MR. HAZLITT. 

" Temple, 18th February, 1808. 

"Sir, — I am truly concerned that any 
mistake of mine should have caused you 
uneasiness, but I hope we have got a clue to 
William's absence, which may clear up all 
apprehensions. The people where he lodges 
in town have received direction from him to 
forward some linen to a place called Winter- 
slow, in the county of Wilts (not far from 
Salisbury), where the lady lives whose cottage, 
pictured upon a card, if you opened my letter 
you have doubtless seen, and though we 
have had no explanation of the mystery 
since, we shrewdly suspect that at the time 
of writing that letter which has given you 
all this trouble, a certain son of yours (who is 
both painter and author) was at her elbow, 
and did assist in framing that very cartoon 
which was sent to amuse and mislead us in 
town, as to the real place of his destination. 

" And some words at the back of the said 
cartoon, which we had not marked so 
narrowly before, by the similarity of the 
handwriting to William's, do very much 
confirm the suspicion. If our theory be 
right, they have had the pleasure of their 
jest, and I am afraid you have paid for it 
in anxiety. 

" But I hope your uneasiness will now be 
removed, and you will pardon a suspense 
occasioned by Love, who does so many worse 
mischiefs every day. 

" The letter to the people where William 
lodges says, moreover, that he shall be in 
town in a fortnight. 

" My sister joins in respects to you and 
Mrs. Hazlitt, and in our kindest remem- 
brances and wishes for the restoration of 
Peggy's health. 

" I am, Sir, your humble servant, 

" C. Lamb." 



Mr. and Mrs. Hazlitt afterwards took up 
their temporary abode at Winterslow, to 
which place Miss Lamb addressed the 
following letter, containing interesting details 



232 



MISS LAMB TO MRS. HAZLITT. 



of her own and her brother's life, and illus- 
trating her own gentle character : — 



TO MRS. HAZLITT. 

" December 10th, 1808. 

" My dear Sarah, — I hear of you from 
your brother, but you do not write yourself, 
nor does Hazlitt. I beg that one or both 
of you will amend this fault as speedily as 
possible, for I am very anxious to hear of 
your health. I hope, as you say nothing 
about your fall to your brother, you are 
perfectly recovered from the effects of it. 

" You cannot think how very much we 
miss you and H. of a Wednesday evening — 
all the glory of the night, I may say, is at an 
end. Phillips makes his jokes, and there is 
no one to applaud him ; Bickman argues, 
and there is no one to oppose him. 

" The worst miss of all to me is, that when 
we are in the dismals there is now no hope 
of relief from any quarter whatsoever. 
Hazlitt was most brilliant, most ornamental, 
as a Wednesday-man, but he was a more 
useful one on common days, when he dropt 
in after a quarrel or a fit of the glooms. 
The Sheflington is quite out now, my brother 
having got merry with claret and Tom 
Sheridan. This visit, and the occasion of it, 
is a profound secret, and therefore I tell it to 
nobody but you and Mrs. Eeynolds. Through 
the medium of Wroughton, there came an 
invitation and proposal from T, S., that C. L. 
should write some scenes in a speaking 
pantomime, the other parts of which Tom 
now, and his father formerly, have manu- 
factured between them. So in the Christ- 
mas holidays my brother, and his two great 
associates, we expect will be all three damned 
together ; this is, I mean if Charles's share, 
which is done and sent in, is accepted. 

" I left this unfinished yesterday, in the 
hope that my brother would have done it for 
me. His reason for refusing me was 'no 
exquisite reason,' for it was because he must 
write a letter to Manning in three or four 
weeks, and therefore ' he could not be always 
writing letters,' he said. I wanted him to 
tell your husband about a great work which 
Godwin is going to publish to enlighten the 
world once more, and I shall not be able to 
make out what it is. He (Godwin) took his 
usual walk one evening, a fortnight since, to 
the end of Hatton Garden and back again. 



During that walk a thought came into his 
mind, which he instantly sate down and 
improved upon till he brought it, in seven or 
eight days, into the compass of a reasonable 
sized pamphlet. 

" To propose a subscription to all well- 
disposed people to raise a certain sum of 
money, to be expended in the care of a cheap 
monument for the former and the future 
great dead men ; the monument to be a 
white cross, with a wooden slab at the end, 
telling their names and qualifications. This 
wooden slab and white cross to be perpetuated 
to the end of time ; to survive the fall of 
empires, and the destruction of cities, by 
means of a map, which, in case of an insur- 
rection among the people, or any other cause 
by which a city or country may be destroyed, 
was to be carefully preserved ; and then, 
when things got again into their usual order, 
the white-cross-wooden-slab-makers were to 
go to work again and set the wooden slabs 
in their former places. This, as nearly as 
I can tell you, is the sum and substance of 
it ; but it is written remarkably well — in 
his very best manner — for the proposal 
(which seems to me very like throwing salt 
on a sparrow's tail to catch him.) occupies 
but half a page, which is followed by very 
fine writing on the benefits he conjectures 
would follow if it were done ; very excellent 
thoughts on death, and our feelings concern- 
ing dead friends, and the advantages an old 
country has over a new one, even in the 
slender memorials we have of great men who 
once flourished. 

" Charles is come home and wants his 
dinner, and so the dead men must be no 
more thought of. Tell us how you go on, 
and how you like Winterslow and winter 
evenings. Knowles has not yet got back 
again, but he is in better spirits. John 
Hazlitt was here on Wednesday. Our love 
to Hazlitt. 

" Yours, affectionately, 

" M. Lamb." 

" Saturday." 



To this letter Charles added the following 
postscript : — 

" There came this morning a printed pro- 
spectus from ' S. T. Coleridge, Grasmere,' of 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



a weekly paper, to be called ' The Friend ; ' 
a flaming prospectus. I have no time to give 
the heads of it. To commence first Saturday 
in January. There came also notice of a 
turkey from Mr. Clarkson, which I am more 
sanguine in expecting the accomplishment 
of than I am of Coleridge's prophecy. 

" C. Lamb." 



During the next year Lamb and his sister 
produced their charming little book of 
"Poetry for Children," and removed from 
Mitre Court to those rooms in Inner Temple 
Lane, — most dear of all their abodes to the 
memory of their ancient friends — where first 
I knew them. The change produced its 
natural and sad effect on Miss Lamb, during 
whose absence Lamb addressed the following 
various letter 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

" June 7th, 1809. 

" Dear Coleridge, — I congratulate you on 
the appearance of ' The Friend.' Your first 
number promises well, and I have no 
doubt the succeeding numbers will fulfil 
the promise. I had a kind letter from you 
some time since, which I have left unan- 
swered. I am also obliged to you, I believe, 
for a review in the Annual, am I not % The 
Monthly Eeview sneers at me, and asks ' if 
Comus is not good enough for Mr. Lamb 1 ' 
because I have said no good serious dramas 
have been written since the death of Charles 
the First, except " Samson Agonistes ; ' so 
because they do not know, or won't re- 
member, that Comus was written long before, 
I am to be set down as an undervaluer of 
Milton. O, Coleridge ! do kill those reviews, 
or they will kill us ; kill all we like ! Be a 
friend to all else, but their foe. I have been 
turned out of my chambers in the Temple 
by a landlord who wanted them for himself, 
but I have got other at No. 4, Inner Temple 
Lane, far more commodious and roomy. 
I have two rooms on third floor and five 
rooms above, with an inner staircase to 
myself, and all new painted, &c, and all for 
30£. a year ! I came into them on Saturday 
week ; and on Monday following, Mary was 
taken ill with fatigue of moving, and affected, 
I believe, by the novelty of the home she 
could not sleep, and I am left alone with a 



maid quite a stranger to me, and she has a 
month or two's sad distraction to go through. 
What sad large pieces it cuts out of life ; 
out of her life, who is getting rather old ; 
and we may not have many years to live 
together ! I am weaker, and bear it worse 
than I ever did. But I hope we shall be 
comfortable by and bye. The rooms are 
delicious, and the best look backwards into 
Hare Court, where there is a pump always 
going. Just now it is dry. Hare Court 
trees come in at the window, so that it's like 
living in a garden. I try to persuade myself 
it is much pleasanter than Mitre Court ; 
but, alas ! the household gods are slow to 
come in a new mansion. They are in their 
infancy to me ; I do not feel them yet ; no 
hearth has blazed to them yet. How I hate 
and dread new places ! 

" I was very glad to see Wordsworth's book 
advertised ; I am to have it to-morrow lent 
me, and if Wordsworth don't send me an 
order for one upon Longman, I will buy it. 
It is greatly extolled and liked by all who 
have seen it. Let me hear from some of 
you, for I am desolate. I shall have to send 
you, in a week or two, two volumes of 
Juvenile Poetry, done by Mary and me 
within the last six months, and that tale in 
prose which Wordsworth so much liked, 
which was published at Christmas, with nine 
others, by us, and has reached a second edition. 
There's for you ! We have almost worked 
ourselves out of child's work, and I don't 
know what to do. Sometimes I think of a 
drama, but I have no head for play-making ; 
I can do the dialogue, and that's all. I am 
quite aground for a plan, and I must do 
something for money. Not that I have 
immediate wants, but I have prospective 
ones. "?0 money, money, how blindly thou 
hast been worshipped, and how stupidly 
abused ! Thou art health and liberty, and 
strength, and he that has thee may rattle 
his pockets at the foul fiend ! 

" Nevertheless, do not understand by this 
that I have not quite enough for my occasions 
for a year or two to come. While I think 
on it, Coleridge, I fetch'd away my books 
which you had at the Courier Office, and 
found all but a third volume of the old plays, 
containing ' The White Devil,' Green's ' Tu 
Quoque,' and the 'Honest Whore,' per- 
haps the most valuable volume of them all — 



234 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE. 



thai I could not find. Pray, if you can, 
remember what you did with it, or where 
you took it out with you a walking perhaps ; 
send me word, for, to use the old plea, it 
spoils a set. I found two other volumes 
(you had three), the ' Arcadia,' and Daniel, 
enriched with manuscript notes. I wish 
every book I have were so noted. They have 
thoroughly converted me to relish Daniel, or 
to say I relish him, for, after all, I believe I 
did relish him. You well call him sober- 
minded. Your notes are excellent. Perhaps 
you've forgot them. I have read a review 
in the Quarterly, by Southey, on the Mission- 
aries, which is most masterly. I only grudge 
it being there. It is quite beautiful. Do 
remember my Dodsley ; and, pray, do write, 
or let some of you write. Clarkson tells me 
you are in a smoky house. Have you cured 
it ? It is hard to cure anything of smoking. 
Our little poems are but humble, but they 
have no name. You must read them, 
remembering they were task-work ; and 
perhaps you will admire the number of 
subjects, all of children, picked out by an 
old Bachelor and an old Maid. Many parents 
would not have found so many. Have 
you read ' Ccelebs 1 ' It has reached eight 
editions in so many weeks, yet literally it is 
one of the very poorest sort of common 
novels, with the draw-back of dull religion 
in it. Had the religion been high and 
flavoured, it would have been something. I 
borrowed this ' Ccelebs in Search of a Wife,' 
of a very careful, neat lady, and returned it 
with this stuff written in the beginning : — 

' If ever I marry a wife 

I'd marry a landlord's daughter, 
For then I may sit in the bar, 

And drink cold brandy-and-water.' 

" I don't expect you can find time from 
your 'Friend' to write to me much, but write 
something, for there has been a long silence. 
You know Holcroft is dead. Godwin is well. 
He has written a very pretty, absurd book 
about sepulchres. He was affronted because 
I told him it was better than Hervey, but 
not so good as Sir T. Browne. This letter 
is all about books ; but my head aches, and 
I hardly know what I write ; but I could 
not let ' The Friend ' pass without a con- 
gratulatory epistle. I won't criticise till it 
comes to a volume. Tell me how I shall 



send my packet to you ? — by what convey- 
ance ? — by Longman, Short-man, or how 1 
Give my kindest remembrances to the 
Wordsworths. Tell him he must give me 
a book. My kind love to Mrs. W. and to 
Dorothy separately and conjointly. I wish 
you could all come and see me in my new 
rooms. God bless you all. C. L." 



A journey into Wiltshire, to visit Hazlitt, 
followed Miss Lamb's recovery, and produced 
the following letters : — 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

"Monday, Oct. 30th, 1809. 

" Dear Coleridge, — I have but this moment 
received your letter, dated the 9th instant, 
having just come off a journey from Wilt- 
shire, where I have been with Mary on a 
visit to Hazlitt. The journey has been of 
infinite service to her. We have had nothing 
but sunshiny days, and daily walks from 
eight to twenty miles a-day ; have seen 
Wilton, Salisbury, Stonehenge, &c. Her 
illness lasted but six weeks ; it left her 
weak, but the country has made us whole. 
We came back to our Hogarth Eoom. I 
have made several acquisitions since you 
saw them, — and found Nos. 8, 9, 10 of The 
Friend. The account of Luther in the 
Warteburg is as fine as anything I ever 
read.* God forbid that a man who has such 



* The Warteburg is a Castle, standing on a lofty rock, 
about two miles from the city of Eisenach, in which 
Luther was confined, under the friendly arrest of the 
Elector of Saxony, after Charles V. had pronounced 
against him the Ban in the Imperial Diet ; where he 
composed some of his greatest works, and translated the 
New Testament ; and where he is recorded as engaged in 
the personal conflict with the Prince of Darkness, of 
which the vestiges are still shown in a black stain on the 
wall, from the inkstand hurled at the Enemy. In the 
Essay referred to, Coleridge accounts for the story — 
depicting the state of the great prisoner's mind in most 
vivid colours — and then presenting the following picture, 
which so nobly justifies Lamb's eulogy, that I venture 
to gratify myself by inserting it here. 

" Methinks I see him sitting, the heroic student, in 
his chamber in the Warteburg, with his midnight lamp 
before him, seen by the late traveller in the distant plain 
of Bischofsroda, as a star on the mountain ! Below it lies 
the Hebrew Bible open, on which he gazes ; his brow 
pressing on his palm, brooding over some obscure text, 
which he desires to make plain to the simple boor and to 
the humble artizan, and to transfer its whole force into 
their own natural and living tongue. And he himself 
does not understand it ! Thick darkness lies on the 
original text ; he counts the letters, he calls up the roots 
of each separate word, and questions them as the fami- 
liar Spirits of an Oracle. In vain ; thick darkness 



MISS LAMB TO MRS. HAZLITT. 



235 



things to say should be silenced for want of 
1001. This Custom-and -Duty-Age would 
have made the Preacher ou the Mount take 
out a licence, and St. Paul's Epistles not 
missible without a stamp. O that you may 
find means to go on ! But alas ! where is 
Sir G. Beaumont ?— Sotheby ? What is 
become of the rich Auditors in Albemarle 
Street 1 Your letter has saddened me. 

" I am so tired with my journey, being up 
all night, I have neither things nor words 
in my power. I believe I expressed my 
admiration of the pamphlet. Its power over 
me was like that which Milton's pamphlets 
must have had on his contemporaries, who 
were tuned to them. What a piece of 
prose ! Do you hear if it is read at all ? 
I am out of the world of readers. I hate all 
that do read, for they read nothing but 
reviews and new books. I gather myself up 
unto the old things. 

" I have put up shelves. You never saw 
a book-case in more true harmony with the 
contents, than what I've nailed up in a room, 
which, though new, has more aptitudes for 
growing old than you shall often see — as 
one sometimes gets a friend in the middle of 
life, who becomes an old friend in a short 

continues to cover it ; not a ray of meaning dawns 
through it. With sullen and angry hope he reaches for 
the Vulgate, his old and sworn enemy, the treacherous 
confederate of the Roman Antichrist, which he so gladly, 
when he can, rehukes for idolatrous falsehood, that had 
dared place 

' Within the sanctuary itself their shrines, 
Abominations — ' 

Now — O thought of humiliation — he must entreat its 
aid. See ! there has the sly spirit of apostacy worked-in 
a phrase, which favours the doctrine of purgatory, the 
intercession of saints, or the efficacy of prayers for the 
dead ; and what is worst of all, the interpretation is 
plausible. The original Hebrew might be forced into 
this meaning : and no other meaning seems to lie in it, 
none to hover above it in the heights of allegory, none to 
lurk beneath it even in the depths of Cabala ! This is the 
work of the Tempter ; it is a cloud of darkness conjured 
up hetween the truth of the sacred letters and the eyes 
of his understanding, by the malice of the evil-one, and 
for a trial of his faith ! Must he then at length confess, 
must he subscribe the name of Luther to an exposition 
which consecrates a weapon for the hand of the idolatrous 
Hierarchy I. Never ! Never ! 

" There still remains one auxiliary in reserve, the 
translation of the Seventy. The Alexandrine Greeks, 
anterior to the Church itself, could intend no support to 
its corruptions — The Septuagint will have profaned the 
Altar of Truth with no incense for the nostrils of the 
universal Bishop to snuff up. And here again his hopes 
are baffled ! Exactly at this perplexed passage had the 
Greek translator given his understanding a holiday, and 
made his pen supply its place. O honoured Luther ! as 
easily mightest thou convert the whole City of Rome, 



time. My rooms are luxurious; one is for 
prints and one for books ; a summer and a 
winter-parlour. When shall I ever see you 
in them ? C. L." 



MISS LAMB TO MRS. HAZLITT. 

" November 7 th, 1809. 

" My dear Sarah, — The dear, quiet, lazy, 
delicious month we spent with you is remem- 
bered by me with such regret that I feel 
quite discontented and Winterslow-sick. I 
assure you I never passed such a pleasant 
time in the country in my life, both in the 
house and out of it — the card -playing 
quarrels, and a few gaspings for breath, 
after your swift footsteps up the high hills, 
excepted ; and those draw-backs are not 
unpleasant in the recollection. We have got 
some salt butter, to make our toast seem 
like yours, and we have tried to eat meat 
suppers, but that would not do, for we left 
our appetites behind us, and the dry loaf, 
which offended you, now comes in at night 
unaccompanied ; but, sorry am I to add, it 
is soon followed by the pipe. We smoked 
the very first night of our arrival. 

" Great news ! I have just been inter- 

with the Pope and the conclave of Cardinals inclusively, 
as strike a spark of light from the words, and nothing but 
words, of the Alexandrine version. Disappointed, de- 
spondent, enraged, ceasing to think, yet continuing his 
brain on the stretch in solicitation of a thought ; and 
gradually giving himself up to angry fancies, to recollec- 
tions of past persecutions, to uneasy fears, and inward 
defiances, and floating images of the Evil Being, their 
supposed personal author ; he sinks, without perceiving 
it, into a trance of slumber; during which his brain 
retains its waking energies, excepting that what would 
have been mere thoughts before, now, (the action and 
counterweight of his senses and of their impressions 
being withdrawn) shape and condense themselves into 
things, into realities ! Repeatedly half-wakening, and 
his eye-lids as often reciosing, the objects which really 
surround him form the place and scenery of his dream. 
All at once he sees the arch-fiend coming forth on the 
wall of the room, from the very spot, perhaps, on which 
his eyes had been fixed, vacantly, during the perplexed 
moments of his former meditation : the inkstand which 
he had at the same time been using, becomes associated 
with it ; and in that struggle of rage, which in these 
distempered dreams almost constantly precedes the help- 
less terror by the pain of which we are finally awakened, 
he imagines that he hurls it at the intruder, or not 
improbably in the first instant of awakening, while yet 
both his imagination and his eyes are possessed by the 
dream, he actually hurls it. Some weeks after, perhaps, 
during which interval he had often mused on the 
incident, undetermined whether to deem it a visitation 
of Satan to him in the body or out of the body, he dis- 
covers for the first time the dark spot on his wall, and 
receives it as a sign and pledge vouchsafed to him of the 
event having actually taken place." 



236 



LETTER TO HAZLITT. 



rupted by Mr. Daw, who came to tell me he 
was yesterday elected a Eoyal Academician. 
He said none of his own friends voted for 
him, he got it by strangers, who were pleased 
with his picture of Mrs. White. 

" Charles says he does not believe North- 
cote ever voted for the admission of any one. 
Though a very cold day, Daw was in a 
prodigious perspiration, for joy at his good 
fortune. 

" More great news ! My beautiful green 
curtains were put up yesterday, and all the 
doors listed with green baize, and four new 
boards put to the coal-hole, and fastening 
hasps put to the windows, and my dyed 
Manning-silk cut out. 

" We had a good cheerful meeting on 
Wednesday, much talk of Winterslow, its 
woods and its sun-flowers. I did not so much 

like P at Winterslow as I now like him 

for having been with us at Winterslow. 
We roasted the last of his ' Beech of oily 
nut prolific' on Friday at the Captain's. 
Nurse is now established in Paradise, alias 
the incurable ward of Westminster Hospital. 
I have seen her sitting in most superb state, 
surrounded by her seven incurable com- 
panions. They call each other ladies ; nurse 
looks as if she would be considered as the 
first lady in the ward ; only one seemed at 
all likely to rival her in dignity. 

" A man in the India House has resigned, 
by which Charles will get twenty pounds a 
year, and White has prevailed on him to 
write some more lottery puffs ; if that ends 
in smoke the twenty pounds is a sure card, 
and has made us very joyful. 

"I continue very well, and return you 
very sincere thanks for my good health and 
improved looks, which have almost made 

Mrs. die with envy. She longs to come 

to Winterslow as much as the spiteful elder 
sister did to go to the well for a gift to spit 
diamonds. 

" Jane and I have agreed to boil a round 
of beef for your suppers when you come to 
town again. She (Jane) broke two of the 
Hogarth glasses, while we were away, where- 
at I made a great noise. Farewell. Love 
to William, and Charles's love and good 
wishes for the speedy arrival of the ' Life of 
Holcroft,' and the bearer thereof. 

" Yours, most affectionately, 

" Tuesday. M. LAMB. 



" Charles told Mrs. , Hazlitt had found 

a well in his garden, which, water being 
scarce in your county, would bring him in 
two hundred a year ; and she came, in great 
haste, the next morning, to ask me if it were 
true. 

" Your brother and sister are quite well." 



The country excursions, with which Lamb 
sometimes occupied his weeks of vacation, 
were taken with fear and trembling — often 
foregone — and finally given up, in conse- 
quence of the sad effects which the excite- 
ments of travel and change produced in his 
beloved companion. The following refers to 
one of these disasters : — 

TO MR. HAZLITT. 

" August 9th, 1810. 

" Dear H., — Epistemon is not well. Our 
pleasant excursion has ended sadly for one 
of us. You will guess I mean my . sister. 
She got home very well (I was very ill on 
the journey) and continued so till Monday 
night, when her complaint came on, and she 
is now absent from home. 

" I am glad to hear you are all well. I 
think I shall be mad if I take any more 
journeys with two experiences against it. I 
find all well here. Kind remembrances to 
Sarah, — have just got her letter. 

" H. Eobinson has been to Blenheim, he 
says you will be sorry to hear that we should 
not have asked for the Titian Gallery there. 
One of his friends knew of it, and asked to 
see it. It is never shown but to those who 
inquire for it. 

" The pictures are all Titians, Jupiter and 
Ledas, Mars and Venuses, &c, all naked 
pictures, which may be a reason they don't 
show it to females. But he says they are 
very fine ; and perhaps it is shown separately 
to put another fee into the shower's pocket. 
Well, I shall never see it. 

" I have lost all wish for sights. God bless 
you. I shall be glad to see you in London. 
" Yours truly, C. Lamb." 

" TJmrsday." 



Mr. Wordsworth's Essay on Epitaphs, 
afterwards appended to "The Excursion," 
produced the following letter : — 



LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. 



237 



TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 

" Friday, 19th Oct. 1810. E.I. Ho. 

" Dear W., — Mary has been very ill, which 
you have heard, I suppose, from the Mon- 
tagues. She is very weak and low spirited 
now. I was much pleased with your con- 
tinuation of the Essay on Epitaphs. It is 
the only sensible thing which has been 
written on that subject, and it goes to the 
bottom. In particular I was pleased with 
your translation of that turgid epitaph into 
the plain feeling under it. It is perfectly a 
test. But what is the reason we have no 
good epitaphs after all % 

" A very striking instance of your position 
might be found in the churchyard of Ditton- 
upon-Thames, if you know such a place. 
Ditton-upon-Thames has been blessed by the 
residence of a poet, who, for love or money, 
I do not well know which, has dignified 
every grave-stone, for the last few years, 
with bran-new verses, all different, and all 
ingenious, with the author's name at the 
bottom of each. This sweet Swan of Thames 
has artfully diversified his strains and his 
rhymes, that the same thought never occurs 
twice ; more justly, perhaps, as no thought 
ever occurs at all, there was a physical 
impossibility that the same thought should 
recur. It is long since I saw and read these 
inscriptions, but I remember the impression 
was of a smug usher at his desk in the 
intervals of instruction, levelling his pen. 
Of death, as it consists of dust and worms, 
and mourners and uncertainty, he had never 
thought ; but the word ' death ' he had often 
seen separate and conjunct with other words, 
till he had learned to speak of all its attributes 
as glibly as Unitarian Belsham will discuss 
you the attributes of the word ' God ' in a 
pulpit ; and will talk of infinity with a tongue 
that dangles from a skull that never reached 
in thought and thorough imagination two 
inches, or further than from his hand to his 
mouth, or from the vestry to the sounding- 
board of the pulpit. 

" But the epitaphs were trim, and sprag, 
and patent, and pleased the survivors of 
Thames Ditton above the old mumpsimus of 
'Afflictions Sore.' ... .'To do justice though, 
it must be owned that even the excellent 
feeling which dictated this dirge when new, 
must have suffered something in passing 



through so many thousand applications, 
many of them no doubt quite misplaced, as 
I have seen in Islington churchyard (I think) 
an Epitaph to an infant, who died ' JEtatis 
four months,' with this seasonable inscription 
appended, 'Honour thy father and thy 
mother ; that thy days may be long in the 
land,' &c. Sincerely wishing your children 
long life to honour, &c. 



" I remain, 



C. Lamb.' 



CHAPTER VI. 

letters to "wordsworth, etc., chiefly respecting 
Wordsworth's poems. 

[1815 to 1818.] 

The admirers of "Wordsworth — few, but 
energetic and hopeful — were delighted, and 
his opponents excited to the expression of 
their utmost spleen, by the appearance, in 
1814, of "The Excursion," (in the quarto 
form marked by the bitter flippancy of Lord 
Byron) ; and by the publication, in 1815, of 
two volumes of Poems, some of which only 
were new. The following letters are chiefly 
expressive of Lamb's feelings respecting these 
remarkable works, and the treatment which 
his own Review of the latter received from 
Mr. Gifford, then the Editor of the Quarterly 
Review, for which it was written. The fol- 
lowing letter is in acknowledgment of an 
early copy of " The Excursion." 



TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 



1814. 



" Dear Wordsworth, — I cannot tell you 
how pleased I was at the receipt of the great 
armful of poetry which you have sent me ; 
and to get it before the rest of the world too ! 
I have gone quite through with it, and was 
thinking to have accomplished that pleasure 
a second time before I wrote to thank you, 
but M. B. came in the night (while we were 
out) and made holy theft of it, but we expect 
restitution in a day or two. It is the noblest 
conversational poem I ever read — a day in 
Heaven. The part (or rather main body) 
which has left the sweetest odour on my 
memory (a bad term for the remains of an 
impression so recent) is the Tales of the 
Church-yard ; — the only girl among seven 



233 



LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. 



brethren, born out of due time, and not 
duly taken away again ; — the deaf man 
and the blind man ; — the Jacobite and the 
Hanoverian, whom antipathies reconcile ; 
the Scarron-entry of the rusticating parson 
upon his solitude ; — these were all new to 
me too. My having known the story of 
Margaret (at the beginning), a very old 
acquaintance, even as long back as when I 
saw you first at Stowey, did not make her I 
reappearance less fresh. I don't know what 
to pick out of this best of books upon the 
best subjects for partial naming. That 
gorgeous sunset is famous ; * I think it must 
have been the identical one we saw on Salis- 
bury Plain five years ago, that drew P 

from the card-table, where he had sat from j 
rise of that luminary to its unequalled j 
setting ; but neither he nor I had gifted eyes 
to see those symbols of common things glo- j 
rified, such as the prophets saw them in 
that sunset — the wheel, the potter's clay, 
the washpot, the wine-press, the almond- 
tree rod, the baskets of figs, the four-fold 
visaged head, the throne, and Him that sat 
thereon.f 

" One feeling I was particularly struck 
with, as what I recognised so very lately at 
Harrow Church on entering in it after a hot 
and secular day's pleasure, the instantaneous 
coolness and calming, almost transforming 
properties of a country church just entered ; 
a certain fragrance which it has, either from 
its holiness, or being kept shut all the 
week, or the air that is let in being pure 
country, exactly what you have reduced into 
words — but I am feeling that which I cannot 
express. The reading your lines about it 
fixed me for a time, a monument in Harrow 
Church ; do you know it 1 with its fine long 
spire, white as washed marble, to be seen, by 
vantage of its high site, as far as Salisbury 
spire itself almost. 

" I shall select a day or two, very shortly, 
when I am coolest in brain, to have a steady 
second reading, which I feel will lead to 

* The passage to which the allusion applies does not 
picture a sunset, but the effect of sunlight on a receding 
mist among the mountains, in the second book of " The 
Excursion." 

i " Fix'd resemblances were seen 

To implements of ordinary use, 
P.ut vast in size, in substance glorified ; 
Such as by Hebrew Prophets were beheld 
In vision — forms uncouth of mightiest powers, 
For admiration and mysterious awe." 



many more, for it will be a stock book with 
me while eyes or spectacles shall be lent me. 
There is a great deal of noble matter about 
mountain scenery, yet not so much as 
to overpower and discountenance a poor 
Londoner or south-countryman entirely, 
though Mary seems to have felt it occasion- 
ally a little too powerfully, for it was her 
remark during reading it, that by your 
system it was doubtful whether a liver in 
towns had a soul to be saved. She almost 
trembled for that invisible part of us in her. 
" Save for a late excursion to Harrow, and 
a day or two on the banks of the Thames 
this summer, rural images were fast fading 
from my mind, and by the wise provision of 
the Regent, all that was country-fy'd in the 
Parks is all but obliterated. The very colour 
of green is vanished ; the whole surface of 
Hyde Park is dry crumbling sand {Arabia 
Arenosa), not a vestige or hint of grass ever 
having grown there ; booths and drinking- 
places go all round it for a mile and half, I 
am confident — I might say two miles in 
circuit — the stench of liquors, bad tobacco, 
dirty people and provisions, conquers the air, 
and we are stifled and suffocated in Hyde 
Park." 



Lamb was delighted with the proposition, 
made through Southey, that he should re- 
view " The Excursion " in the " Quarterly " 
— though he had never before attempted 
contemporaneous criticism, and cherished a 
dislike to it, which the event did not diminish. 
The ensuing letter was addressed while me- 
ditating on his office, and uneasy lest he 
should lose it for want of leisure. 



TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 



1814. 



" My dear W. — I have scarce time or quiet 
to explain my present situation, how unquiet 
and distracted it is, owing to the absence of 
some of my compeers, and to the deficient 
state of payments at E. I. H., owing to bad 
peace speculations in the calico market. (I 
write this to W. W., Esq., Collector of Stamp 
Duties for the conjoint Northern Counties, 
not to W". W., Poet.) I go back, and have 
for these many days past, to evening work, 
generally at the rate of nine hours a day. 
The nature of my work, too, puzzling and 



LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. 



239 



hurrying, has so shaken my spirits, that 
my sleep is nothing but a succession of 
dreams of business I cannot do, of as- 
sistants that give me no assistance, of 
terrible responsibilities. I reclaimed your 
book, which Hazlitt has uncivilly kept, only 
two days ago, and have made shift to read it 
again with shattered brain. It does not lose 
— rather • some parts have come out with a 
prominence I did not perceive before — but 
such was my aching head yesterday (Sunday), 
that the book was like a mountain landscape 
to one that should walk on the edge of a 
precipice ; I perceived beauty dizzily. Now, 
what I would say is, that I see no prospect 
of a quiet half-day, or hour even, till this 
week and the next are past. I then hope to 
get four weeks' absence, and if then is time 
enough to begin, I will most gladly do what 
is required, though I feel my inability, for 
my brain is always desultory, and snatches 
off hints from things, but can seldom follow 
a ■ work ' methodically. But that shall be 
no excuse. What I beg you to do is, to let 
me know from Southey, if that will be time 
enough for the ' Quarterly.' i. e., suppose it 
done in three weeks from this date (19th 
Sept.) : if not, it is my bounden duty to 
express my regret, and decline it. Mary 
thanks you, and feels highly grateful for 
your ' Patent of Nobility,' and acknowledges 
the author of ' The Excursion ' as the legiti- 
mate Fountain of Honour. "We both agree, 
that, to our feeling, Ellen is best as she is. 
To us there would have been something re- 
pugnant in her challenging her Penance as a 
Dowry ; the fact is explicable, but how few 
are those to whom it would have been 
rendered explicit. The unlucky reason of 
the detention of ' The Excursion ' was Hazlitt, 
for whom M. Burney borrowed it, and, after 
reiterated messages, I only got it on Friday. 
His remarks had some vigour in them ; * 
particularly something about an old ruin 
being too modem for your Primeval Nature, 
and about a lichen. I forget the passage, but 
the whole wore an air of despatch. That 
objection which M. Burney had imbibed 
from him about Voltaire, I explained to 
M. B. (or tried) exactly on your principle of 



* This refers to an article of Hazlitt on " The Excur- 
sion " in the " Examiner," very fine in passages, but 
more characteristic of the critic than descriptive of the 
poem. 



its being a characteristic speech. * That it 
was no settled comparative estimate of Vol- 
taire with any of his own tribe of buffoons — 
no injustice, even if you spoke it, for I dared 
say you never could relish ' Candide.' I 
know I tried to get through it about a 
twelvemonth since, and couldn't for the 
dull less. Now I think I have a wider range 
in buffoonery than you. Too much tolera- 
tion perhaps. 

" I finish this after a raw ill-baked dinner 
fast gobbled up to set me off to office again, 
after working there till near four. O how I 
wish I were a rich man, even though I were 
squeezed camel-fashion at getting through 
that needle's eye that is spoken of in the 
Written Word. Apropos ; .is the Poet of 
' The Excursion ' a Christian 1 or is it the 
Pedlar and the Priest that are 1 

" I find I miscalled that celestial splendour 
of the mist going off, a sunset. That only 
shows my inaccuracy of head. 

" Do, pray, indulge me by writing an 
answer to the point of time mentioned above, 
or let Southey. I am ashamed to go bargain- 
ing in this way, but indeed I have no time I 
can reckon on till the first week in October. 
God send I may not be disappointed in that ! 
Coleridge swore in a letter to me he would 
review ' The Excursion ' in the ' Quarterly.' 
Therefore, though that shall not stop me, yet 
if I can do anything, when done, I must know 
of him if he has anything ready, or I shall 
fill the world with loud exclaims. 

" I keep writing on, knowing the postage 
is no more for much writing, else so fagged 
and dispirited I am with cursed India House 
work, I scarce know what I do. My left 
arm reposes on ' The Excursion.' I feel 
what it would be in quiet. It is now a 
sealed book." 



The next letter was written after the fatal 
critique was despatched to the Editor, and 
before its appearance. 



* The passage in "which the copy of " Candide," found 
in the apartment of the Recluse, is described as " the 
dull production of a scoffer's brain," which had excited 
Hazlitt to energetic vindication of Voltaire from the 
charge of dulness. Whether the work, written in 
mockery of human hopes, be dull, I will not venture to 
determine ; but I do not hesitate, at any risk, to avow a 
conviction that no book in the world is more adapted to 
make a good man wretched. 



240 



LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. 



TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 

" 1814. 

" Dear W. — Your experience about tailors 
seems to be in point blank opposition to 
Burton, as much as the author of ' The Ex- 
cursion ' does, toto ccelo, differ in his notion of 
a country life, from the picture which W. H. 
has exhibited of the same. But, with a little 
explanation, you and B. may be reconciled. 
It is evident that he confined his observa- 
tions to the genuine native London Tailor. 
What freaks tailor-nature may take in the 
country is not for him to give account of. 
And certainly some of the freaks recorded 
do give an idea of the persons in question 
being beside themselves, rather than in 
harmony with the common, moderate, self- 
enjoyment of the rest of mankind. A flying- 
tailor, I venture to say, is no more in rerum 
naturd than a flying-horse or a Gryphon. 
His wheeling his airy-flight from the pre- 
cipice you mention, had a parallel in the 
melancholy Jew who toppled from the monu- 
ment. Were his limbs ever found ? Then, 
the man who cures diseases by words, is 
evidently an inspired tailor. Burton never 
affirmed that the art of sewing disqualified 
the practiser of it from being a fit organ for 
supernatural revelation. He never enters 
into such subjects. 'Tis the common, unin- 
spired tailor which he speaks of. Again, the 
person who makes his smiles to be heard, is 
evidently a man under possession ; a demo- 
niac tailor. A greater hell than his own 
must have a hand in this. I am not certain 
that the cause which you advocate has much 
reason for triumph. You seem to me to 
substitute light-headedness for light-hearted- 
ness by a trick, or not to know the difference. 
I confess, a grinning tailor would shock me. 
Enough of tailors ! 

" The ' 'scapes ' of the Great God Pan, 
who appeared among your mountains some 
dozen years since, and his narrow chance of 
being submerged by the swains, afforded me 
much pleasure. I can conceive the water- 
nymphs pulling for him. He would have 
been another Hylas — W. Hylas. In a mad 
letter which Capel Lofft wrote to M. M.* 
Phillips (now Sir Richard) I remember his 
noticing a metaphysical article of Pan, 

* Monthly Magazine. 



signed H., and adding, i I take your corre- 
spondent to be the same with Hylas.' Hylas 
had put forth a pastoral just before. How 
near the unfounded conjecture of the certainly 
inspired Lofft (unfounded as we thought it) 
was to being realised ! I can conceive him 
being 'good to all that wander in that 
perilous flood.' One J. Scott* (I know 
no more) is editor of ' The Champion.' 
Where is Coleridge ? 

" That Review you speak of, I am only 
sorry it did not appear last month. The 
circumstances of haste and peculiar bad 
spirits under which it was written, would 
have excused its slightness and inadequacy, 
the full load of which I shall suffer from its 
lying by so long, as it will seem to have 
done, from its postponement. I write with 
great difficulty, and can scarce command my 
own resolution to sit at writing an hour 
together. I am a poor creature, but I am 
leaving off gin. I hope you will see good- 
will in the thing. I had a difficulty to per- 
form not to make it all panegyric ; I have 
attempted to personate a mere stranger to 
you ; perhaps with too much strangeness. 
But you must bear that in mind when you 
read it, and not think that I am, in mind, 
distant from you or your poem, but that 
both are close to me, among the nearest of 
persons and things. I do but act the stranger 
in the Review. Then, I was puzzled about 
extracts and determined upon not giving one 
that had been in the * Examiner ; ' for 
extracts repeated give an idea that there is 
a meagre allowance of good things. By this 
way, I deprived myself of ' Sir Alfred 
Irthing,' and the reflections that conclude 
his story, which are the flower of the poem. 
Hazlitt had given the reflections before me. 
Then it is the first review I ever did, and I 
did not know how long I might make it. 
But it must speak for itself, if Gifford and his 
crew do not put words in its mouth, which 
I expect. Farewell. Love to all. Mary keeps 
very bad. C. Lamb." 



The apprehension expressed at the close 
of the last letter was dismally verified. The 
following contains Lamb's first burst of an 



* Afterwards the distinguished and unfortunate editor 
of the London Magazine. 



LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. 



241 



indignation which lasted amidst all his gen- 
tleness and tolerance unquenched through 
life :— 



TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 



1814. 



"Dear Wordsworth, — I told you my 
Review was a very imperfect one. But what 
you will see in the ' Quarterly ' is a spurious 
one, which Mr. Baviad Gifford has palmed 
upon it for mine. I never felt more vexed 
in my life than when I read it. I cannot 
give you an idea of what he has done to it, 
out of spite at me, because he once suffered 
me to be called a lunatic in his Review.* 
The language he has altered throughout. 
"Whatever inadequateness it had to- its sub- 
ject, it was, in point of composition, the 
prettiest piece of prose I ever writ ; and so 
my sister (to whom alone I read the MS.) 
said. That charm, if it had any, is all gone : 
more than a third of the substance is cut 
away, and that not all from one place, but 
passim, so as to make utter nonsense. Every 
warm expression is changed for a nasty cold 
one. 

" I have not the cursed alteration by me ; 
I shall never look at it again ; but for a 
specimen, I remember I had said the poet 
of ' The Excursion ' ' walks through common 
forests as through some Dodona or enchanted 
wood, and every casual bird that flits upon 
the boughs, like that miraculous one in 
Tasso, but in language more piercing than 
any articulate sounds, reveals to him far 
higher love-lays.' It is now (besides half-a- 
dozen alterations in the same half-dozen 
lines) 'but in language more intelligent 
reveals to him ; ' — that is one I remember. 

" But that would have been little, putting 
his shoemaker phraseology (for he was a 
shoemaker) instead of mine, which has been 
tinctured with better authors than his 
ignorance can comprehend ; — for I reckon 
myself a dab at prose; — verse I leave to my 
betters : God help them, if they are to be so 
reviewed by friend and foe as you have been 
this quarter ! I have read ' It won't do.' f 

* In alluding to Lamb's note on the great scene of 
" The Broken Heart," where Calantha dances on, after 
hearing at every pause of some terrible calamity, a writer 
in the " Quarterly" had affected to excuse the writer as 
a " maniac ; " a suggestion which circumstances rendered 
most cruel. 

t Though the article on "The Excursion," in the 



But worse than altering words ; he has kept 
a few members only of the part I had done 
best, which was to explain all I could of 
your 'Scheme of Harmonies,' as I had 
ventured to call it, between the external 
universe and what within us answers to it. 
To do this I had accumulated a good many 
short passages, rising in length to the end, 
weaving in the extracts as if they came in 
as a part of the text naturally, not obtruding 
them as specimens. Of this part a little is 
left, but so as, without conjuration, no man 
could tell what I was driving at. A proof 
of it you may see (though not judge of the 
whole of the injustice) by these words. I had 
spoken something about 'natural methodism;' 
and after follows, ' and therefore the tale of 
Margaret should have been postponed ' (I 
forget my words, or his words) ; now the 
reasons for postponing it are as deducible 
from what goes before, as they are from the 
104th Psalm. The passage whence I deduced 
it, has vanished, but clapping a colon before 
a therefore is always reason enough for 
Mr. Baviad Gifford to allow to a reviewer 
that is not himself. I assure you my com- 
plaints are founded. I know how sore a 
word altered makes one ; but, indeed, of 
this review the whole complexion is gone. 
I regret only that I did not keep a copy. I 
am sure you would have been pleased with 
it, because I have been feeding my fancy for 
some months with the notion of pleasing 
you. Its imperfection or inadequateness in 
size and method I knew ; but for the writing- 
part of it I was fully satisfied ; I hoped it 
would make more than atonement. Ten or 
twelve distinct passages come to my mind, 
which are gone, and what is left is, of course, 
the worse for their having been there ; the 
eyes are pulled out, and the bleeding sockets 
are left. 

" I read it at Arch's shop with my face 
burning with vexation secretly, with just such 
a feeling as if it had been a review written 
against myselfj making false quotations from 
me. But I am ashamed to say so much 
about a short piece. How are you served ! 
and the labours of years turned into contempt 
by scoundrels ! 

" But I could not but protest against your 

" Edinburgh Review," commenced "This will never do!" 
it contained ample illustrations of the author's genius, 
and helped the world to disprove its oracular beginning. 



242 



LETTERS TO MISS HUTCHINSON AND WORDSWORTH. 



taking that thing as mine. Every 'pretty 
expression (I know there were many) ; every 
warm expression (there was nothing else) 
is vulgarised and frozen. — But if they catch 
me in their camps again, let them spitchcock 
me ! They had a right to do it, as no name 
appears to it, and Mr. Shoemaker Gifford, I 
suppose, never waived a right he had since 
he commenced author. Heaven confound 
him and all caitiffs ! C. L." 



The following letter to Mrs. Wordsworth's 
sister, who resided with the poet at Eydal, 
relates to matters of yet nearer interest. 

TO MISS HUTCHINSON. 

" Thursday, 19th Oct., 1815. 

" Dear Miss H., — I am forced to be the 
replier to your letter, for Mary has been ill, 
and gone from home these five weeks 
yesterday. She has left me very lonely, and 
very miserable. I stroll about, but there is 
no rest but at one's own fireside, and there is 
no rest for me there now. I look forward to 
the worse half being past, and keep up as 
well as I can. She has begun to show some 
favourable symptoms. The return of her 
disorder has been frightfully soon this time, 
with scarce a six months' interval. I am 
almost afraid my worry of spirits about the 
E. I. House was partly the cause of her 
illness, but one always imputes it to the cause 
next at hand ; more probably it comes from 
some cause we have no control over or con- 
jecture of. It cuts sad great slices out of 
the time, the little time, we shall have to live 
together. I don't know but the recurrence 
of these illnesses might help me to sustain 
her death better than if we had had no 
partial separations. But I won't talk of 
death. I will imagine us immortal, or forget 
that we are otherwise. By God's blessing, 
in a few weeks we may be making our meal 
together, or sitting in the front row of the 
Pit at Drury lane, or taking our evening 
walk past the theatres, to look at the outside 
of them, at least, if not to be tempted in. 
Then we forget we are assailable ; we are 
strong for the time as rocks ; — ' the wind 
is tempered to the shorn Lambs.' Poor 
C. Lloyd, and poor Priscilla ! I feel I 
hardly feel enough for him ; my own calami- 
ties press about me, and involve me in a 



thick integument not to be reached at by 
other folks' misfortunes. But I feel all I 
can — all the kindness I can, towards you all 
— God bless you ! I hear nothing from Cole- 
ridge. Yours truly, C. Lamb." 



The following three letters best speak for 
themselves : — 

TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 

"The conclusion of this epistle getting 
gloomy, I have chosen this part to desire 
our kindest loves to Mrs. Wordsworth and 
to Dorothea. Will none of you ever be in 
London again % 

" 1815. 

" Dear Wordsworth, — You have made me 
very proud with your successive book 
presents. I have been carefully through 
the two volumes, to see that nothing was 
omitted which used to be there. I think 
I miss nothing but a character in antithetic 
manner, which I do not know why you left 
out, — the moral to the boys building the 
giant, the omission whereof leaves it, hi my 
mind, less complete, — and one admirable line 
gone (or something come instead of it), ' the 
stone-chat, and the glancing sand-piper,' 
which was a line quite alive. I demand these 
at your hand. I am glad that you have not 
sacrificed a verse to those scoundrels. I 
would not have had you offer up the poorest 
rag that lingered upon the stript shoulders 
of little Alice Fell, to have atoned all their 
malice ; I would not have given 'em a red 
cloak to save their souls. I am afraid lest 
that substitution of a shell (a flat falsification 
of the history) for the household implement, 
as it stood at first, was a kind of tub thrown 
out to the beast, or rather thrown out for 
him. The tub was a good honest tub in its 
place, and nothing could fairly be said 
against it. You say you made the alteration 
for the ' friendly reader,' but the ' malicious ' 
will take it to himself. If you give 'em an 
inch, &c. The Preface is noble, and such as 
you should write. I wish I could set my 
name to it, Imprimatur, — but you have set 
it there yourself, and I thank you. I had 
rather be a door-keeper in your margin, 
than have their proudest text swelling with 
my eulogies. The poems in the volumes, 
which are new to me, are so much in the 



LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. 



old tone, that I hardly received them as 
novelties. Of those, of which I had no 
previous knowledge, the ' Four Yew Trees,'* 
and the mysterious company which you have 
assembled there, most struck me — 'Death 
the Skeleton and Time the Shadow.' It is a 
sight not for every youthful poet to dream 
of ; it is one of the last results he must have 
gone thinking on for years for. 'Laodamia ' 
is a very original poem ; I mean original 
with reference to your own manner. You 
have nothing like it. I should have seen it 
in a strange place, and greatly admired it, 
but not suspected its derivation. 

" Let me in this place, for I have writ you 
several letters naming it, mention that my 
brother, who is a picture -collector, has 
picked up an undoubtable picture of Milton. 
He gave a few shillings for it, and could get 
no history with it, but that some old lady 
had had it for a great many years. Its age 
is ascertainable from the state of the canvas, 
and you need only see it to be sure that it is 
the original of the heads in the Tonson 
editions, with which we are all so well 
familiar. Since I saw you I have had a 
treat in the reading way, which comes not 
every day,f the Latin Poems of V. Bourne, 
which were quite new to me. What a heart 
that man had, all laid out upon town scenes, 
a proper counterpoise to some people's rural 
extravaganzas. Why I mention him is, that 
your ' Power of Music ' reminded me of his 
poem of 'The Ballad-singer in the Seven 
Dials.' Do you remember his epigram on 
the old woman who taught Newton the 
ABC, which, after all, he says, he hesitates 
not to call Newton's ' Principia 1 ' I was 
lately fatiguing myself with going through a 
volume of fine words by Lord Thurlow ; 
excellent words ; and if the heart could live 
by words alone, it could desire no better 
regales ; but what an aching vacuum of 
matter ! I don't stick at the madness of it, 
for that is only a consequence of shutting his 
eyes and thinking he is in the age of the old 
Elizabeth poets. From thence I turned to 

* The poem on the four great yew trees of Borrow- 
dale, which the poet has, by the most potent magic of 
the imagination, converted into a temple for the ghastly 
forms of Death and Time " to meet at noon-tide," — a 
passage surely not surpassed in any English poetry 
written since the days of Milton. 

t The following little passage about Vincent Bourne 
has been previously printed. 



Bourne. What a sweet, unpretending, pretty- 
mannered, matter-fvl creal lire sucking from 
every flower, making a flower of everything, 
his diction all Latin, and his thoughts all 
English. Bless him ! Latin wasn't good 
enough for him. Why wasn't he content 
with the language which Gay and Prior 
wrote in ? 

" I am almost sorry that you printed 
extracts from those first poems,* or that you 
did not print them at length. They do not 
read to me as they do altogether. Besides, 
they have diminished the value of the original 
(which I possess) as a curiosity. I have 
hitherto kept them distinct in my mind as 
referring to a particular period of your life. 
All the rest of your poems are so much of a 
piece, they might have been written in the 
same week ; these decidedly speak of an 
earlier period. They tell more of what you 
had been reading. We were glad to see the 
poems 'by a female friend.'t The one on 
the wind is masterly, but not new to us. 
Being only three, perhaps you might have 
clapt a D. at the corner, and let it have 
past as a printer's mark to the uninitiated, 
as a delightful hint to the better instructed. 
As it is, expect a formal criticism on the 
poems of your female friend, and she must 
expect it. I should have written before, but 
I am cruelly engaged, and like to be. On 
Friday I was at office from ten in the 
morning (two hours dinner except) to eleven 
at night ; last night till nine. My business 
and office business in general have increased 
so ; I don't mean I am there every night, 
but I must expect a great deal of it. I 
never leave till four, and do not keep a 
holiday now once in ten times, where I used 
to keep all red-letter days, and some five 
days besides, which I used to dub Nature's 
holidays. I have had my day. I had 
formerly little to do. So of the little that is 
left of life, I may reckon two-thirds as dead, 
for time that a man may call his own is his 
life ; and hard work and thinking about it 
taint even the leisure hours, — stain Sunday 
with work-day contemplations. This is 
Sunday : and the head-ache I have is part 



* The " Evening Walk," and " Descriptive Sketches 
among the Alps " — Wordsworth's earliest poems — now 
happily restored in their entirety to their proper places 
in the poet's collected works. 

f By Miss Dorothea Wordsworth. 



R 2 



244 



LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. 



late hours at work the two preceding nights, 
and part later hours over a consoling pipe 
afterwards. But I find stupid acquiescence 
coming over me. I bend to the yoke, and it 
is almost with me and my household as with 
the man and his consort. 

' To them each evening had its glittering star, 
And every sabhath-day its golden sun ' — 

to such straits am I driven for the life of 
life, Time ! O that from that superfluity of 
holiday-leisure my youth wasted, ' Age might 
but take some hours youth wanted not.' 
N.B. — I have left off spirituous liquors for 
four or more months, with a moral certainty 
of its lasting.* Farewell, dear Wordsworth ! 

" O happy Paris, seat of idleness and 
pleasure ! from some returned English I 
hear, that not such a thing as a counting- 
house is to be seen in her streets, — scarce a 
desk. Earthquakes swallow up this mercan- 
tile city and its ' gripple merchants,' as 
Drayton hath it — ' born to be the curse of 
this brave isle ! ' I invoke this, not on 
account of any parsimonious habits the 
mercantile interest may have, but, to confess 
truth, because I am not fit for an office. 

" Farewell, in haste, from a head that is 
too ill to methodise, a stomach to digest, and 
all out of tune. Better harmonies await 
you ! C. Lamb." 



TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 

" Excuse this maddish letter ; I am too 
tired to write in forma. 

"1815. 

" Dear "Wordsworth, — The more I read of 
your two last volumes, the more I feel it 
necessary to make my acknowledgments for 
them in more than one short letter. The 
'Night Piece,' to which you refer me, I 
meant fully to have noticed ; but, the fact is, 
I come so fluttering and languid from 
business, tired with thoughts of it, frightened 
with fears of it, that when I get a few 
minutes to sit down to scribble (an action of 
the hand now seldom natural to me — I mean 

* Alas ! for moral certainty in this moral but mortal 
■world ! Lamb's resolution to leave off spirituous liquors 
was a brave one ; but he strengthened and rewarded it 
by such copious libations of porter, that his sister, for 
■whose sake mainly he attempted the sacrifice, entreated 
him to " live like himself," and in a few weeks after this 
assurance he obeyed her. 



voluntary pen-work) I lose all presential 
memory of what I had intended to say, and 
say what I can, talk about Vincent Bourne, 
or any casual image, instead of that which I 
had meditated, (by the way, I must look out 
V. B. for you). So I had meant to have 
mentioned 'Yarrow Visited,' with that stanza, 
' But thou, that didst appear so fair ; ' * than 
which I think no lovelier stanza can be found 
in the wide world of poetry ; — yet the poem, 
on the whole, seems condemned to leave 
behind it a melancholy of imperfect satisfac- 
tion, as if you had wronged the feeling with 
which, in what preceded it, you had resolved 
never to visit it, and as if the Muse had 
determined, in the most delicate manner, to 
make you, and scarce make you, feel it. Else, 
it is far superior to the other, which has but 
one exquisite verse in it, the last but one, 
or the two last — this has all fine, except, 
perhaps, that that of 'studious ease and 
generous cares,' has a little tinge of the less 
romantic about it. ' The Farmer of Tilsbury 
Vale ' is a charming counterpart to ' Poor 
Susan,' with the addition of that delicacy 
towards aberrations from the strict path, 
which is so fine in the ' Old Thief and the 
Boy by his side,' which always brings water 
into my eyes. Perhaps it is the worse for 
being a repetition ; ' Susan ' stood for the 
representative of poor Rus in TJrbe. There 
was quite enough to stamp the moral of the 
thing never to be forgotten ; ' bright volumes 
of vapour,' &c. The last verse of Susan was 
to be got rid of, at all events. It threw a 
kind of dubiety upon Susan's moral conduct. 
Susan is a servant maid. I see her trundling 
her mop, and contemplating the whirling 
phenomenon through blurred optics ; but to 
term her ' a poor outcast ' seems as much as 
to say that poor Susan was no better than 
she should be, which I trust was not what 
you meant to express. Eobin Goodfellow 
supports himself without that stick of a moral 
which you have thrown away ; but how I 
can be brought in felo de omittendo for that 
ending to the Boy-builders is a mystery. I 
can't say positively now, — I only know that 
no line oftener or readier occurs than that 
' Light-hearted boys, I will build up a Giant 



But thou, that didst appear so fair 

To fond imagination, 
Dost rival in the light of day 

Her delicate creation." 



LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. 



245 



with you.' It comes naturally, with a warm 
holiday, and the freshness of the blood. It 
is a perfect summer amulet, that I tie round 
my legs to quicken their motion when I go 
out a niaying. (N.B.) I don't often go out a 
maying ; — Must is the tense with me now. 
Do you take the pun 1 Young Romilly is 
divine ; * the reasons of his mother's grief 
being remediless — I never saw parental love 
carried up so high, towering above the other 
loves — Shakspeare had done something for 
the filial, in Cordelia, and, by implication, 
for the fatherly too, in Lear's resentment ; 
he left it for you to explore the depths of the 
maternal heart. I get stupid, and flat, and 
flattering ; what's the use of telling you what 
good things you have written, or — I- hope I 
may add — that I know them to be good 1 
Apropos — when I first opened upon the just- 
mentioned poem, in a careless tone, I said to 
Mary, as if putting a riddle, ' What is good 
for a bootless bene f ' To which, with infinite 
presence of mind, (as the jest-book has it) 
she answered, ' a shoeless pea.' It was the 
first joke she ever made. Joke the second I 
make. You distinguish well, in your old 
preface, between the verses of Dr. Johnson, 
of the ' Man in the Strand,' and that from 
1 The Babes in the Wood.' I was thinking, 
whether taking your own glorious lines — 

' And from the love which was in her soul 
For her youthful Romilly,' 

which, by the love I bear my own soul, I 
think have no parallel in any of the best old 
ballads, and just altering it to — 

' And from the great respect she felt 
For Sir Samuel Romilly,' 

would not have explained the boundaries of 
prose expression, and poetic feeling, nearly 
as well. Excuse my levity on such an occa- 
sion. I never felt deeply in my life if that 
poem did not make me, both lately and when 
I read it in MS. No alderman ever longed 
after a haunch of buck venison more than I 
for a spiritual taste of that ' White Doe' you 
promise. I am sure it is superlative, or will 
be when drest, i, e., printed. All things read 
raw to me in MS. ; to compare magna parvis, 

* The admirable little poem, entitled " The Force of 
Prayer," developing the depths of a widowed mother's 
grief, whose only son has been drowned in attempting 
to leap over the precipice of the " Wharf" at Bolton 



I cannot endure my own writings in that 
state. The only one which I think would 
not very much win upon me in print is 
Peter Bell. But I am not certain. You ask 
me about your preface. I like both that and 
the supplement without an exception. The 
account of what you mean by imagination is 
very valuable to me. It will help me to like 
some things in poetry better, which is a little 
humiliating in me to confess. I thought I 
could not be instructed in that science (I 
mean the critical), as I once heard old obscene, 
beastly Peter Pindar, in a dispute on Milton, 
say he thought that if he had reason to value 
himself upon one thing more than another, 
it was in knowing what good verse was. 
Who looked over your proof-sheets and left 
ordebo in that line of Virgil 1 

"My brother's picture of Milton is very 
finely painted, that is, it might have been 
done by a hand next to Vandyke's. It is the 
genuine Milton, and an object of quiet gaze 
for the half-hour at a time. Yet though I 
am confident there is no better one of him, 
the face does not quite answer to Milton. 
There is a tinge of petit (or petite, how do you 
spell it ?) querulousness about it ; yet, hang 
it ! now I remember better, there is not ; it 
is calm, melancholy and poetical. One of the 
copies of the poems you sent has precisely 
the same pleasant blending of a sheet of 
second volume with a sheet of first. I think 
it was page 245 ; but I sent it and had it 
rectified. It gave me, in the first impetus 
of cutting the leaves, just such a cold squelch 
as going down a plausible turning and sud- 
denly reading ' No thoroughfare.' Kobinson's 
is entire : I wish you would write more 
criticism about Spenser, &c. I think I could 
say something about him myself, but, Lord 
bless me ! these ' merchants and their spicy 

Abbey. The first line, printed in old English characters, 
from some old English ballad, 

' What is good for a bootless bene ? " 

suggests Miss Lamb's single pun. The following are the 
profoundest stanzas among those which excite her 
brother's most just admiration : — 

" If for a lover the lady wept, 
A solace she might borrow 
From death and from the passion of death j — 
Old Wharf might heal her sorrow. 

She weeps not for the wedding-day, 

Which was to be to-morrow : 
Her hope was a further-looking hope, 

And hers is a mother's sorrow." 



246 



LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. 



drugs,' which are so harmonious to sing of, 
they lime-twig up my poor soul and body, 
till I shall forget I ever thought myself a bit 
of a genius ! I can't even put a few thoughts 
on paper for a newspaper. I ( engross ' when 
I should * pen ' a paragraph. Confusion blast 
all mercantile transactions, all traffic, ex- 
change of commodities, intercourse between 
nations, all the consequent civilisation, and 
wealth, and amity, and link of society, and 
getting rid of prejudices, and knowledge of 
the face of the globe ; and rot the very firs 
of the forest, that look so romantic alive, 
and die into desks ! Vale. 

" Yours, dear W., and all yours, 

" C. Lamb." 

TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 

" April 9th, 1816. 

" Dear Wordsworth, — Thanks for the 
books you have given me and for all the 
books you mean to give me. I will bind up 
the Political Sonnets and Ode according to 
your suggestion. I have not bound the 
poems yet. I wait till people have done 
borrowing them. I think I shall get a chain 
and chain them to my shelves, more Bodleiano, 
aud people may come and read them at 
chain's length. For of those who borrow, 
some read slow ; some mean to read but 
don't read ; and some neither read nor meant 
to read, but borrow to leave you an opinion 
of their sagacity. I must do my money- 
borrowing friends the justice to say that 
there is nothing of this caprice or wantonness 
of alienation in them. When they borrow 
my money they never fail to make use of it. 
Coleridge has been here about a fortnight. 
His health is tolerable at present, though 
beset with temptations. In the first place, 
the Covent Garden Manager has declined 
accepting his Tragedy, though (having read 
it) I see no reason upon earth why it might 
not have run a very fair chance, though, 
it certainly wants a prominent part for a 
Miss O'Neil or a Mr. Kean. However, he 
is going to-day to write to Lord Byron to get 
it to Drury. Should you see Mrs. C, who 
has just written to C. a letter, which I have 
given him, it will be as well to say nothing 
about its fate, till some answer is shaped 
from Drury. He has two volumes printing 
together at Bristol, both finished as far as 
the composition goes ; the latter containing 



his fugitive poems, the former his Literary 
Life. Nature, who conducts every creature, 
by instinct, to its best end, has skilfully 
directed C. to take up his abode at a Chymist's 
Laboratory in Norfolk-street. She might as 
well have sent a Helluo Librorum for cure to 
the Vatican. God keep him inviolate among 
the traps and pitfalls ! He has done pretty 
well as yet. 

"Tell Miss H., my sister is every day 
wishing to be quietly sitting down to answer 
her very kind letter, but while C. stays she 
can hardly find a quiet time ; God bless him ! 

" Tell Mrs. W. her postscripts are always 
agreeable. They are so legible too. Your 
manual-graphy is terrible, dark asLycophron. 
'Likelihood,' for instance, is thus typified 

* I should not wonder if the constant 

making out of such paragraphs is the cause 
of that weakness in Mrs. W.'s eyes, as she is 
tenderly pleased to express it. Dorothy, I 
hear, has mounted spectacles ; so you have 
deoculated two of your dearest relations in 
life. Well, God bless you, and continue to 
give you power to write with a finger of 
power upon our hearts what you fail to 
impress, in corresponding lucidness, upon 
our outward eye-sight ! 

" Mary's love to all ; she is quite well. 

"I am called off to do the deposits on 
Cotton Wool — but why do I relate this to 
you, who want faculties to comprehend the 
great mystery of deposits, of interest, of 
warehouse rent, and contingent fund 1 Adieu ! 

« C, Lamb. 

" A longer letter when C. is gone back 
into the country, relating his success, &c. — 
my judgment of your new books, &c. &c. — I 
am scarce quiet enough while he stays. 

" Yours again, C. L." 



The next letter is fantastically written 
beneath a regular official order, the words in 
italics being printed. 



" Sir, — Please to state the weights and 
amounts of the following Lots of 
\ sold Sale, 181 for 

" Tour obedient Servant, 

" Chas. Lamb. 

Here is a most inimitable scrawl. 



LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH. 



247 



" Accountant's Office, 26th April, 1816.* 
"Dear W., — I have just finished the 
pleasing task of correcting the revise of the 
poems and letter. I hope they will come 
out faultless. One blunder I saw and 
shuddered at. The hallucinating rascal had 
printed battered for battened, this last not 
conveying any distinct sense to his gaping 
soul. The Eeader (as they call 'em) had dis- 
covered it, and given it the marginal brand, 
but the substitutory n had not yet appeared. 
I accompanied his notice with a most pathetic 
address to the printer not to neglect the cor- 
rection. I know how such a blunder would 
' batter at your peace.' With regard to the 
works, the Letter I read with unabated 
satisfaction. Such a thing was wanted ; 
called for. The parallel of Cotton with 
Burns I heartily approve. Iz. Walton hal- 
lows any page in which his reverend name 
appears. ' Duty archly bending to purposes 
of general benevolence' is exquisite. The 
poems I endeavoured not to understand, but 
to read them with my eye alone, and I think 
I succeeded. (Some people will do that 
when they come out, you'll say.) As if I 
were to luxuriate to-morrow at some picture- 
gallery I was never at before, and going by 
to-day by chance, found the door open, and 
having but five minutes to look about me, 
peeped in ; just such a chastised peep I took 
with my mind at the lines my luxuriating 
eye was coursing over unrestrained, not to 
anticipate another day's fuller satisfaction. 
Coleridge is printing ' Christabel,' by Lord 
Byron's recommendation to Murray, with 
what he calls a vision, ' Kubla Khan,' which 
said vision he repeats so enchantingly that it 
irradiates and brings heaven and elysian 
bowers into my parlour while he sings or 
says it ; but there is an observation, ' Never 
tell thy dreams,' and I am almost afraid that 
'Kubla Khan' is an owl that won't bear 
day-light. I fear lest it should be discovered 
by the lantern of typography and clear re- 
ducting to letters no better than nonsense 
or no sense. When I was young, I used to 
chant with ecstacy ' Mild Arcadians ever 
blooming,' till somebody told me it was 
meant to be nonsense. Even yet I have a 
lingering attachment to it, and I think it 

* This is shown hy the postmark to he an error ; it 
should he 1818. 



better than ' Windsor Forest,' 'Dying Chris- 
tian's Address,' &c. Coleridge has sent his 
tragedy to D. L. T. ; it cannot be acted this 
season, and by their manner of receiving, I 
hope he will be able to alter it to make them 
accept it for next. He is, at present, under 
the medical care of a Mr. Oilman (KillmaD I) 
at Highgate, where he plays at leaving off 
laud — m ; I think his essentials not touched ; 
he is very bad, but then he wonderfully picks 
up another day, and his face, when he repeats 
his verses, hath its ancient glory ; an arch- 
angel a little damaged. Will Miss H. 
pardon our not replying at length to her 
kind letter ? We are not quiet enough ; 
Morgan is with us every day, going betwixt 
Highgate and the Temple. Coleridge is 
absent but four miles, and the neighbourhood 
of such a man is as exciting as the presence 
of fifty ordinary persons. 'Tis enough to be 
within the whiff and wind of his genius for 
us not to possess our souls in quiet. If I 
lived with him or the Author of the Excursion, 
I should, in a very little time, lose my own 
identity, and be dragged along in the current 
of other people's thoughts, hampered in a 
net. How cool I sit in this office, with no 
possible interruption further than what I 
may term material ! There is not as much 
metaphysics in thirty-six of the people here 
as there is in the first page of Locke's 
'Treatise on the Human Understanding,' 
or as much poetry as in any ten lines of the 
' Pleasures of Hope,' or more natural ' Beg- 
gar's Petition.' I never entangle myself in 
any of their speculations. Interruptions, if 
I try to write a letter even, I have dreadful. 
Just now, within four lines, I was called off 
for ten minutes to consult dusty old books 
for the settlement of obsolete errors. I hold 
you a guinea you don't find the chasm where 
I left off, so excellently the wounded sense 
closed again and was healed. 

"N.B. — Nothing said above to the con- 
trary, but that I hold the personal presence 
of the two mentioned potent spirits at a rate 
as high as any ; but I pay dearer ; what 
amuses others robs me of myself ; my mind 
is positively discharged into their greater 
currents, but flows with a willing violence. 
As to your question about work ; it is far 
less oppressive to me than it was, from cir- 
cumstances ; it takes all the golden part of 



248 



" LONDON MAGAZINE "—JOHN SCOTT. 



the day away, a solid lump, from ten to four ; 
but it does not kill my peace as before. Some 
day or other I shall be in a taking again. My 
Ik ad aches, and you have had enough. God 
bless you ! C. Lamb." 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE "LONDON MAGAZINE"' CHARACTER AND FATE OF 

MR. JOHN SCOTT, ITS EDITOR GLIMPSE OF MR. THOMAS 

GRIFFITHS WAINWRIGHT, ONE OF ITS CONTRIBUTORS 

MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS OF LAMB TO WORDSWORTH, 
COLERIDGE, AND OTHERS. 

[1818 to 1825.] 

Lamb's association with Hazlitt in the year 
1820 introduced him to that of the " London 
Magazine," which supplied the finest sti- 
mulus his intellect had ever received, and 
induced the composition of the Essays fondly 
and familiarly known under the fantastic 
title of Elia. Never was a periodical work 
commenced with happier auspices, numbering 
a list of contributors more original in thought, 
more fresh in spirit, more sportive in fancy, 
or directed by an editor better qualified by 
nature and study to preside, than this 
/" London." There was Lamb, with humanity 
I ripened among town-bred experiences, and 
pathos matured by sorrow, at his wisest, 
sagest, airiest, widiscreetest, best ; Barry 
Cornwall, in the first bloom of his modest 
and enduring fame, streaking the darkest 
passion with beauty ; John Hamilton Rey- 
nolds, lighting up the wildest eccentricities 
and most striking features of many-coloured 
life with vivid fancy ; and, with others of 
less note, Hazlitt, whose pen, unloosed from 
the chain which earnest thought and meta- 
physical dreamings had woven, gave radiant 
expression to the results of the solitary 
musings of many years. Over these con- 
tributors John Scott presided, himself a 
critic of remarkable candour, eloquence, and 
discrimination, unfettered by the dogmas of 
contending schools of poetry and art ; apt to 
discern the good and beautiful in all ; and 
having, as editor, that which Kent recog- 
nised in Lear, which subjects revere in 
kings, and boys admire in schoolmasters, 
and contributors should welcome in editors 
— authority ; — not manifested in a worrying, 



matters, but in a judicious and steady super- 
intendence of the whole ; with a wise allow- 
ance of the occasional excesses of wit and 
genius. In this respect, Mr. Scott differed 
entirely from a celebrated poet, who was 
induced, just a year after, to undertake the 
Editorship of the " New Monthly Magazine," 
an office for which, it may be said, with all 
veneration for his poetic genius, he was the 
most unfit person who could be found in the 
wide world of letters — who regarded a maga- 
zine as if it were a long affidavit, or a short 
answer in Chancery, in which the absolute 
truth of every sentiment and the propriety of 
every jest were verified by the editor's oath 
or solemn affirmation ; who stopped the press 
for a week at a comma ; balanced contending 
epithets for a fortnight ; and, at last, grew 
rash in despair, and tossed the nearest, and 
often the worst article, "unwhipped of 
justice," to the impatient printer. Mr. Scott, 
indeed, was more fit to preside over a little 
commonwealth of authors than to hold a 
despotic rule over subject contributors ; he 
had not the airy grace of Jeffrey by which 
he might give a certain familiar liveliness to 
the most laborious disquisitions, and shed 
the glancing light of fancy among party 
manifestoes ; — nor the boisterous vigour of 
Wilson, riotous in power, reckless in wisdom, 
fusing the production of various intellects, 
into one brilliant reflection of his own master- 
mind ; — and it was well that he wanted 
these weapons of a tyranny which his chief 
contributors were too original and too sturdy 
to endure. He heartily enjoyed his position ; 
duly appreciated his contributors and him- 
self; and when he gave audience to some 
young aspirant for periodical honours at a 
late breakfast, amidst the luxurious con- 
fusion of newspapers, reviews, and uncut 
novels, lying about in fascinating litter, and 
carelessly enunciated schemes for bright suc- 
cessions of essays, he seemed destined for 
many years of that happy excitement in 
which thought perpetually glows into un- 
ruffled but energetic language, and is assured 
by the echoes of the world. 

Alas ! a few days after he thus appeared 
the object of admiration and envy to a young 
visitor, in his rooms in York-street, he was 
stretched on a bed of mental agony — the 
foolish victim of the guilty custom of a 
world which would have laughed at him for 



THOMAS GRIFFITHS WAINWRIGHT. 



249 



regarding himself as within the sphere of its 
opinion, if he had not died to shame it ! In 
a luckless hour, instead of seeking to oppose 
the bitter personalities of " Blackwood " by 
the exhibition of a serener power, he rushed 
with spurious chivalry into a personal con- 
test ; caught up the weapons which he had 
himself denounced, and sought to unmask 
his opponents and draw them beyond the 
pale of literary courtesy ; placed himself 
thus in a doubtful position in which he could 
neither consistently reject an appeal to the 
conventional arbitrament of violence nor 
embrace it ; lost his most legitimate oppor- 
tunity of daring the unhallowed strife, and 
found another with an antagonist connected 
with the quarrel only by too zealous a 
friendship ; and, at last, met his death almost 
by lamentable accident, in the uncertain 
glimmer of moonlight, from the hand of one 
who went out resolved not to harm him ! 
Such was the melancholy result — first of a 
controversy too envenomed — and afterwards 
of enthralment in usages, absurd in all, but 
most absurd when applied by a literary man 
to a literary quarrel. Apart from higher 
considerations, it may befit a life destined for 
the listless excesses of gaiety to be cast on 
an idle brawl ; — " a youth of folly, an old 
age of cards " may be no great sacrifice to 
preserve the hollow truce of fashionable 
society ; but for men of thought — whose 
minds are their possession, and who seek to 
live in the minds of others by sympathy with 
their thoughts — for them to hazard a thought- 
ful being because they dare not own that 
they prefer life to death — contemplation to 
the grave — the preparation for eternity to 
the unbidden entrance on its terrors, would 
be ridiculous if it did not become tragical. 
" Sir, I am a metaphysician ! " said Hazlitt 
once, when in a fierce dispute respecting the 
colours of Holbein and Vandyke, words 
almost became things ; " and nothing makes 
an impression upon me but abstract ideas ; " 
and woeful, indeed, is the mockery when 
thinkers condescend to be duellists ! 

The Magazine did not perish with its 
Editor ; though its unity of purpose was lost, 
it was still rich in essays of surpassing indi- 
vidual merit ; among which the masterly 
vindication of the true dramatic style by 
Darley ; the articles of Cary, the admirable 
translator of Dante ; and the " Confessions 



of an English Opium Eater," held a distin- 
guished place. Mr. De Quincy, whose youth 
bad been inspired by enthusiastic admiration 
of Coleridge, shown in contributions to " Tin 
Friend," not unworthy of his master, and 
substantial contributions of the blessings of 
fortune, came up to London, and found an 
admiring welcome from Messrs. Taylor and 
Hessey, the publishers into whose hands the 
" London Magazine " had passed. After the 
good old fashion of the great trade, these 
genial booksellers used to assemble their 
contributors round their hospitable table in 
Fleet Street, where Mr. De Quincy was intro- 
duced to his new allies. Among the contri- 
butors who partook of their professional 
festivities, was a gentleman whose subse- 
quent career has invested the recollection 
of his appearances in the familiarity of 
social life with fearful interest — Mr. Thomas 
Griffiths Wainwright. He was then a young 
man ; on the bright side of thirty ; with a 
sort of undress military air, and the conver- 
sation of a smart, lively, clever, heartless, 
voluptuous coxcomb. It was whispered that 
he had been an officer in the Dragoons ; had 
spent more than one fortune ; and he now 
condescended to take a part in periodical 
literature, with the careless grace of an 
amateur who felt himself above it. He was 
an artist also ; sketched boldly and graphi- 
cally ; exhibited a portfolio of his own 
drawings of female beauty, in which the 
voluptuous trembled on the borders of the 
indelicate ; and seized on the critical depart- 
ment of the Fine Arts, both in and out of 
the Magazine, undisturbed by the presence 
or pretensions of the finest critic on Art 
who ever wrote — William Hazlitt. On this 
subject, he composed, for the Magazine, 
under the signature of " Janus Weather- 
cock," articles of flashy assumption — in 
which disdainful notices of living artists were 
set off by fascinating references to the per- 
sonal appearance, accomplishments, and luxu- 
rious appliances of the writer, ever the first 
hero of his essay. He created a new sensa- 
tion in the sedate circle, not only by his 
braided surtouts, jewelled fingers, and vari- 
ous neck-handkerchiefs, but by ostentatious 
contempt for everything in the world but 
elegant enjoyment. Lamb, who delighted to 
find sympathy in dissimilitude, fancied that 
he really liked him ; took, as he ever did, 



250 



LETTER TO WORDSWORTH. 



the genial side of character ; and, instead of 
disliking the rake in the critic, thought it 
pleasant to detect so much taste and good- 
nature in a fashionable roue ; and regarded 
all his vapid gaiety, which to severer observ- 
ers looked like impertinence, as the playful 
effusion of a remarkably guileless nature. 
We lost sight of him when the career of the 
" London Magazine " ended ; and Lamb did 
not live to learn the sequel of his history. 



In 1819, Mr. Wordsworth, encouraged by 
the extending circle of his earnest admirers, 
announced for publication his "Peter Bell" 
— a poem written in the first enthusiasm of 
his system, and exemplifying, amidst beauty 
and pathos of the finest essence, some of its 
most startling peculiarities. Some wicked 
jester, gifted with more ingenuity and bold- 
ness than wit, anticipated the real " Simon 
Pure," by a false one, burlesquing some of 
the characteristics of the poet's homeliest 
style. This grave hoax produced the follow- 
ing letter from Lamb, appropriately written 
in alternate lines of red and black ink, till 
the last sentence, in which the colours are 
alternated, word by word — even to the sig- 
nature — and "Mary's love," at the close ; so 
that " Mary " is black, and her " love " red. 



TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 



1819. 



" Dear Wordsworth, — I received a copy of 
' Peter Bell ' a week ago, and I hope the 
author will not be offended if I say I do not 
much relish it. The humour, if it is meant 
for humour, is forced ; and then the price ! 
— sixpence would have been dear for it. 
Mind I do not mean your ' Peter Bell,' but 
a 'Peter Bell,' which preceded it about a 
week, and is in every bookseller's shop 
window in London, the type and paper 
nothing differing from the true one, the 
preface signed W. W., and the supplemen- 
tary preface quoting as the author's words 
an extract from the supplementary preface 
to the 'Lyrical Ballads.' Is there no law 
against these rascals 1 I would have this 
Lambert Sininel whipt at the cart's tail. 
Who started the spurious ' P. B.' I have not 
heard. I should guess, one of the sneering 

; but I have heard no name mentioned. 

' Peter Bell ' (not the mock one) is excellent. 



For its matter I mean. I cannot say the 
style of it quite satisfies me. It is too 
lyrical. The auditors to whom it is feigned 
to be told, do not arride me. I had rather 
it had been told me, the reader, at once. 
' Hartleap Well ' is the tale for me ; in 
matter as good as this, in manner infinitely 
before it, in my poor judgment. Why did 
you not add ' The Waggoner ' ? — Have I 
thanked you, though, yet, for ' Peter Bell ' ? 
I would not not have it for a good deal of 

money. C is very foolish to scribble 

about books. Neither his tongue nor fingers 
are very retentive. But I shall not say any- 
thing to him about it. He would only begin a 
very long story with a very long face, and I 
see him far too seldom to teaze him with 
affairs of business or conscience when I do 
see him. He never comes near our house, 
and when we go to see him he is generally 
writing, or thinking : he is writing in his 
study till the dinner comes, and that is 
scarce over before the stage summons us 
away. The mock ' P. B.' had only this effect 
on me, that after twice reading it over in 
hopes to find something diverting in it, I 
reached your two books off the shelf, and 
set into a steady reading of them, till I had 
nearly finished both before I went to bed. 
The two of your last edition, of course, I mean. 
And in the morning I awoke determined 
to take down the ' Excursion.' I wish the 
scoundrel imitator could know this. But 
why waste a wish on him 1 I do not believe 
that paddling about with a stick in a pond, 
and fishing up a dead author, whom his 
intolerable wrongs had driven to that deed 
of desperation, would turn the heart of one 
of these obtuse literary Bells. There is no 
Cock for such Peters ; — hang 'em ! I am 
glad this aspiration came upon the red ink 
line. It is more of a bloody curse. I have 
delivered over your other presents to 
Alsager and G. D. A., I am sure, will value 
it, and be proud of the hand from which it 
came. To G. D. a poem is a poem. His 
own as good as anybody's, and, God bless 
him ! anybody's as good as his own ; for I 
do not think he has the most distant guess 
of the possibility of one poem being better 
than another. The gods, by denying him 
the very faculty itself of discrimination, have 
effectually cut off every seed of envy in his 
bosom. But with envy, they excided curiosity 



LETTERS TO COLERIDGE AND MISS WORDSWORTH. 



251 



also ; and if you wish the copy again, which 
you destined for him, I think I shall be able 
to find it again for you, on his third shelf, 
where he stuffs his presentation copies, ; 
uncut, in shape and matter resembling a 
lump of dry dust ; but on carefully removing 
that stratum, a thing like a pamphlet will 
emerge. I have tried this with fifty different 
poetical works that have been given G. D. 
in return for as many of his own per- 
formances, and I confess I never had any 
scruple in taking my oivn again, wherever I 
found it, shaking the adherences off — and by 
this means one copy of ' my works ' served 
for G. D. — and, with a little dusting, was 

made over to my good friend Dr. G , 

who little thought whose leavings he was 
taking when he made me that graceful bow. 
By the way, the Doctor is the only one of 
my acquaintance who bows gracefully, my 
town acquaintance, I mean. How do you 
like my way of writing with two inks 1 I 
think it is pretty and motley. Suppose 
Mrs. W. adopts it, the next time she holds 
the pen for you. My dinner waits. I have" 
no time to indulge any longer in these 
laborious curiosities. God bless you, and 
cause to thrive and burgeon whatsoever you 
write, and fear no inks of miserable poet- 
asters. Yours truly, 

" Charles Lamb. 
" Mary's love." 



The following letter, probably written 
about this time, is entirely in red ink, 

TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

" Dear Coleridge, — A letter written in the 
blood of your poor friend would indeed be of 
a nature to startle you ; but this is nought 
but harmless red ink, or, as the witty mer- 
cantile phrase hath it, clerk's blood. Hang 
'em ! my brtiin, skin, flesh, bone, carcase, 
soul, time is all theirs. The Royal Exchange, 
Gresham's Folly, hath me body and spirit. 

I admire some of 's lines on you, and I 

admire your postponing reading them. He 
is a sad tattler, but this is under the rose. 
Twenty years ago he estranged one friend 
from me quite, whom I have been regretting, 
but never could regain since ; he almost 
alienated you also from me, or me from you, 
I don't know which. But that breach is 



closed. The dreary sea is filled up. He lias 
lately been at work 'telling again,' as they 
call it, a most gratuitous piece of mischief, 
and has caused a coolness betwixt me and a 
(not friend exactly, but) intimate acquaint- 
ance. I suspect also, he saps Manning's 
faith in me, who am to Manning more than 
an acquaintance. Still I like his writing 
verses about you. Will your kind host and 
hostess give us a dinner next Sunday, and 
better still, not expect us if the weather 
is very bad. Why you should refuse twenty 
guineas per sheet for Blackwood's or any 
other magazine passes my poor comprehen- 
sion. But, as Strap says, ' you know best.' 
I have no quarrel with you about prsepran- 
dial avocations, so don't imagine one. That 
Manchester sonnet* I think very likely is 
Capel Lofft's. Another sonnet appeared with 
the same initials in the same paper, which 

turned out to be P 's. What do the 

rascals mean 1 Am I to have the fathering 
of what idle rhymes every beggarly poet- 
aster pours forth ! Who put your marine 
sonnet ' about Browne ' into ' Blackwood ' ? 
I did not. So no more, till we meet. 

" Ever yours, C. L." 



The following letter (of post-mark 1822) is 
addressed to Trinity College, Cambridge, 
when Miss Wordsworth was visiting her 
brother, Dr. Wordsworth. 



" TO MISS WORDSWORTH. 

" Mary perfectly approves of the appro- 
priation of the feathers, and wishes them 
peacock's for your fair niece's sake. 

" 1822, 

"Dear Miss Wordsworth, — I had just 
written the above endearing words when 

M tapped me on the shoulder with an 

invitation to cold goose pie, which I was 
not bird of that sort enough to decline. 

Mrs. M , I am most happy to say, is 

better. Mary has been tormented with a 
rheumatism, which is leaving her. I am 
suffering from the festivities of the season. I 
wonder how my misused carcase holds it out. 
I have played the experimental philosopher 

* A sonnet in " Blackwood," dated Manchester, and 
signed C. L. 



252 



LETTER TO WILSON. 



on it, that's certain. Willy* shall be wel- 
come to a mince-pie, and a bout at com- 
merce whenever he comes. He was in our 
eye. I am glad you liked my new year's 
speculations, everybody likes them, except 
the author of the ' Pleasures of Hope.' Dis- 
appointment attend him ! How I like to be 
liked, and what I do to be liked ! They 
natter me in magazines, newspapers, and all 
the minor reviews ; the Quarterlies hold 
aloof. But they must come into it in time, 
or their leaves be waste paper. Salute Trinity 
Library in my name. Two special things 
are worth seeing at Cambridge, a portrait 
of Cromwell, at Sydney, and a better of 
Dr. Harvey, (who found out that blood was 
red) at Dr. Davy's ; you should see them. 
Coleridge is pretty well ; I have not seen 
him, but hear often of him from Allsop, who 
sends me hares and pheasants twice a week ; 
I can hardly take so fast as he gives. I have 
almost forgotten butcher's meat, as plebeian. 
Are you not glad the cold is gone ? I find 
winters not so agreeable as they used to be 
' when winter bleak had charms for me.' I 
cannot conjure up a kind similitude for those 
snowy flakes. Let them keep to twelfth 
cakes ! 

" Mrs. P , our Cambridge friend, has 

been in town. You do not know the W 's 

in Trumpington Street. They are capital 
people. Ask anybody you meet who is the 
biggest woman in Cambridge, and I'll hold 

you a wager they'll say Mrs. ; she broke 

down two benches in Trinity gardens, one on 
the confines of St. John's, which occasioned a 
litigation between the Societies as to re- 
pairing it. In warm weather, she retires 
into an ice-cellar (literally !), and dates the 
returns of the years from a hot Thursday 
some twenty years back. She sits in a room 
with opposite doors and windows, to let in a 
thorough draught, which gives her slenderer 
friends tooth-aches. She is to be seen in the 
market every morning at ten cheapening 
fowls, which I observe the Cambridge poul- 
terers are not sufficiently careful to stump. 

"Having now answered most of the points 
contained in your letter, let me end with 
assuring you of our very best kindness, and 
excuse Mary for not handling the pen on 
this occasion, especially as it has fallen into 

* Mr. Wordsworth's second sou, then at the Charter- 
house. 



so much better hands ! Will Dr. W. accept 
of my respects at the end of a foolish letter ? 

"C. L." 

The following letter to Mr. Walter Wilson, 
who was composing a " Life of De Foe," in 
reply to inquiries on various points of the 
great novelist's history, is dated 24th Feb., 
1823. 

TO MR. WALTER WILSON. 

" Dear W., — I write that you may not 
think me neglectful, not that I have anything 
to say. In answer to your questions, it was 
at your house I saw an edition of ' Roxana,' 
the preface to which stated that the author 
had left out all that part of it which related 
to Roxana's daughter persisting in imagining 
herself to be so, in spite of the mother's 
denial, from certain hints she had picked up, 
and throwing herself continually in her 
mother's way (as Savage is said to have done 
in the way of his, prying in at windows to 
get a glimpse of her), and that it was by 
advice of Southern, who objected to the 
circumstances as being untrue, when the 
rest of the story was founded on fact ; which 
shows S. to have been a stupid-ish fellow. 
The incidents so resemble Savage's story, 
that I taxed Godwin with taking Falkner 
from his life by Dr. Johnson. You should 
have the edition (if you have not parted with 
it), for I saw it never but at your place at 
the Mews' Gate, nor did I then read it to 
compare it with my own ; only I know the 
daughter's curiosity is the best part of my 
' Eoxana.' The prologue you speak of was 
mine, and so named, but not worth much. 
You ask me for two or three pages of verse. 
I have not written so much since you knew 
me. I am altogether prosaic. May be I 
may touch off a sonnet in time. I do not 
prefer 'Colonel Jack' to either 'Robinson 
Crusoe ' or ' Roxana.' I only, spoke of the 
beginning of it, his childish history. The 
rest is poor. I do not know anywhere any 
good character of De Foe besides what you 
mention.* I do not know that Swift men- 

• Those who wish to read an admirable character of 
De Foe, associated with the most valuable information 
respecting his personal history, should revert to an article 
in the " Edinburgh Review" on De Foe, attributed to 
the author of the " Lives of the Statesmen of the Com- 
monwealth," and of the delightful "Biography of Oliver 
Goldsmith,' 9 almost as charming as its subject. 



LETTERS TO MISS HUTCHINSON AND MRS. IIAZLITT. 



253 



tions him ; Pope does. I forget if D'Israeli 
has. Dunlop I think has nothing of him. 
He is quite new ground, and scarce known 
beyond ' Crusoe.' , I do not know who wrote 
' Quart.' I never thought of ' Quarl ' as 
having an author. It is a poor imitation ; 
the monkey is the best in it, and his pretty 
dishes made of shells. Do you know the paper 
in the ' Englishman ' by Sir Richard Steele, 
giving an account of Selkirk 1 It is admira- 
ble, and has all the germs of ' Crusoe.' You 
must quote it entire. Captain G. Carleton 
wrote his own memoirs, they are about Lord 
Peterborough's campaign in Spain, and a 
good book. ' Puzzelli ' puzzles me, and I am 
in a cloud about ' Donald M'Leod.' I never 
heard of them ; so you see, my dear Wilson, 
what poor assistances I can give in the way 
of information. I wish your book out, for I 
shall like to see anything about De Foe or 
from you. Your old friend, C. Lamb. 

" From my and your old compound." 



The following is the fragment of a letter 
addressed in the beginning of 1823 to Miss 
Hutchinson at Eamsgate, whither she had 
gone with an invalid relative. 

TO MISS HUTCHINSON. 

" April 25th, 1823. 

" Dear Miss H., — It gives me great pleasure 
(the letter now begins) to hear that you got 

down so smoothly, and that Mrs. M 's 

spirits are so good and enterprising. It shows 
whatever her posture may be, that her mind 
at least is not supine. I hope the excursion 
will enable the former to keep pace with its 
outstripping neighbour. Pray present our 
kindest wishes to her and all ; (that sentence 
should properly have come into the Postscript, 
but we airy mercurial spirits, there is no 
keeping us in). ' Time ' (as was said of one 
of us) ' toils after us in vain.' I am afraid 
our co-visit with Coleridge was a dream. I 
shall not get away before the end (or middle) 
of June, and then you will be frog-hopping 
at Boulogne ; and besides, I think the 
Gilmans would scarce trust him with us ; I 
have a malicious knack at cutting of apron- 
strings. The Saints' days you speak of have 
long since fled to heaven, with Astrsea, and 
the cold piety of the age lacks fervour to 
recall them ; only Peter left his key— the 



iron one of the two that * shuts amain' — and 
that is the reason I am locked up. Mean- 
while of afternoons we pick uj> primroses at 
Dalston, and Mary corrects me when I call 
'em cowslips. God bless you all, and pray, re- 
member me euphoniously to Mr. G . 

That Lee Priory must be a dainty bower. 
Is it built of flints 1 — and does it stand at 
Kingsgate 1 " 



In this year, Lamb made his greatest essay 
in house-keeping, by occupying Colebrook 
Cottage at Islington, on the banks of his 
beloved New River. There occurred the 
immersion of George Dyer at noontide, which 
supplies the subject of one of " The Last 
Essays of Elia ; " and which is veritably re- 
lated in the following letter of Lamb, which 
is curious, as containing the germ of that 
delightful article, and the first sketches of 
the Brandy-and-Water Doctor therein cele- 
brated as miraculous. 

TO MRS. HAZLITT. 

" November, 1823. 
" Dear Mrs. H., — Sitting down to write a 
letter is such a painful operation to Mary, 
that you must accept me as her proxy. You 
have seen our house. What I now tell you 
is literally true. Yesterday week, George Dyer 
called upon us, at one o'clock, {bright noon 
day) on his way to dine with Mrs. Barbauld, 
at Newington. He sat with Mary about half 
an hour, and took leave. The maid saw him 
go out, from her kitchen window, but sud- 
denly losing sight of him, ran up in a fright 
to Mary. G. D., instead of keeping the slip 
that leads to the gate, had deliberately, staff 
in hand, in broad open day, marched into 
the New Eiver. He had not his spectacles 
on, and you know his absence. Who helped 
him out, they can hardly tell, but between 'em 
they got him out, drenched thro' and thro'. 
A mob collected by that time, and accom- 
panied him in. ' Send for the Doctor ! ' they 
said : and a one-eyed fellow, dirty and drunk, 
was fetched from the public-house at the end> 
where it seems he lurks, for the sake of pick- 
ing up water-practice ; having formerly had 
a medal from the Humane Society, for some 
rescue. By his advice, the patient was put 
between blankets ; and when I came home 
at four, to dinner, I found G. D. a-bed, and 



254 



LETTERS TO BARTON. 



raving, light-headed, with the brandy-and 
water which the doctor had administered. 
He sung, laughed, whimpered, screamed, 
babbled of guardian angels, would get up 
and go home ; but we kept him there by 
force ; and by next morning he departed 
sobered, and seems to have received no 
injury. All my friends are open-mouthed 
about having paling before the river, but I 
cannot see, because an absent man chooses to 
walk into a river, with his eyes open, at 
midday, I am any the more likely to be 
drowned in it, coming home at midnight. 

" I have had the honour of dining at the 
Mansion House, on Thursday last, by special 
card from the Lord Mayor, who never saw 
my face, nor I his ; and all from being a 
writer in a magazine ! The dinner costly, 
served on massy plate, champagne, pines, &e. ; 
forty-seven present, among whom, the Chair- 
man, and two other directors of the India 
Company. There's for you! and got away 
pretty sober ! Quite saved my credit ! 

" We continue to like our house prodi- 
giously. Our kind remembrances to you 



principal as you mention ; and the most 
graceful excuse for the acceptance, would be, 
that it left you free to your voluntary 
functions. That is the less light part of the 
scruple. It has no darker shade. I put in 
darker, because of the ambiguity of the word 
light, which Donne in his admirable poem 
on the Metempsychosis, has so ingeniously 
illustrated in his invocation — 



1 2 
Make my dark heavy poem, 



l 2 

light and light. 



and yours. — Yours truly. 



C. Lamb. 



" I am pleased that H. liked my letter to 
the Laureate." 



Requested by the Quaker Poet, to advise 
him on a proposal for appropriating a large 
sum of money raised by a few admiring 
friends to his comfort in advancing years, 
Lamb gave his wise and genial judgment in 
the following letter 



TO BERNARD BARTON 

" March 24th, 1824. 

" Dear B. B.,— I hasten to say that if my 
opinion can strengthen you in your choice, it is 
decisive for your acceptance of what has been 
so handsomely offer'd. I can see nothing in- 
jurious to your most honourable sense. 
Think that you are called to a poetical 
Ministry — nothing worse — the Minister is 
worthy of the hire. — The only objection I 
feel is founded on a fear that the acceptance 
may be a temptation to you to let fall the 
bone (hard as it is) which is in your mouth 
and must afford tolerable pickings, for the 
shadow of independence. You cannot pro- 
pose to become independent on what the low 
state of interest could afford you from such a 



where two senses of light are opposed to dif- 
ferent opposites. A trifling criticism. — I 
can see no reason for any scruple then but 
what arises from your own interest ; which 
is in your own power of course to solve. If 
you still have doubts, read over Sanderson's 
Cases of Conscience, and Jeremy Taylor's 
Ductor Dubitantium, the first a moderate 
octavo, the latter a folio of 900 close pages, 
and when you have thoroughly digested the 
admirable reasons pro and con which they 

give for every possible case, you will be 

just as wise as when you began. Everyman 
is his own best Casuist ; and after all, as 
Ephraim Smooth in the pleasant comedy of 
' Wild Oats,' has it, ' there is no harm in a 
Guinea.' A fortiori there is less in 2000. 

" I therefore most sincerely congratulate 
with you, excepting so far as excepted above. 
If you have fair prospects of adding to the 
principal, cut the Bank ; but in either case 
do not refuse an honest Service. Your heart 
tells you it is not offered to bribe you from 
any duty, but to a duty which you feel to be 
your vocation. Farewell heartily. 

" C. L." 

The following, with its grotesque sketches, 
is addressed also 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

" December 1st, 1824. 
" Dear B. B.,— If Mr. Mitford will send 
me a full and circumstantial description of 
his desired vases, I will transmit the same 
to a gentleman resident at Canton, whom I 
think I have interest enough in to take the 
proper care for their execution. But Mr. M. 
must have patience. China is a great way 
off, further perhaps than he thinks ; and his 
next year's roses must be content to wither 
in a Wedgwood pot. He will please to say 
whether he should like his Arms upon them, 
&c. I send herewith some patterns which 



LHTTER TO MISS HUTCHINSON". 



255 



.suggest themselves to rue at the first blush 
of the subject, but he will probably consult 
his own taste after all. 




The last pattern is obviously fitted for 
ranunculuses only. The two former may 
indifferently hold daisies, marjoram, sweet 
williams, and that sort. My friend in Canton 
is Inspector of Teas, his name is Ball ; and I 
can think of no better tunnel. I shall expect 
Mr. M.'s decision. 

" Taylor and Hessey finding their maga- 
zine goes off very heavily at 2s. 6cl. are pru- 
dently going to raise their price another 
shilling ; and having already more authors 
than they want, intend to increase the 
number of them. If they set up against the 
New Monthly, they must change their pre- 
sent hands. It is not tying the dead carcase 
of a Review to a half-dead Magazine will do 
their business. It is like G. D. multiplying 
his volumes to make 'em sell better. When 
he finds one will not go off, he publishes two ; 
two stick, he tries three ; three hang fire, he 
is confident that four will have a better 
chance. C. L." 



The following letter to Miss Hutchinson, 
at Torquay, refers to some of Lamb's later 
articles, published in the "London Magazine," 
which, in extending its size and pretensions 
to a three-and-sixpenny miscellany, had lost 
much of its spirit. He exults, however, in 
his veracious " Memoir of Liston ! " 

TO MISS HUTCHINSON. 

" The brevity of this is owing to scratching 
it off at my desk amid expected interruptions. 
By habit, I can write letters only at office. 

" January 20th, 1825. 
" Dear Miss H., — Thank you for a noble 
goose, which wanted only the massive in- 
crustation that we used to pick- axe open, 
about this season, in old Gloster Place. When 
shall we eat another goose pie together 'I 
The pheasant, too, must not be forgotten ; 
twice as big, and half as good as a partridge. 



You ask about the editor of the ' London ; ' I 
know of none. This first specimen is flat and 
pert enough to justify subscribers who 

grudge t'other shilling. De Quincy's ' Parody' 
was submitted to him before printed, and 
had his Prohatum* The 'Horns' is in a 
poor taste, resembling the most laboured 
papers in the « Spectator.' I had signed it 
' Jack Horner' ; but Taylor and Hessey said 
it would be thought an offensive article, 
unless I put my known signature to it, and 
wrung from me my slow consent. But did 
you read the ' Memoir of Liston ' ? — and did 
you guess whose it was 1 Of all the lies I 
ever put off, I value this most. It is from 
top to toe, every paragraph, pure invention, 
and has passed for gospel ; ,has been repub- 
lished in newspapers, and in the penny play- 
bills of the night, as an authentic account. 
I shall certainly go to the naughty man some 
day for my fibbings. In the next number I 
figure as a theologian ! and have attacked 
my late brethren, the Unitarians. What 
Jack Pudding tricks I shall play next, I 
know not ; I am almost at the end of my 
tether. Coleridge is quite blooming, but his 
book has not budded yet. I hope I have 
spelt Torquay right now, and that this will 
find you all mending, and looking forward to 
a London flight with the Spring. Winter, we 
have had none, but plenty of foul weather. 
I have lately picked up an epigram which 
pleased me — 

" ' Two noble earls, whom if I quote, 
Some folks might call me sinner, 
The one invented half a coat, 
The other half a dinner. 

The plan was good, as some will say, 

And fitted to console one ; 
Because, in this poor starving day, 

Few can afford a whole one.' 

" I have made the lame one still lamer by 
imperfect memory ; but spite of bald diction, 
a little done to it might improve it into a 
good one. You have nothing else to do at 
Torquay. Suppose you try it. Well, God 
bless you all, as wishes Mary most sincerely, 
with many thanks for letter, &c. Elia." 

* Mr. de Quincy had commenced a series of letters in 
the " London Magazine," " To a Young Man whose 
education has been neglected," as a vehicle for conveying 
miscellaneous information in his admirable style. L T pon 
this hint Lamb, with the assent which Mr. de Quincy 
could well afford to give, contributed a parody on the 
scheme, in "A Letter to an Old Gentleman whose 
education has been neglected." 



256 



LETTERS TO MANNING AND WORDSWORTH. 



The first dawning hope of Lamb's emanci- 
pation from the India House is suggested in 
the following note to Manning, proposing a 
visit, in which he refers to a certificate of 
non-capacity for hard desk-work, given by a 
medical friend. 

TO MR. MANNING. 

"My dear M. — You might have come 
inopportunely a week since, when we had an 
inmate. At present and for as long as ever 
you like, our castle is at your service. I 

saw T yesternight, who has done for me 

what may 

' To all my nights and days to come, 

Give solely sovran sway and masterdom.' 

But I dare not hope, for fear of disappoint- 
ment. I cannot be more explicit at present. 
But 1 have it under his own hand, that I am 
ram-capacitated, (I cannot write it in-) for 
business. O joyous imbecility ! Not a 
susurration of this to anybody ! 

" Mary's love. C. Lamb." 



The dream was realised — in April 1825, 
the " world-wearied clerk " went home for 
ever — with what delight has been told in 
the elaborate raptures of his " Superannuated 
Man," and in the letters already published. 
The following may be now added to these, 
illucidative of his too brief raptures. 

TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 

" Dear W. — I write post-haste to ensure 
a frank. Thanks for your hearty congratu- 
lations ! I may now date from the sixth 
week of my ' Hegira, or Flight from Leaden- 
hall.' I have lived so much in it, that a 
summer seems already past ; and 'tis but 
early May yet with you and other people. 
How I look down on the slaves and drudges 
of the world ! Its inhabitants are a vast 
cotton-web of spin-spin-spinners ! O the 
carking cares ! O the money-grubbers ! 
Sempiternal muckworms ! 

"Your Virgil I have lost sight of, but 
suspect it is in the hands of Sir G. Beaumont ; 
I think that circumstance made me shy of 
procuring it before. Will you write to him 
about it ? — and your commands shall be 
obeyed to a tittle. 

"Coleridge has just finished his prize 



Essay, by which, if it get the prize, he'll 
touch an additional 100Z. I fancy. His 
book, too, (' Commentary on Bishop Leigh- 
ton,') is quite finished, and penes Taylor and 
Hessey. 

" In the ' London ' which is just out 
(1st May,) are two papers entitled the 
' Superannuated Man,' which I wish you to 
see ; and also, 1st April, a little thing called 

' Barbara S ,' a story gleaned from Miss 

Kelly. The L. M., if you can get it, will 
save my enlargement upon the topic of my 
manumission. 

"I must scribble to make up my hiatus 
crumence ; for there are so many ways, pious 
and profligate, of getting rid of money in this 
vast city and suburbs, that I shall miss my 
thirds. But couragio ! I despair not. Your 
kind hint of the cottage was well thrown out ; 
an anchorage for age and school of economy, 
when necessity comes ; but without this 
latter, I have an unconquerable terror of 
changing place. It does not agree with us. 
I say it from conviction ; else I do sometimes 
ruralise in fancy. 

"Some d — d people are come in, and I 
must finish abruptly. By d — d, I only mean 
deuced. 'Tis these suitors of Penelope that 
make it necessary to authorise a little for 
gin and mutton, and such trifles. 

" Excuse my abortive scribble. 

" Yours, not in more haste than heart, 

"C. L. 

"Love and recollects to all the Wms., 
Doras, Maries round your Wrekin. 

" Mary is capitally well. Do write to Sir 
G. B., for I am shyish of applying to him." 



CHAPTEE VIII. 

LETTERS OF LAMB'S LAST YEARS. 

[1825 to 1834.] 

How imperfectly the emancipation, so 
rapturously hailed, fulfilled its promises ; 
how Lamb left Islington for Enfield, and 
there, after a while, subsided into a lodger ; 
and how, at last, he settled at Edmonton to 
die, sufficiently appear in the former series of 
his letters. Those which occupy this chapter, 
scattered through nine years, have either 



LETTERS TO TALFOURD AND BARTON. 



257 



been subsequently communicated by the 
kindness of the possessors, or were omitted 
for some personal reason which has lost its 
force in time. The following, addressed in 
1829 to the Editor, on occasion of his giving 
to a child the name of " Charles Lamb," 
though withheld from an indisposition to 
intrude matters so personal to himself on the 
reader, may now, on his taking farewell of 
the subject, find its place. 



TO MR. TALFOURD. 

" Dear Talfourd, — You could not have 
told me of a more friendly thing than you 
have been doing. I am proud of my name- 
sake. I shall take care never to do any 
dirty action, pick pockets, or anyhow get 
myself hanged, for fear of reflecting ignominy 
upon your young Chrisom. I have now a 
motive to be good. I shall not omnis 
moriar ;— -my name borne down the black 
gulf of oblivion. 

"I shall survive in eleven letters, five 
more than Caesar. Possibly I shall come to> 
be knighted, or more ! Sir C. L. Talfourd, 
Bart. ! 

" Yet hath it an authorish twang with it, 
which will wear out with my name for 
poetry. Give him a smile from me till I see 
him. If you do not drop down before, some 
"YTay in the week after next I will come and 
take one night's lodging with you, if con- 
venient, before you go hence. You shall 
name it. We are in town to-morrow speciali 
gratia, but by no arrangement can get up 
near you. 

"Believe us both, with greatest regards, 
yours and Mrs. Talfourd's. 

" Charles Lamb-Philo-Talfourd. 



" I come as near it as I can." * 

* The child who bore the name so honoured by his 
parents, survived his god-father only a year — dying- at 
Brighton, whither he had been taken in the vain hope 
of restoration, on the 3rd December, 1835. Will the 
reader forgive the weakness which prompts the desire, in 
this place, to link their memories together, by inserting 
a few verses which, having been only published at the 
end of the last small edition of the Editor's dramas, may 
have missed some of the friendly eyes for which they 
were written ? 

Our gentle Charles has pass'd away 

From earth's short bondage free, 
And left to us its leaden day 

And mist-enshrouded sea. 



The following eight Letters, evoked by 
Lamb's excellent and indefatigable corres- 
pondent, Barton, speak for themselves : — 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

"July 2nd, 1825. 

" My dear B. B., — My nervous attack has 
so unfitted me that I have not courage to sit 
down to a letter. My poor pittance in the 
' London ' you will see is drawn from my 
sickness. Your book is very acceptable to 
me, because most of it is new to me ; but 
your book itself we cannot thank you for 
more sincerely than for the introduction you 
favoured us with to Anne Knight. Now 
cannot I write Mrs. Anne Knight for the 

life of me. She is a very pleas , but I 

won't write all we have said of her so often 
to ourselves, because I suspect you would 
read it to her. Only give my sister's and 
my kindest remembrances to her, and how 



Here, by the ocean's terraced side, 
Sweet hours of hope were known, 

When first the triumph of its tide 
Seem'd omen of our own. 

That eager joy the sea-breeze gave, 

When first it raised his hair, 
Sunk with each day's retiring wave, 

Beyond the reach of prayer. 

The sun-blink that through drizzling mist, 

To flickering hope akin, 
Lone waves with feeble fondness kiss'd, 

No smile as faint can win ; 

Yet not in vain with radiance weak 
The heavenly stranger gleams — 

Not of the world it lights to speak, 
But that from whence it streams. 

That world our patient sufferer sought, 

Serene with pitying eyes, 
As if his mounting spirit caught 

The wisdom of the skies. 

With boundless love it look'd abroad 

For one bright moment given, 
Shone with a loveliness that awed, 

And quiver'd into Heaven. 

A year made slow by care and toil 

Has paced its weary round, 
Since Death enrich' d with kindred spoil 

The snow-clad, frost-ribb'd ground. 

Then Lamb, with whose endearing name 

Our boy we proudly graced, 
Shrank from the warmth of sweeter fame 

Than ever bard embraced. 

Still 'twas a mournful joy to think 

Our darling might supply, 
For years to us, a living link 

With name that cannot die. 

And though such fancy gleam no more 

On earthly sorrow's night, 
Truth's nobler torch unveils the shore 

Which lends to both its light. 



258 



LETTER TO BARTOK 



glad we are we can say that word. If ever 
she come to Southwark again, I count upon 
another pleasant Bridge walk with her. 
Tell her, I got home, time for a rubber ; but 
poor Tryphena will not understand that 
phrase of the worldlings. 

"I am hardly able to appreciate your 
volume now ; but I liked the dedication 
much, and the apology for your bald burying 
grounds. To Shelley, but that is not new. 
To the young vesper-singer, Great Bealings, 
Playford, and what not ? 

" If there be a cavil, it is that the topics 
of religious consolation, however beautiful, 
are repeated till a sort of triteness attends 
them. It seems as if you were for ever 
losing friends' children by death, and re- 
minding their parents of the Eesurrection. 
Do children die so often, and so good in 
your parts ? The topic taken from the con- 
sideration that they are snatched away from 
possible vanities, seems hardly sound ; for to 
an Omniscient eye their conditional failings 
must be one with their actual ; but I am too 
unwell for theology. 

" Such as I am, 
" I am yours and A. K.'s truly, 

"C.Lamb." 

to bernard barton. 

"August 10th, 1825. 

<l We shall be soon again at Colebrook. 

" Dear B. B., — You must excuse my not 
writing before, when I tell you we are on a 
visit at Enfield, where I do not feel it natural 
to sit down to a letter. It is at all times an 
exertion. I had rather talk with you, and 
Anne Knight, quietly at Colebrook Lodge, 
over the matter of your last. You mistake 



The nursling there that hand may take, 

None ever grasp'd in vain, 
And smiles of well-known sweetness wake, 

Without their tinge of pain. 

Though, 'twixt the child and child-like bard 

Late seem'd distinction wide, 
They now may trace, in Heaven's regard, 

How near they were allied. 

Within the infant's ample brow 

Blythe fancies lay unfuiTd, 
Which all uncrush'd may open now 

To charm a sinless world. 

Though the soft spirit of those eyes 
Might ne'er with Lamb's compete — 

Ne'er sparkle with a wit as wise, 
Or melt in tears, as sweet, 



me when you express misgivings about my 
relishing a series of scriptural poems. I 
wrote confusedly — what I meant to say was, 
that one or two consolatory poems on deaths 
would have had a more condensed effect than 
many. Scriptural — devotional topics — admit 
of infinite variety. So far from poetry tiring 
me because religious, I can read, and I say 
it seriously, the homely old version of the 
Psalms in our Prayer-books for an hour or 
two together sometimes without sense of 
weariness. 

" I did not express myself clearly about 
what I think a false topic insisted on so 
frequently in consolatory addresses on the 
death of infants. I know something like it 
is in Scripture, but I think humanly spoken. 
It is a natural thought, a sweet fallacy to 
the survivors — but still a fallacy. If it stands 
on the doctrine of this being a probationary 
state, it is liable to this dilemma. Omni- 
science, to whom possibility must be clear as 
act, must know of the child, what it would 
hereafter turn out : if good, then the topic 
is false to say it is secured from falling into 
future wilfulness, vice, &c. If bad, I do not 
see how its exemption from certain future 
overt acts, by being snatched away at all 
tells in its favour. You stop the arm of a 
murderer, or arrest the finger of a pickpurse, 
but is not the guilt incurred as much by the 
intent as if never so much acted. Why 
children are hurried off, and old reprobates 
of a hundred left, whose trial humanly we 
may think was complete at fifty, is among 
the obscurities of providence. The very 
notion of a state of probation has darkness 
in it. The All-knower has no need of satis- 
fying his eyes by seeing what we will do, 
when he knows before what we will do. 



The nurseling's unforgotten look 

A kindred love reveals, 
With his who never friend forsook, 

Or hurt a thing that feels. 

In thought profound, in wildest glee, 
In sorrow's lengthening range, 

His guileless soul of infancy 
Endured no spot or change. 

From traits of each our love receives 

For comfort nobler scope ; 
While light which child-like genius leaves 

Confirms the infant's hope : 

And in that hope with sweetness fraught 

Be aching hearts beguiled, 
To blend in one delightful thought .. 

The Poet and the Child ! 



LETTERS TO BARTON. 



259 



Methinks we might be condemned before 
commission. In these things we grope and 
flounder, and if we can pick up a little human 
comfort that the child taken is snatch'd from 
vice (no great compliment to it, by the by) 
let us take it. And as to where an untried 
child goes, whether to join the assembly of 
its elders who have borne the heat of the day 
— fire-purified martyrs, and torment-sifted 
confessors — what know we 1 We promise 
heaven, methinks, too cheaply, and assign 
large revenues to minors, incompetent to 
manage them. Epitaphs run upon this topic 
of consolation, till the very frequency induces 
a cheapness. Tickets for admission into 
Paradise are sculptured out at a penny a 
letter, twopence a syllable, &c. It is all a 
mystery, and the more I try to express my 
meaning (having none that is clear), the 
more I flounder. Finally, write what your 
own conscience, which to you is the unerring 
judge, deems best, and be careless about the 
whimsies of such a half-baked notionist as I 
am. We are here in a most pleasant country, 
full of walks, and idle to our hearts' desire. 
Taylor has dropt the ' London.' It was indeed 
a dead weight. It has got in the Slough of 
Despond. I shuffle off my part of the pack, 
and stand like Christian with light and 
merry shoulders. It had got silly, indecorous, 
pert, and everything that is bad. Both our 
kind remembrances to Mrs. K. and yourself, 
and strangers'-greeting to Lucy — is it Lucy 
or Euth ? — that gathers wise sayings in a 
Book. C. Lamb." 



TO BERNARD BARTON. 

"1826. 

" Dear B. B., — I don't know why I have 
delay'd so long writing. 'Twas a fault. The 
under current of excuse to my mind was that 
I had heard of the vessel in which Mitford's 
jars were to come ; that it had been obliged 
to put into Batavia to refit (which accounts 
for its delay), but was daily expected. Days 
are past, and it comes not, and the mermaids 
may be drinking their tea out of his china 
for aught I know ; but let's hope not. In 
the meantime I have paid 28?., &c. for the 
freight and prime cost. But do not mention 
it. I was enabled to do it by a receipt of 
30£. from Colburn, with whom, however, I 
have done. I should else have run short. 



For I just make ends meet. We will wait 
the arrival of the trinkets, and to ascertain 
their full expense, and then bring in the bill. 

"Colburn had something of mine in last 
month, which he has had in hand these seven 
months, and had lost, or couldn't find room 
for : I was used to different treatment in the 
' London,' and have forsworn periodicals. I 
am going thro' a course of reading at the 
Museum : the Garrick plays, out of part of 
which I have formed my specimens. I have 
two thousand to go thro'; and in a few weeks 
have despatched the tythe of 'em. It is a 
sort of office to me ; hours, ten to four, the 
same. It does me good. Man must have 
regular occupation, that has been used to it. 

" Will you pardon my -neglect 1 Mind, 
again I say, don't show this to M. ; let me 
wait a little longer to know the event of his 
luxuries. Heaven send him his jars 
uncrack'd, and me my . 

" Yours, with kindest wishes to your 
daughter and friend, in which Mary joins, 

"C.L." 



TO BERNARD BARTON. 



"1826. 



"Dear B. B., — The Busy Bee, as Hood after 
Dr. Watts apostrophises thee, and well dost 
thou deserve it for thy labours in the Muses' 
gardens, wandering over parterres of Think - 
on-mes and Forget-me-nots, to a total 
impossibility of forgetting thee, — thy letter 
was acceptable, thy scruples may be dis- 
missed, thou art rectus in curia, not a word 
more to be said, verbum sapienti, and so forth, 
the matter is decided with a white stone, 
classically, mark me, and the apparitions 
vanish'd which haunted me, only the cramp, 
Caliban's distemper, clawing me in the 
calvish part of my nature, makes me ever 
and anon roar bullishly, squeak cowardishly, 
and limp cripple-ishly. Do I write quakerly 
and simply, 'tis my most Master Mathews' 
like intention to do it. See Ben Jonson. — I 
think you told me your acquaintance with 
the Drama was confin'd to Shakspeare and 
Miss Baillie : some read only Milton and 
Croly. The gap is as from an ananas to a 
turnip. I have fighting in my head the plots, 
characters, situations, and sentiments of 400 
old plays (bran new to me) which I have 
been digesting at the Museum, and my 



s 2 



260 



LETTERS TO BARTON. 



appetite sharpens to twice as many more, 
which I mean to course over this winter. I 
can scarce avoid dialogue fashion in this 
letter. I soliloquise my meditations, and 
habitually speak dramatic blank verse with- 
out meaning it. Do you see Mitford 1 He 
will tell you something of my labours. Tell 
him I am sorry to have missed seeing him, 
to have talked over those old Treasures. I 
am still more sorry for his missing Pots. 
But I shall be sure of the earliest intelligence 
of the Lost Tribes. His Sacred Specimens 
are a thankful addition to my shelves. 
Marry, I could wish he had been more 
careful of corrigenda. T have discover'd 
certain which have slipt his errata. I put 
'em in the next page, as perhaps thou canst 
transmit them to him. For what purpose, 
but to grieve him (which yet I should be 
sorry to do), but then it shows my learning, 
and the excuse is complimentary, as it 
implies their correction in a future edition. 
His own things in the book are magnificent, 
and as an old Christ's Hospitaller I was 
particularly refresh'd with his eulogy on our 
Edward. Many of the choice excerpta were 
new to me. Old Christmas is a coming, to 
the confusion of Puritans, Muggletonians, 
Anabaptists, Quakers, and that unwassailing 
crew. He cometh not with his wonted gait, 
he is shrunk nine inches in his girth, but is 
yet a lusty fellow. Hood's book is mighty 
clever, and went off 600 copies the first day. 
Sion's Songs do not disperse so quickly. The 
next leaf is for Eev. J. M. In this adieu, 
thine briefly, in a tall friendship, 

" C. Lamb." 



TO BERNARD BARTON. 

"June 11, 1827. 

" Dear B. B.,— Martin's < Belshazzar ' (the 
picture) I have seen. Its architectural effect 
is stupendous, but the human figures, the 
squalling contorted little antics that are 
playing at being frightened, like children at 
a sham ghost, who half know it to be a mask, 
are detestable. Then the letters are nothing 
more than a transparency lighted up, such 
as a Lord might order to be lit up on a 
sudden at a Christmas gambol, to scare the 
ladies. The type is as plain as Baskerville's 
— they should have been dim, full of mystery, 
letters to the mind rather than the eye. 



" Bembrandt has painted only Belshazzar 
and a courtier or two, (taking a part of the 
banquet for the whole) not fribbled out a 
mob of fine folks. Then every thing is so 
distinct, to the very necklaces, and that 
foolish little prophet. What one point is 
there of interest ? The ideal of such a 
subject is, that you the spectator should see 
nothing but what at the time you would 
have seen, — the hand, and the King, — not to 
be at leisure to make tailor-remarks on the 
dresses, or, Dr. Kitchener-like, to examine 
the good things at table. 

"Just such a confused piece is his 'Joshua,' 
frittered into a thousand fragments, little 
armies here, little armies there — you should 
see only the Sun and Joshua. If I remember, 
he has not left out that luminary entirely, 
but for Joshua, I was ten minutes a finding 
him out. Still he is showy in all that is not 
the human figure or the preternatural 
interest : but the first are below a drawing 
school girl's attainment, and the last is a 
phantasmagoric trick, — ' Now you shall see 
what you shall see, dare is Balshazar and 
dare is Daniel.' 

"You have my thoughts of M., and so adieu ! 

"C. Lamb." 



TO BERNARD BARTON. 



1827. 



"My dear B. B,, — You will understand 
my silence when I tell you that my sister, on 
the very eve of entering into a new house we 
have taken at Enfield, was surprised with 
an attack of one of her sad long illnesses, 
which deprive me of her society, though not 
of her domestication, for eight or nine weeks 
together. I see her, but it does her no good. 
But for this, we have the snuggest, most 
comfortable house, with every thing most 
compact and desirable. Colebrook is a 
wilderness. The books, prints, &c, are come 
here, and the New Biver came down with 
us. The familiar prints, the bust, the Milton, 
seem scarce to have changed their rooms. 
One of her last observations was ' how 
frightfully like this room is to our room in 
Islington' — our up-stairs room, she meant. 
How I hope you will come some better day, 
and judge of it ! We have tried quiet here 
for four months, and I will answer for the 
comfort of it enduring. 



LETTERS TO BARTON. 



201 



" On emptying my bookshelves I found an 
Ulysses, which T will send to A. K. when 
I go to town, for her acceptance — unless the 
book be out of print. One likes to have one 
copy of every thing one does. I neglected 
to keep one of 'Poetry for Children,' the 
joint production of Mary and me, and it is 
not to be had for love or money. It had in 
the title page 'by the Author of Mrs. Lester's 
School.' Know you any one that has it, and 
would exchange it ? 

"Strolling to Waltham Cross the other 
day, I hit off these lines. It is one of the 
Crosses which Edward I. caused to be built 
for his wife at every town where her corpse 
rested between Northamptonshire and 
London. 

" A stately cross each, sad spot doth attest, 
Whereat the corpse of Eleanor did rest, 
From Herdby fetch'd — her spouse so honour'd her— 
To sleep with royal dust at Westminster. 
And, if less pompous obsequies -were thine, 
Duke Brunswick's daughter, princely Caroline, 
Grudge not, great ghost, nor count thy funeral losses : 
Thou in thy life-time had'st thy share of crosses. 

"My dear B. B. 

"My head aches with this little excursion. 
"Pray accept two sides for three for once, 
"And believe me 

" Yours sadly, 

"C. L." 

" Chase Side, Enfield." 



TO BERNARD BARTON. 



"1827. 



"My dear B., — We are all pretty well 
again and comfortable, and I take a first 
opportunity of sending the Adventures of 
Ulysses, hoping that among us — Homer, 
Chapman, and Co. — we shall afford you some 
pleasure. I fear it is out of print ; if not, 
A. K. will accept it, with wishes it were 
bigger ; if another copy is not to be had, it 
reverts to me and my heirs for ever. With 
it I send a trumpery book ; to which, without 
my knowledge, the editor of the Bijoux has 
contributed Lucy's verses ; I am asham'd to 
ask her acceptance of the trash accompanying 
it. Adieu to Albums — for a great while — I 
said when I came here, and had not been 
fixed for two days, but my landlord's daughter 
(not at the Pot house) requested me to write 
in her female friends', and in her own ; if 
I go to j thou art there also, O all 



pervading Album ! All over the Leeward 
Islands, in Newfoundland, and the Back 
Settlements, I understand there is no other 
reading. They haunt me. I die of Albo- 
phobia ! C. L." 



TO BERNARD BARTON. 

"IS27. 

" My dear B. B., — A gentleman I never 
saw before brought me your welcome present 
— jmagine a scraping, fiddling, fidgetting, 
petit-maitre of a dancing school advancing 
into my plain parlour with a coupee and a 
sideling bow, and presenting the book as if 
he had been handing a glass of lemonade to 
a young miss — imagine this, and contrast it 
with the serious nature of the book pre- 
sented ! Then task your imagination, reserv- 
ing this picture, to conceive of quite an 
opposite messenger, a lean, strait-locked, 
whey-faced Methodist, for such was he in 
reality who brought it, the Genius (it seems) 
of the Wesleyan Magazine. Certes, friend 
B., thy Widow's Tale is too horrible, spite of 
the lenitives of Religion, to embody in verse ; 
I hold prose to be the appropriate expositor 
of such atrocities ! No offence, but it is a 
cordial that makes the heart sick. Still thy 
skill in compounding it I do not deny. I turn 
to what gave me less mingled pleasure. I find 
mark'd with pencil these pages in thy pretty 
book, and fear I have been penurious. 

" Page 52, 53— Capital. 

„ 59 — 6th stanza, exquisite simile. 

„ 61 — 11th stanza, equally good. 

„ 108 — 3rd stanza, I long to see 

Yan Balen. 
„ 111 — A downright good sonnet. 

Bixi. 
„ 153 — Lines at the bottom. 

So you see, I read, hear, and mark, if I don't 
learn. In short this little volume is no dis- 
credit to any of your former, and betrays 
none of the senility you fear about. — Apropos 
of Van Balen, an artist who painted me 
lately, had painted a blackamoor praying, 
and not filling his canvas, stuffed in his little 
girl aside of blackey, gaping at him unmean- 
ingly ; and then did'nt know what to call it. 
Now for a picture to be promoted to the 
Exhibition (Suffolk Street) as Historical, a 



'262 



LETTERS TO MOXON. 



subject is requisite. What does me 1 I but 
christen it the ' Young Catechist ' and fur- 
bish'd it with dialogue following, which 
dubb'd it an Historical Painting. Nothing 
to a friend at need. 

" While this tawny Ethiop prayeth, 
Painter, who is she that stayeth 
By, with skin of whitest lustre ; 
bunny locks, a shining cluster ; 
Saint-like seeming to direct him 
To the Power that must protect him ? 
Is she of the heav'n-born Three, 
Meek Hope, strong Faith, sweet Charity ? 
Or some Cherub ? 

They you mention 
Far transcend my weak invention. 
'Tis a simple Christian child, 
Missionary young and mild, 
From her store of script'ral knowledge, 
(Bible-taught, without a college) 
Which by reading she could gather, 
Teaches him to say Our Father 
To the common Parent, who 
Colour not respects, nor hue. 
"White and black in him have part, 
Who looks not to the skin, but heart. 

When I'd done it, the artist (who had clapt 
in Miss merely as a fill-space) swore I ex- 
prest his full meaning, and the damosel 
bridled up into a missionary's vanity. I like 
verses to explain pictures ; seldom pictures 
to illustrate poems. Your woodcut is a 
rueful lignum mortis. By the by, is the 
widow likely to marry again ? 

" I am giving the fruit of my old play 
reading at the Museum to Hone, who sets 
forth a portion weekly in the Table Book. 
Do you see it 1 How is Mitford 1 — I '11 just 
hint that the pitcher, the cord and the bowl 
are a little too often repeated (passim) in 
your book, and that in page 17, last line 
but 4, him is put for he, but the poor widow 
I take it had small leisure for grammatical 
niceties. Don't you see there's he, myself, 
and him ; why not both him ? likewise im- 
perviously is cruelly spelt imperiously. These 
are trifles, and I honestly like your book and 
you for giving it, though I really am ashamed 
of so many presents. I can think of no 
news, therefore I will end with mine and 
Mary's kindest remembrances to you and 
yours, C. L." 



While Lamb was residing at Enfield, the 
friendship which, in 1824, he had formed 
with Mr. Moxon, led to very frequent inter- 
course, destined, in after years, to be rendered 



habitual, by the marriage of his friend with 
the young lady whom he regarded almost as 
a daughter. In 1828 Mr. Moxon, at the 
request of Mr. Hurst, of the firm of Hurst, 
Chance, and Co., applied to Lamb to supply 
an article for the "Keepsake," which he, 
always disliking the flimsy elegancies of the 
Annuals — sadly opposed to his own exclusive 
taste for old, standard, moth-eaten books — 
thus declined : — 



TO MR. MOXON. 

"March 19th, 1828. 

" My dear M. — It is my firm determina- 
tion to have nothing to do with ' Forget-me- 
Nots ' — pray excuse me as civilly as you can 
to Mr. Hurst. I will take care to refuse any 
other applications. The things which Pick- 
ering has, if to be had again, I have promised 
absolutely, you know, to poor Hood, from 
whom I had a melancholy epistle yesterday ; 
besides that' Emma has decided objections 
to her own and her friend's Album verses 
being published ; but if she gets over that, 
they are decidedly Hood's, 



" Till we meet, farewell. 



Loves to Dash.'' 
"C.L." 



The following introduced Mr. Patmore to 
Mr. Moxon : — 

TO MR. MOXON. 

"May 3rd, 1828. 

" Dear M. — My friend Patmore, author of 
the 'Months,' a very pretty publication — 
of sundry Essays in the 'London,' 'New 
Monthly,' &c, wants to dispose of a volume 
or two of 'Tales.' Perhaps they might 
chance to suit Hurst ; but be that as it may, 
he will call upon you, under favour of my 
recommendation; and as he is returning to 
France, where he lives, if you can do any- 
thing for him in the Treaty line, to save him 
dancing over the Channel every week, I am 
sure you will. I said I 'd never trouble you 
again ; but how vain are the resolves of 
mortal man ! P. is a very hearty friendly 
good fellow — and was poor John Scott's 
second, as I will be yours when you want 
one. May you never be mine ! 

" Yours truly, C. L." 

" Enfield." 

* The great dog, which was, at one time, the constant 
companion of his long walks. 



LETTERS TO BARTON, COLERIDGE, AND OILMAN. 



203 



The following letter exemplifies some of 
the most remarkable peculiarities of thought 
and intellectual sentiment which streaked, 
without darkening, Lamb's evening of life. 



TO BERNARD BARTON. 

"March 25th, 1829. 

" Dear B. R, — I have just come from Town, 
where I have been to get my bit of quarterly 
pension. And have brought home, from 
stalls in Barbican, the old ' Pilgrim's Pro- 
gress,' with the prints — Vanity Fair, &c. — 
now scarce. Four shillings. Cheap. And 
also one of whom I have oft heard and had 
dreams, but never saw in the flesh — that is 
in sheepskin — 'The whole theologic. works 
of 

Thomas Aquinas ! ' 

My arms ached with lugging it a mile to the 
stage, but the burden was a pleasure, such as 
old Anchises was to the shoulders of iEneas 
— or the Lady to the Lover in old romance, 
who having to carry her to the top of a high 
mountain — the price of obtaining her — 
clambered with her to the top, and fell dead 
with fatigue. 

• O, the glorious old Schoolmen ! ' 

There must be something in him. Such 
great names imply greatness. "Who hath 
seen Michael Angelo's things — of us that 
never pilgrimaged to Eome — and yet which 
of us disbelieves his greatness 1 How I will 
revel in his cobwebs and subtleties, till my 
brain spins ! 

" N.B. I have writ in the old Hamlet — 
offer it to Mitford in my name, if he have 
not seen it. 'Tis woefully below our editions 
of* it. But keep it, if you like. 

"I do not mean this to go for a letter, 
only to apprize you, that the parcel is booked 
for you this 25th March, 1829, from the 
Four Swans, Bishopsgate. With both our 
loves to Lucy and A. K., 

" Yours ever, C. L." 

The following notes, undated, but of 
about 1829, were addressed to Coleridge, 
under the genial care of Mr. Gilman at 
Highgate : — 



TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

" Dear C. — Your sonnet is capital. The 
paper ingenious,* only that it split into four 
parts (besides a side splinter) in the carriage. 
I have transferred it to the common English 
paper, manufactured of rags, for better pre- 
servation. I never knew before how the 
' Iliad ' and ' Odyssey ' were written. 'Tis 
strikingly corroborated by observations on 
Cats. These domestic animals, put 'em on a 
rug before the fire, wink their eyes up, and 
listen to the kettle, and then purr, which is 
their poetry. 

" On Sunday week we kiss your hands (if 
they are clean). This next Sunday I have 
been engaged for some time.. 

" With remembrances to your good host 
and hostess, 

" Yours ever, C. Lamb." 



TO MR. COLERIDGE. 

" My dear Coleridge, — With pain and 
grief, I must entreat you to excuse us on 
Thursday. My head, though externally 
correct, has had a severe concussion in my 
long illness, and the very idea of an engage- 
ment hanging over for a day or two, forbids 
my rest, and I get up miserable. I am not 
well enough for company. I do assure you, 
no other thing prevents me coming. I expect 

and his brothers this or to-morrow 

evening, and it worries me to death that 
I am not ostensibly ill enough to put 'em off. 
I will get better, when I shall hope to see 
your nephew. He will come again. Mary 
joins in best love to the Gilmans. Do, 
I earnestly entreat you, excuse me. I assure 
you, again, that I am not fit to go out yet. 
" Yours (though shattered), 

" C. Lamb." 

"Tuesday." 

The next two notelets are addressed to 
Coleridge's excellent host, on the occasion 
of borrowing and returning the works of 
Fuller :— 

TO MR. GILMAN. 

"Pray trust me with the 'Church His- 
tory,' as well as the ' Worthies.' A moon 

* Some gauzy tissue paper on -which the sonnet -was 
copied. 



2(34 



LETTERS TO GILMAN AND ROBINSON. 



shall restore both. Also give me back t Him 
of Aquinimi.' In return you have the light 
of my countenance* Adieu. 

" P.S. A sister also of mine comes with it. 
A son of Nimshi drives her. Their driving 
will have been furious, impassioned. Pray 
God they have not toppled over the tunnel ! 
I promise you I fear their steed, bred out of 
the wind without father, semi-Melchisedec- 
ish, hot, phaetontic. From my country 
lodgings at Enfield. C. L." 



TO MR. GILMAN. 

" Dear Gilman, — Pray do you, or S. T. C, 
immediately write to say you have received 
back the golden works of the dear, fine, silly 
old angel, which I part from, bleeding, and 
to say how the winter has used you all. 

" It is our intention soon, weather per- 
mitting, to come over for a day at Highgate ; 
for beds we will trust to the Gate-House, 
should you be full : tell me if we may come 
casually, for in this change of climate, there 
is no naming a day for walking. With best 
loves to Mrs. Gilman, &c, 

" Yours, mopish but in health, 

" C. Lamb." 

" I shall be uneasy till I hear of Fuller's 
safe arrival." 



The following two letters, addressed to 
Mr. H. C. Robinson, when afflicted with 
rheumatism, are in Lamb's wildest strain of 
mirth. In the first, he pretends to endure 
all the pain he believes his friend to be 
suffering, and attributes it to his own incau- 
tious habits : in the second he attributes the 
suffering to his friend in a strain of exagger- 
ation, probably intended to make the reality 
more tolerable by comparison : — ■ 

TO MR. H. C. ROBINSON. 

"April 10th, 1829. 
" Dear Robinson, — We are afraid you will 
slip from us from England without again 
seeing us. It would be charity to come and 
see me. I have these three days been laid 
up with strong rheumatic pains, in loins, 

• A sketch of Lamb, bv an amateur artist. 



back, shoiilders. I shriek sometimes from 
the violence of them. I get scarce any sleep, 
and the consequence is, I am restless, and 
want to change sides as I lie, and I cannot 
turn without resting on my hands, and so 
turning all my body all at once, like a log 
with a lever. While this rainy weather 
lasts, I have no hope of alleviation. I have 
tried flannels and embrocation in vain. Just 
at the hip joint the pangs sometimes are so 
excruciating, that I cry out. It is as violent 
as the cramp, and far more continuous. I am 
ashamed to whine about these complaints to 
you, who can ill enter into them ; but indeed 
they are sharp. You go about, in rain or 
fine, at all hours, without discommodity. 
I envy you your immunity at a time of life 
not much removed from my own. But you 
owe your exemption to temperance, which it 
is too late for me to pursue. I, in my life 
time, have had my good things. Hence my 
frame is brittle — your's strong as brass. 
I never knew any ailment you had. You 
can go out at night in all weathers, sit up all 
hours. Well, I don't want to moralise, I 
only wish to say that if you are inclined to a 
game at double-dumby, I would try and 
bolster up myself in a chair for a rubber or 
so. My days are tedious, but less so, and 
less painful, than my nights. May you never 
know the pain and difficulty I have in writing 
so much ! Mary, who is most kind, joins in 
the wish ! C. Lamb." 



THE COMPANION LETTER TO THE SAME. 

(A "WEEK AFTERWARDS.) 

"I do confess to mischief. It was the 
subtlest diabolical piece of malice heart of 
man has contrived. I have no more rheu- 
matism than that poker. Never was freer 
from all pains and aches. Every joint sound, 
to the tip of the ear from the extremity of 
the lesser toe. The report of thy torments 
was blown circuitously here from Bury. I 
could not resist the jeer. I conceived you 
writhing, when you should just receive my 
congratulations. How mad you'd be. Well, 
it is not in my method to inflict pangs. I 
leave that to Heaven. But in the existing 
pangs of a friend I have a share. His dis- 
quietude crowns my exemption. I imagine 
you howling, and pace across the room, 
shooting out my free arms, legs, &c, / \/J 



LETTERS TO BARTON AND WORDSWORTH. 



265 



this way and that way, with an assurance of 
not kindling a spark of pain from them. I 
deny that Nature meant us to sympathise 
with agonies. Those face-contortions, re- 
tortions, distortions have the merriness of 
antics. Nature meant them for farce — not 
so pleasant to the actor, indeed ; but Grimaldi 
cries when we laugh, and 'tis but one that 
suffers to make thousands rejoice. 

" You say that shampooing is ineffectual. 
But, per se, it is good, to show the introvolu- 
tions, extravolutions, of which the animal 
frame is capable — to show what the creature 
is receptible of, short of dissolution. 

" You are worst of nights, an't you ? You 
never was rack'd, was you 1 I should like an 
authentic map of those feelings. 

" You seem to have the flying gout. You 
can scarcely screw a smile out of your face, 
can you 1 I sit at immunity and sneer ad 
libitum. 'Tis now the time for you to make 
good resolutions. I may go on breaking 'em 
for anything the worse I find myself. Your 
doctor seems to keep you on the long cure. 
Precipitate healings are never good. Don't 
come while you are so bad ; I shan't be able 
to attend to your throes and the dumby at 
once. I should like to know how slowly the 
pain goes off. But don't write, unless the 
motion will be likely to make your sensibility 
more exquisite. 

" Your affectionate and truly healthy 
friend, C. Lamb. 

" Mary thought a letter from me might 
amuse you in your torment." 



The illness of Mr. Barton's daughter drew 
from Lamb the following expression of 
kindred loneliness and sorrow : — 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

" July 3rd, 1829. 

" Dear B. B., — I am very much grieved 
indeed for the indisposition of poor Lucy. 
Your letter found me in domestic troubles. 
My sister is again taken ill, and I am obliged 
to remove her out of the house for many 
weeks, I fear, before I can hope to have her 
again. I have been very desolate indeed. 
My loneliness is a little abated by our young 
friend Emma having just come here for her 
holy days, and a schoolfellow of hers that was, 



with her. Still the house is not the same, 
tho' she is the same. Mary had been pleasing 
herself with the prospect of seeing her at 
this time ; and with all their company, the 
house feels at times a frightful solitude. May 
you and I in no very long time have a more 
cheerful theme to write about, and congratu- 
late upon a daughter's and a sister's perfect 
recovery. Do not be long without telling 
me how Lucy goes on. I have a right to 
call her by her quaker-name, you know. 
Emma knows that I am writing to you, and 
begs to be remembered to you with thank- 
fulness for your ready contribution. Her 
album is filling apace. But of her con- 
tributors one, almost the flower of it, a 
most amiable young man and late acquaint- 
ance of mine, has been carried off by con- 
sumption, on return from one of the Azores 
islands, to which he went with hopes of 
mastering the disease, came back improved, 
went back to a most close and confined 
counting-house, and relapsed. His name 
was Dibdin, grandson of the Songster. 

" C. L." 



The following graphic sketch of the happy 
temperament of one of Lamb's intimate 
friends, now no more, is contained in a 
letter to — 

MR. WORDSWORTH. 

" A is well, and in harmony with him- 
self and the world. T don't know how he, and 
those of his constitution, keep their nerves 
so nicely balanced as they do. Or, have 
they any ? Or, are they made of pack- 
thread ? He is proof against weather, in- 
gratitude, meat underdone, every weapon of 
fate. I have just now a jagged end of a 
tooth pricking against my tongue, which 
meets it half way, in a wantonness of pro- 
vocation ; and there they go at it, the tongue 
pricking itself, like the viper against the 
file, and the tooth galling all the gum inside 
and out to torture ; tongue and tooth, tooth 
and tongue, hard at it ; and I to pay the 
reckoning, till all my mouth is as hot as 
brimstone ; and I'd venture the roof of my 
mouth, that at this moment, at which I 
conjecture my full-happiness'd friend is pick- 
ing his crackers, that not one of the double 
rows of ivory in his privileged mouth has as 



266 



LETTER TO AYRTON". 



much as a flaw in it, but all perform their 
functions, and, having performed them, 
expect to be picked, (luxurious steeds !) and 
rubbed down. I don't think he could be 
robbed, or have his house set on fire, or even 
want money. I have heard him express a 
similar opinion of his own infallibility. I 

keep acting here Heautontimorumenos. 

******* 

" Have you seen a curious letter in the 
Morning Chronicle, by C. L.,* the genius of 
absurdity, respecting Bonaparte's suing out 
his Habeas Corpus 1 That man is his own 
moon. He has no need of ascending into 
that gentle planet for mild influences." 



In the spring of the year, Mr. Murray, the 
eminent publisher, through one of Lamb's 
oldest and most cherished friends, Mr. 
Ayrton, proposed that he should undertake 
a continuation of his Specimens of the Old 
English Dramatists. The proposal was com- 
municated by Mr. Ayrton to Lamb, then at 
Enfield, and then too painfully anxious for 
the recovery of Miss Isola, who was danger- 
ously ill in Suffolk to make the arrangement 
desired. The following is the reply : — 

TO MR. AYRTON. 
" Mr. Westwood's, Chase Side, Enfield. 
"14th March, 1830. 

"My dear Ayrton, — Your letter, which 
was only not so pleasant as your appearance 
would have been, has revived some old 
images ; Phillips,f (not the Colonel), with 
his few hairs bristling up at the charge of a 

* Capel Lofft, a barrister residing in Suffolk, a well- 
known whig and friend of Major Wyvil and Major Cart- 
wright, who sometimes half vexed Lamb by signing, as 
he had a right, their common initials to a sonnet. He 
wrote a very vehement letter, contending that the deten- 
tion of Napoleon on board a vessel off the coast, pre- 
paratory to his being sent to St. Helena, was illegal, and 
that the captain of the vessel would be compelled to 
surrender him in obedience to a writ of Habeas Corpus. 

+ Edward Phillips, Esq., Secretary to the Right Hon. 
Charles Abbott, Speaker of the House of Commons. The 
" Colonel" alluded to was the Lieutenant of Marines 
who accompanied Capt. Cook in his last voyage, and on 
shore with that great man when he fell a victim to his | 
humanity. On the death of his commander, Lieutenant 
Phillips, himself wounded, swam off to the boats ; but 
8eeing one of his marines struggling in the water to escape 
the natives who were pursuing him, gallantly swam back, 
protected his man at the peril of his own life, and both 
reached their boat in safety. He afterwards married that 
accomplished and amiable daughter of Dr. Burney, whose 
name so frequently occurs in the Diary and Correspond- 
ence of her sister, Madame D'Arblay. 



revoke, which he declares impossible ; the 
old Captain's significant nod over the right 
shoulder * (was it not ?) ; Mrs. B 's de- 
termined questioning of the score, after the 
game was absolutely gone to the d — 1 ; the 
plain but hospitable cold boiled-beef suppers 
at sideboard ; all which fancies, redolent of 
middle age and strengthful spirits, come 
across us ever and anon in this vale of 
deliberate senectitude, ycleped Enfield. 

" You imagine a deep gulf between you 
and us ; and there is a pitiable hiatus in 
hind between St. James's Park and this 
extremity of Middlesex. But the mere dis- 
tance in turnpike roads is a trifle. The roof 
of a coach swings you down in an hour or 
two. We have a sure hot joint on a Sunday, 
and when had we better ? I suppose you 
know that ill health has obliged us to give 
up housekeeping, but we have an asylum at 
the very next door — only twenty-four inches 
further from town, which is not material in 
a country expedition — where a table d'hdte 
is kept for us, without trouble on our parts, 
and we adjourn after dinner, when one of 
the old world (old friends) drops casually 
down among us. Come and find us out ; 
and seal our judicious change with your 
approbation, whenever the whim bites, or 
the sun prompts. No need of announcement, 
for we are sure to be at home. 

" I keep putting off the subject of my 
answer. In truth I am not in spirits at 
present to see Mr. Murray on such a business ; 
but pray offer him my acknowledgments, 
and an assurance that I should like at least 
one of his propositions, as I have so 
much additional matter for the Specimens, 
as might make two volumes in all; or 
one (new edition) omitting such better 
known authors as Beaumont and Fletcher, 
Jonson, &c. 

" But we are both in trouble at present. 
A very dear young friend of ours, who passed 
her Christmas holidays here, has been taken 
dangerously ill with a fever, from which she 
is very precariously recovering, and I expect 
a summons to fetch her when she is well 
enough to bear the journey from Bury. 
It is Emma Isola, with whom we got 
acquainted at our first visit to your sister, 
at Cambridge, and she has been an occasional 

* Captain (afterwards Admiral), James Burney. 



LETTERS TO MRS. WILLIAMS AND MRS. HAZLITT. 



267 



inmate with us — and of late years much more 
frequently — ever since. While she is in this 
danger, and till she is out of it, and here in 
a probable way to recovery, I feel that I 
have no spirits for an engagement of any 
kind. It has been a terrible shock to us ; 
therefore I beg that you will make my 
handsomest excuses to Mr. Murray. 

" Our very kindest loves to Mrs. A. and the 
younger A.'s. Your unforgotten, 

" C. Lamb." 



Good tidings soon reached Lamb of Miss 
Isola's health, and he went to Fornham to 
bring her, for a month's visit, to Enfield. 
The following are portions of letters addressed 
to the lady from whose care he had removed 
her, after their arrival at home, other parts 
of which have been already published. 

TO MRS. WILLIAMS. 

" Enfield, April 2nd, 1830. 

" Dear Madam, — I have great pleasure in 
letting you know Miss Isola has suffered 
very little from fatigue on her long journey ; 
I am ashamed to say that I came home 
rather the more tired of the two. But I am 
a very unpractised traveller. We found my 
sister very well in health, only a little 
impatient to see her ; and, after a few 
hysterical tears for gladness, all was comfort- 
able again. We arrived here from Epping 
between five and six. 

" How I employed myself between Epping 
and Enfield, the poor verses in the front of 
my paper may inform you, which you may 
please to christen an 'Acrostic in a cross- 
road,' and which I wish were worthier of the 
lady they refer to, but I trust you will plead 
my pardon to her on a subject so delicate as 
a lady's good name. Your candour must 
acknowledge that they are written straight. 
And now, dear madam, I have left myself 
hardly space to express my sense of the 
friendly reception I found at Fornham. 
Mr. Williams will tell you that we had the 
pleasure of a slight meeting with him on the 
road, where I could almost have told him, 
but that it seemed ungracious, that such had 
been your hospitality, that I scarcely missed 
the good master of the family at Fornham, 
though heartily I should have rejoiced to 
have made a little longer acquaintance with 



him. I will say nothing of our deeper 
obligations to both of you, because I think 
we agreed at Fornham that gratitude may 
be over-exacted on the part of the obliging, 
and over-expressed on the part of the obliged 

person. 

******* 

" Miss Isola is writing, and will tell you 
that we are going on very comfortably. Her 
sister is just come. She blames my last 
verses, as being more written on Mr. Williams 
than on yourself; but how should I have 
parted whom a Superior Power has brought 
together ? I beg you will jointly accept of 
all our best respects, and pardon your 
obsequious if not troublesome correspondent, 

" C. L. 

" P.S. — I am the worst folder-up of a 
letter in the world, except certain Hottentots, 
in the land of Caffre, who never fold up their 
letters at all, writing very badly upon 
skins, &c." 



The following contains Lamb's account of 
the same journey, addressed to Buxton : — 

TO MRS. HAZLITT. 

" May 24th, 1830. 

" Mary's love ? Yes. Mary Lamb is 
quite well. 

" Dear Sarah, — I found my way to Nor- 
thaw on Thursday, and saw a very good 
woman behind a counter, who says also that 
you are a very good lady. I did not accept 
her offered glass of wine (home-made, I take 
it) but craved a cup of ale, with which I 
seasoned a slice of cold lamb, from a sand- 
wich box, which I ate in her back parlour, 
and proceeded for Berkhampstead, &c. ; lost 
myself over a heath, and had a day's plea- 
sure. I wish you could walk as I do, and 
as you used to do. I am sorry to find you 
are so poorly ; and, now I have found my 
way, I wish you back at Goody Tomlinson's. 
What a pretty village 'tis. I should have 
come sooner, but was waiting a summons to 
Bury. Well, it came, and I found the good 
parson's lady (he was from home) exceedingly 
hospitable. 

" Poor Emma, the first moment we were 
alone, took me into a corner, and said, ' Now, 



268 



LETTER TO MOXON. 



pray, don't drink ; do check yourself after 
dinner, for my sake, and when we get home 
to Enfield, you shall drink as much as ever 
you please, and I won't say a word about it.' 
How I behaved, you may guess, when I tell 
you that Mrs. Williams and I have written 
acrostics on each other, and she hoped that 
she should have i no reason to regret Miss 
Isola's recovery, by its depriving her of our 
begun correspondence.' Emma stayed a 
month with us, and has gone back (in toler- 
able health) to her long home, for she 
comes not again for a twelvemonth. I 
amused Mrs. Williams with an occurrence 
on our road to Enfield.* We travelled with 
one of those troublesome fellow-passengers 
in a stage-coach, that is called a well-informed 
man. For twenty miles we discoursed about 
the properties of steam, probabilities of 
carriages by ditto, till all my science, and 
more than all, was exhausted, and I was 
thinking of escaping my torment by getting 
up on /he outside, when, getting into Bishops 
Stortford, my gentleman, spying some farm- 
ing land, put an unlucky question to me : 
' What sort of a crop of turnips I thought we 
should have this year 1 ' Emma's eyes turned 
to me, to know what in the world I could 
have to say ; and she burst into a violent 
fit of laughter, maugre her pale, serious 
cheeks, when, with the greatest gravity, I 
replied, that ' it depended, I believed, upon 
boiled legs of mutton.' This clenched our 
conversation, and my gentleman, with a face 
half wise, half in scorn, troubled us with no 
more conversation, scientific or philosophical, 

for the remainder of the journey. S 

was here yesterday, and as learned to the 
full as my fellow-traveller. What a pity 
that he will spoil a wit, and a most pleasant 

fellow (as he is) by wisdom. N. Y f is 

as good, and as odd as ever. We had a 
dispute about the word 'heir,' which I con- 
tended was pronounced like 'air;' he said 
that might be in common parlance ; or that 
we might so use it, speaking of the 'Heir-at- 
Law,' a comedy ; but that in the law courts 
it was necessary to give it a full aspiration, 
and to say hayer ; he thought it might even 
vitiate a cause, if a counsel pronounced it 



• This little anecdote was told by Lamb in a letter 
previously published, but not quite so richly as here. 

t A very old and dear friend of Lamb who had just 
been called to the bar. 



otherwise. In conclusion, he ' would consult 
Serjeant Wilde,' who gave it against him. 
Sometimes he falleth into the water ; some- 
times into the fire. He came down here, and 
insisted on reading Virgil's f Eneid' all 
through with me, (which he did) because a 
counsel must know Latin. Another time he 
read out all the Gospel of St. John, because 
Biblical quotations are very emphatic in a 
court of justice. A third time, he would 
carve a fowl, which he did very ill-favouredly, 
because l we did not know how indispensable 
it was for a barrister to do all those sort of 
things well ? Those little things were of 
more consequence than we supposed.' So 
he goes on, harassing about the way to 
prosperity, and losing it. With a long head, 
but somewhat a wrong one — harum-scarum. 
Why does not his guardian angel look to 
him ? He deserves one : may be, he has 
tired him out. 

" I am with this long scrawl, but I thought 
in your exile, you might like a letter. Com- 
mend me to all the wonders in Derbyshire, 
and tell the devil I humbly kiss — my hand 
to him. Yours ever, C. Lamb." 

" Enfield, Saturday.'''' 



The esteem, which Lamb had always 
cherished for Mr. Eogers, was quickened 
into a livelier feeling by the generous 
interest which the poet took in the success 
of Mr. Moxon, who was starting as a pub- 
lisher. The following little note shows the 
state of his feelings at this time towards two 
distinguished persons. 

TO MR. MOXON. 

" Enfield, Tuesday. 
" Dear M., — I dined with your and my 
Bogers, at Mr. Gary's, yesterday. Cary con- 
sulted me on the proper bookseller to offer a 
lady's MS. novel to. I said I would write 
to you. But I wish you would call on the 
translator of Dante, at the British Museum, 
and talk with him. He is the pleasantest 
of clergymen. I told him of all Kogers's 
handsome behaviour to you, and you are 
already no stranger. Go ! I made Bogers 
laugh about your Nightingale Sonnet, not 
having heard one. 'Tis a good sonnet, not- 
withstanding. You shall have the books 
shortly. C. L." 



LETTERS TO BARTON AND MOXON. 



2G9 



The petty criticisms on the small volume 
of " Album Verses," by which a genial trifle, 
intended to mark the commencement of the 
career of a dear friend, was subjected to ab- 
surd severity, and which called forth a little 
indignant poem from the Laureate, provoked 
the following notice from Lamb, in a letter 
addressed 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

"August 30th, 1830. 

" Dear B.B., — My address is 34, Southamp- 
ton Buildings, Holborn. For God's sake do 
not let me be pester'd with Annuals. They 
are all rogues who edit them, and something 
else who write in them. I am still alone, 
and very much out of sorts, and cannot spur 
up my mind to writing. The sight of one of 
those year books makes me sick. I get no- 
thing by any of 'em, not even a copy. 

" Thank you for your warm interest about 
my little volume, for the critics on which I 
care the five hundred thousandth part of the 
tythe of a half-farthing. I am too old a 
Militant for that. How noble, tho', in R. S.,* 
to come forward for an old friend, who had 
treated him so unworthily. — 

" Moxon has a shop without customers, I 
a book without readers. But what a clamour 
against a poor collection of Album verses, as 
if we had put forth an Epic. I cannot 
scribble a long letter — I am, when not at 
foot, very desolate, and take no interest in 
anything, scarce hate anything, but Annuals. 
I am in an interregnum of thought and feel- 
ing. What a beautiful autumn morning this 
is, if it was but with me as in times past 
when the candle of the Lord shined round 
me. I cannot even muster enthusiasm to 
admire the French heroism. In better times 
I hope we may some day meet, and discuss 
an old poem or two. But if you'd have me 
not sick, no more of Annuals. 

" C. L., Ex-Elia. 

" Love to Lucy and A. K. always." 



In 1830, Lamb tried the experiment of 
lodging a little while in London ; but Miss 
Lamb's malady compelled him to return to 
the solitude of Enfield. He thus communi- 
cates the sad state of his sister : — 

* Robert Southey. 



TO MR. MOXON. 

" Dear Moxon, — I have broughl my sister 
to Enfield, being sure that she had no hope 
of recovery in London. Her state of mind is 
deplorable beyond any example. I almost 
fear whether she has strength at her time of 
life ever to get out of it. Here she must be 
nursed, and neither see nor hear of anything 
in the world out of her sick chamber. The 
mere hearing that Southey had called at our 
lodgings totally upset her. Pray see him, or 
hear of him at Mr. Riekman's, and excuse 
my not writing to him. I dare not write, or 
receive a letter in her presence ; every little 
task so agitates her. Westwood will receive 
any letter for me, and give it, me privately. 

" Pray assure Southey of my kindliest 
feelings towards him, and, if you do not see 
him, send this to him. 

" Kindest remembrances to your sister, 
and believe me ever yours, C. Lamb. 

" Eemember me kindly to the All sops." 



The following curious piece of modern 
Latin was addressed 

TO BERNARD BARTON. 

" April, 1831. 

" Vir Bone ! — Recepi literas tuas amicis- 
simas, et in mentem venit responsuro mihi, 
vel raro, vel nunquam, inter nos intercedisse 
Latinam linguam, organum rescribendi, 
loquendive. Epistolse tuse, Plinianis elegantiis 
(supra quod Tremulo deceat) refertse, tarn a 
verbis Plinianis adeo abhorrent, ut ne vocem 
quamquam (Romanam scilicet) habere vide- 
aris, quam'ad canem,' ut aiunt, 'rejectare 
possis.' Forsan desuetudo Latinissandi ad 
vernaculam linguam usitandam, plusquam 
opus sit, coegit. Per adagia qusedam nota, et 
in ore omnium pervulgata, ad Latinitatis 
perditse recuperationem revocare te institui. 

" Felis in abaco est, et segre videt. 

" Omne quod splendet nequaquam aurum 
putes. 

" Imponas equo mendicum, equitabit idem 
ad diabolum. 

" Fur commode a fure prenditur. 

" O Maria, Maria, vald£ contraria, quo- 
modo crescit hortulus tuus % 

" Nunc majora canamus. 

" Thomas, Thomas, de Islington, uxorem 



270 



LETTERS TO MOXON". 



duxit die nupera Dominica. Eeduxit domum 
postera. Succedenti baculum emit. Postridie 
ferit illam. iEgrescit ilia subsequenti. 
Proxima (nempe Veneris) est mortua. Plu- 
rimum gestiit Thomas, quod appropinquanti 
Sabbato efferenda sit. 

"Horner qnidam Johannulus in angulo 
sedebat, artocreas quasdam deglutiens. In- 
seruit pollices, pruna nana evellens, et magna 
voce exclamavit ' Dii boni, quam bonus puer 
fio!' 

" Diddle-diddle-dumkins ! meus unicus 
filius Johannes cubitum ivit, integris braccis, 
caliga una tantum, indutus. Diddle-diddle, 
&e. Da Capo. 

" Hie adsum saltans Joannula. Cum 
nemo adsit mini, semper resto sola. 

" iEnigma mihi hoc solvas, et GEdipus 
fies. 

" Qua ratione assimulandus sit equus 
Tremulo 1 

" Quippe cui tota communicatio sit per 
Hat et Neigh, juxta consilium illud Domi- 
nicum, ' Fiat omnis communicatio vestra Yea 
et Nay.' 

" In his nugis caram diem consumo, dum 
invigilo valetudini carioris nostrse Emmse, 
quae apud nos jamdudum segrotat. Salvere 
vos jubet mecum Maria mea, ipsa integra 
valetudine. Eli a. 

" Ab agro Enfeldiense datum, Aprilis nescio 
quibus Calendis — Davus sum, non Calen- 
darius. 

" P.S. — Perdita in toto est Billa Refor- 
matura." 

Mr. Moxon, having become the publisher 
of " The Englishman's Magazine," obtained 
Lamb's aid, as a contributor of miscellaneous 
articles, which were arranged to appear 
under the comprehensive title of "Peter's 
Net." The following accompanied his first 
contribution, in which some reminiscences of 
the Royal Academy were enshrined. 

TO MR. MOXON. 

" August, 1831. 

"Dear M., — The R.A. here memorised was 
George Dawe, whom I knew well, and heard 
many anecdotes of, from Daniels and 



Westall, at H. Rogers's ; to each of them it 
will be well to send a magazine in my name. 
It will fly like wildfire among the Royal 
Academicians and artists. Could you get hold 
of Procter ? — his chambers are in Lincoln's 
Inn, at Montague's ; or of Janus Weathercock ? 
— both of their prose is capital. Don't en- 
courage poetry. The ' Peter's Net ' does not 
intend funny things only. All is fish. And 
leave out the sickening ' Elia ' at the end. 
Then it may comprise letters and characters, 
addressed to Peter ; but a signature forces it 
to be all characteristic of the one man, Elia, 
or the one man, Peter, which cramped me 
formerly. I have agreed not for my sister to 
know the subjects I choose, till the magazine 
comes out ; so beware of speaking of 'em, or 
writing about 'em, save generally. Be parti- 
cular about this warning. Can't you drop 
in some afternoon, and take a bed ? The 
' Athenaeum ' has been hoaxed with some ex- 
quisite poetry, that was, two or three months 
ago, in 'Hone's Book.' I like your first 
number capitally. But is not it small ? 
Come and see us, week-day if possible. 

" Send, or bring me, Hone's number for 
August. The anecdotes of E. and of G. D. 
are substantially true ; what does Elia (or 
Peter) care for dates ? 

" The poem I mean, is in ' Hone's Book,' 
as far back as April. I do not know who 
wrote it ; but 'tis a poem I envy — that and 
Montgomery's ' Last Man : ' I envy the 
writers, because I feel I could have done 
something like them. C. L." 



The following contains Lamb's character- 
istic acknowledgment of a payment on ac- 
count of these contributions. 



TO MR. MOXON. 

" Sept. 5ta, 1831. 
" Dear M., — Your letter's contents pleased 
me. I am only afraid of taxing you. Yet I 
want a stimulus, or I think I should drag 
sadly. I shall keep the moneys in trust, till 
I see you fairly over the next 1st January. 
Then I shall look upon 'em as earned. No 
part of your letter gave me more pleasure (no, 
not the \0l., tho' you may grin) than that 
you will revisit old Enfield, which I hope 
will be always a pleasant idea to you. 

" Yours, very faithfully, C. L." 



LETTER TO MOXON. 



271 



The magazine, although enriched with 
Lamb's articles, and some others of great 
merit, did not meet with a success so rapid 
as to requite the proprietor for the labour 
and anxiety of its production. The following 
is Lamb's letter, in reply to one announcing 
a determination to discontinue its publi- 
cation : — 

TO MR. MOXON. 

" Oct. 24th, 1831. 

" To address an abdicated monarch is a 
nice point of breeding. To give him his lost 
titles is to mock him ; to withhold 'em is to 

j wound him. But his minister, who falls with 
him, may be gracefully sympathetic. I do 
honestly feel for your diminution of honours, 
and regret even the pleasing cares which are 
part and parcel of greatness. Your magna- 
nimous submission, and the cheerful tone of 

; your renunciation, in a letter, which, without 
flattery, would have made an ' Article,' and 
which, rarely as I keep letters, shall be pre- 
served, comfort me a little. Will it please, 
or plague you, to say that when your parcel 
came I cursed it, for my pen was warming 
in my hand at a ludicrous description of a 
Landscape of an R.A., which I calculated 
upon sending you to-morrow, the last day 
you gave me ? Now any one calling in, or a 
letter coming, puts an end to my writing for 
the day. Little did I think that the mandate 
had gone out, so destructive to my occupa- 
pation, so relieving to the apprehensions of 
the whole body of E.A.'s ; so you see I had 
not quitted the ship while a plank was re- 
maining. 

" To drop metaphors, I am sure you have 
done wisely. The very spirit of your epistle 
speaks that you have a weight off your mind. 
I have one on mine ; the cash in hand, which, 

as less truly says, burns in my pocket. 

I feel queer at returning it, (who does not ?) 
you feel awkward at retaking it, (who ought 
not ?) — is there no middle way of adjusting 
this fine embarrassment ? I think I have hit 
upon a medium to skin the sore place over, 
if not quite to heal it. You hinted that 
there might be something under 101., by and 
by, accruing to me — Devil's Money ; * (you 
are sanguine, say 71. 10s.) ; that I entirely 
renounce, and abjure all future interest in : 

* Alluding to a little extravagance of Lamb's — scarcely 
worth recollecting — in emulation of the " Devil's Walk" 
of Sotithey and Co. 



I insist upon it, and, 'by him I will not 
name,' I won't touch a penny of it. That 
will split your loss, one h:ilf, and leave me 
conscientious possessor of what I hold. Less 
than your assent to this, no proposal will I 
accept of. 

" The Rev. Mr. , whose name you have 

left illegible (is it Seagull ?) never sent me 
any book on Christ's Hospital, by which I 
could dream that I was indebted to him for 
a dedication. Did G. D. send his penny 
tract to me, to convert me to Unitarianisni > 
Dear, blundering soul ! why I am as old a 
one Goddite as himself. Or did he think his 
cheap publication would bring over the 
Methodists over the way here 1 * However, 
I '11 give it to the pew- opener, in whom I 
have a little interest, to hand over to the 
clerk, whose wife she sometimes drinks tea 
with, for him to lay before the deacon, who 
exchanges the civility of the hat with him, 
for to transmit to the minister, who shakes 
hands with him out of chapel, and he, in all 
odds, will light his pipe with it. 

• " I wish very much to see you. I leave it 
to you to come how you will ; we shall be 
very glad (we need not repeat) to see your 
sister, or sisters, with you ; but for you, 
individually, I will just hint that a dropping 
in to tea, unlooked for, about five, stopping 
bread-and-cheese and gin-and-water, is worth 
a thousand Sundays. I am naturally miser- 
able on a Sunday ; but a week-day evening 
and supper is like old times. Set out now, 
and give no time to deliberation. 

"P.S.— The second volume of 'Elia' is 
delightful (ly bound, I mean), and quite 
cheap. Why, man, 'tis a unique ! 

"If I write much more I shall expand 
into an article, which I cannot afford to let 
you have so cheap. By the by, to show the 
perverseness of human will, while I thought 
I must furnish one of those accursed things 
monthly, it seemed a labour above Hercules' 
' Twelve ' in a year, which were evidently 
monthly contributions. Now I am emanci- 
pated, I feel as if I had a thousand Essays 
swelling within me. False feelings both ! 

"Your ex-Lampoonist, or Lamb-punnist, 
from Enfield, October 24, or 'last day 
but one for receiving articles that can be 
inserted.' " 

* Referring to a chapel opposite his lodging at Enfield. 



272 



LETTERS TO MOXON AND TALFOURD. 



The following was addressed soon after, 

TO MR. MOXON. 

" Feb. 1832. 

"Dear Moxon, — The snows are ancle- 
deep, slush, and mire, that 'tis hard to get to 
the post-office, and cruel to send the maid 
out. 'Tis a slough of despair, or I should 
sooner have thanked you for your offer of 
the ' Life,' which we shall very much like to 
have, and will return duly. I do not know 
when I shall be in town, but in a week or 
two, at farthest, when I will come as far as 
you, if I can. We are moped to death with 
confinement within doors. I send you a 
curiosity of G. Dyer's tender conscience. 
Between thirty and forty years since, G. 
published the ' Poet's Fate,' in which were 
two very harmless lines about Mr. Eogers, 
but Mr. R, not quite approving of them, they 
were left out in a subsequent edition, 1801. 
But G. has been worrying about them ever 
since ; if I have heard him once, I have 
heard him a hundred times, express a remorse 
proportioned to a consciousness of having 
been guilty of an atrocious libel. As the 
devil would have it, a man they call Barker, 
in his 'Parriana' has quoted the identical 
two lines, as they stood in some obscure 
edition anterior to 1801, and the withers of 
poor G. are again wrung. His letter is a 
gem ; with his poor blind eyes it has been 
laboured out at six sittings. The history of 
the couplet is in page 3 of this irregular 
production, in which every variety of shape 
and size that letters can be twisted into is 
to be found. Do show his part of it to Mr. E. 
some day. If he has bowels, they must 
melt at the contrition so queerly charactered 
of a contrite sinner. G. was born, I verily 
think, without original sin, but chooses to 
have a conscience, as every Christian gentle- 
man should have ; his dear old face is 
insusceptible of the twist they call a sneer, 
yet he is apprehensive of being suspected of 
that ugly appearance. When he makes a 
compliment, he thinks he has given an 
affront — a name is personality. But show 
(no hurry) this unique recantation to Mr. E. : 
'tis like a dirty pocket-handkerchief, mucked 
with tears of some indigent Magdalen. 
There is the impress of sincerity in every 
pot-hook and hanger ; and then the gilt 
frame to such a pauper picture ! It should 
go into the Museum. 



"Come when the weather will possibly 
let you ; I want to see the Wordsworths, but 
I do not much like to be all night away. It 
is dull enough to be here together, but it is 
duller to leave Mary ; in short, it is painful, 
and in a flying visit I should hardly catch 
them. I have no beds for them if they came 
down, and but a sort of a house to receive 
them in ; yet I shall regret their departure 
unseen ; I feel cramped and straitened every 
way. Where are they ? 

"We have heard from Emma but once, 
and that a month ago, and are very anxious 
for another letter. 

" You say we have forgot your powers of 
being serviceable to us. That we never shall ; 
I do not know what I should do without 
you when I want a little commission. Now 
then : there are left at Miss Buffon's, the 
' Tales of the Castle,' and certain volumes of 
the ' Eetrospective Eeview.' The first should 
be conveyed to Novello's, and the Eeviews 
should be taken to Talfourd's office, ground- 
floor, east side, Elm Court, Middle Temple, 
to whom I should have written, but my 
spirits are wretched ; it is quite an effort to 
write this. So, with the l ■Life,'' I have cut 
you out three pieces of service. What can I 
do for you here, but hope to see you very 
soon, and think of you with most kindness ? 
I fear to-morrow, between rains and snows 
it would be impossible to expect you, but do 
not let a practicable Sunday pass. We 
are always at home. 

"Mary joins in remembrances to your 
sister, whom we hope to see in any fine-ish 
weather, when she'll venture. 

" Eemember us to Allsop, and all the dead 
people ; to whom, and to London, we seem 
dead." 

In February, 1833, the following letter 
was addressed by Lamb to the editor, on his 
being made Serjeant : — 

TO MR. SERJEANT TALFOURD. 

"My dear T., — Now cannot I call him 
Serjeant; what is there in a coif? Those 
canvas-sleeves protective from ink,* when he 
was a law-chit — a Chittt/lmg, (let the leathern 

* Mr. Lamb always insisted tbat tbe costume referred 
to was worn wbcn be first gladdened bis young friend by 
a call at Mr. Cbitty's Chambers. I am afraid it is all 
apocryphal. 



LETTERS TO MOXON AND WORDSWORTH. 



273 



apron be apocryphal) do more 'specially plead 
to the Jury Court, of old memory. The 
costume (will he agnize it ?) was as of a desk- 
fellow, or Socius Plutei. Methought I spied 
a brother ! 

"That familiarity is extinct for ever. 
Curse me if I can call him Mr. Serjeant — 
except, mark me, in company. Honour 
where honour is due ; but should he ever 
visit us, (do you think he ever will, Mary ?) 
what a distinction should I keep up between 
him and our less fortunate friend, H. C. R. ! 
Decent respect shall always be the Crabb's 
— but, somehow, short of reverence. 

" Well, of my old friends, I have lived to 
see two knighted, one made a judge, another 
in a fair way to it. Why am I restive % 
why stands my sun upon Gibeah ? 

" Variously, my dear Mrs. Talfourd, [I can 
be more familiar with her !] Mrs. Serjeant 
Talfourd, — my sister prompts me — (these 
ladies stand upon ceremonies) — has the con- 
gratulate news affected the members of our 
small community. Mary comprehended it 
at once, and entered into it heartily. Mrs. 

W was, as usual, perverse ; wouldn't, or 

couldn't, understand it. A Serjeant 1 She 
thought Mr. T. was in the law. Didn't know 
that he ever 'listed. 

" Emma alone truly sympathised. She had 
a silk gown come home that very day, and 
has precedence before her learned sisters 
accordingly. 

" We are going to drink the health of Mr. 
and Mrs. Serjeant, with all the young 
serjeantry — and that is all that I can see 
that I shall get by the promotion. 

"Valete, et mementote amici quondam 
vestri humillimi, C. L." 

The following note to Mr. Moxon, on some 
long forgotten occasion of momentary dis- 
pleasure, the nature and object of which is 
uncertain, — contains a fantastical exaggera- 
tion of anger, which, judged by those who 
knew the writer, will only illustrate the 
entire absence of all the bad passions of 
hatred and contempt it feigns. 



TO MR. MOXON. 



1833. 



" Dear M., — Many thanks for the books 
but most thanks for one immortal sentence 
1 If I do not cheat him, never trust me again. 



I do not know whether to admire most, the 
wit or justness of the sentiment. It has my 
cordial approbation. My sense of meum 
and tuum applauds it. I maintain it, the 
eighth commandment hath a secret special 
reservation, by which the reptile is exempt 
from any protection from it. As a dog, or a 
nigger, he is not a holder of property. Not 
a ninth of what he detains from the world is 
his own. Keep your hands from picking 
and stealing, is no ways referable to his 
acquists. I doubt whether bearing false 
witness against thy neighbour at all contem- 
plated this possible scrub. Could Moses 
have seen the speck in vision 1 An ex post 
facto law alone could relieve him ; and we 
are taught to expect no eleventh command- 
ment. The outlaw to the Mosaic dispensa- 
tion ! — unworthy to have seen Moses behind ! 
— to lay his desecrating hands upon Elia ! 
Has the irreverent ark-toucher been struck 
blind, I wonder 1 The more I think of him, 
the less I think of him. His meanness is 
invisible with aid of solar microscope. My 
moral eye smarts at him. The less flea that 
bites little fleas ! The great Beast ! The 
beggarly Nit ! 

" More when we meet ; mind, you'll come, 
two of you ; and couldn't you go off in the 
morning, that we may have a day-long curse 
at him, if curses are not dishallowed by 
descending so low ? Amen. Maledicatur in 
extremis ! C. L." 

In the spring of 1833, Lamb made his 
last removal from Enfield to Edmonton. He 
was about to lose the society of Miss Isola, 
on the eve of marriage, and determined to 
live altogether with his sister, whether in 
her sanity or her madness. This change was 
announced in the following letter 

TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 

" End of May nearly. 

" Dear Wordsworth, — Your letter, save in 
what respects your dear sister's health, 
cheered me in my new solitude. Mary is ill 
again. Her illnesses encroach yearly. The 
last was three months, followed by two of 
depression most dreadful. I look back upon 
her earlier attacks with longing. Nice little 
durations of six weeks or so, followed by 
complete restoration, — shocking as they were 
to me then. In short, half her life she is 



274 



LETTER TO MOXON. 



dead to me, and the other half is made 
anxious with fears and lookings forward to 
the next shock. "With such prospects, it 
seemed to me necessary that she should no 
longer live with me, and be fluttered with 
continual removals ; so I am come to live 
with her, at a Mr. Walden's, and his wife, 
who take in patients, and have arranged to 
lodge and board us only. They have had 
the care of her before. I see little of her, 
alas ! I too often hear her. Sunt lachrymse 
rerum ! and you and I must bear it. 

" To lay a little more load on it, a circum- 
stance has happened, cujus pars magna fui, 
and which, at another crisis, I should have 
more rejoiced in. I am about to lose my 
old and only walk-companion, whose mirthful 
spirits were the ' youth of our house,' Emma 
Isola. I have her here now for a little while, 
but she is too nervous, properly to be under 
such a roof, so she will make short visits, — be 
no more an inmate. With my perfect 
approval, and more than, concurrence, she is 
to be wedded to Moxon, at the end of 
August — so 'perish the roses and the 
flowers ' — how is it 1 

" Now to the brighter side. I am eman- 
cipated from Enfield. I am with attentive 
people, and younger. I am three or four 
miles nearer the great city ; coaches half- 
price less, and going always, of which I avail 
myself. I have few friends left there, one or 
two though, most beloved. But London 
streets and faces cheer me inexpressibly, 
though of the latter, there should be not one 
known one remaining. 

" Thank you for your cordial reception of 
' Elia.' Inter nos, the ' Ariadne ' is not a 
darling with me ; several incongruous things 
are in it, but in the composition it served me 
as illustrative. 

" I want you in the ' Popular Fallacies ' * 
to like the ' Home that is no home,' and 
1 Eising with the lark.' 

" I am feeble, but cheerful in this my 
genial hot weather. Walked sixteen miles 
yesterday. I can't read much in summer 
time. 

" With my kindest love to all, and prayers 
for dear Dorothy, 

" I remain most affectionately yours, 
" C. Lamb. 

» A series of articles contributed, under this title, by 
Lamb, to the " New Monthly Magazine." 



" At Mr. Walden's, Church-street, Edmon- 
ton, Middlesex. 

" Moxon has introduced Emma to Rogers, 
and he smiles upon the project. I have 
given E. my Milton, (will you pardon me ? *) 
in part of a portion. It hangs famously in 
his Murray-like shop." 



On the approach of the wedding-day, 
fixed for 30th July, Lamb turned to the 
account of a half-tearful merriment, the gift 
of a watch to the young lady whom he was 
about to lose. 

TO MR. MOXON. 

"July 24th, 1833. 

" For God's sake give Emma no more 
watches ; one has turned her head. She is 
arrogant and insulting. She said something 
very unpleasant to our old clock in the 
passage, as if he did not keep time, and yet 
he had made her no appointment. She takes 
it out every instant to look at the moment- 
hand. She lugs us out into the fields, 
because there the bird-boys ask you, ' Pray, 
sir, can you tell us what's o'clock % ' and she 
answers them punctually. She loses all her 
time looking to see ' what the time is.' I 
overheard her whispering, ' Just so many 
hours, minutes, &c, to Tuesday ; I think 
St. George's goes too slow.' This little pre- 
sent of Time ! — why, — 'tis Eternity to her ! 

" What can make her so fond of a ginger- 
bread watch ? 

" She has spoiled some of the movements. 
Between ourselves, she has kissed away 
1 half-past twelve,' which I suppose to be the 
canonical hour in Hanover Square. 

"Well, if 'love me, love my watch,' 
answers, she will keep time to you. 

" It goes right by the Horse Guards. 

"Dearest M., — Never mind opposite t 
nonsense. She does not love you for the 
watch, but the watch for you. I will be at 
the wedding, and keep the 30th July, as 
long as my poor months last me, as a festival, 
gloriously. Yours ever, Elia. 

* It had been proposed by Lamb that Mr. W. should 
be the possessor of the portrait if he outlived his friend, 
and that afterwards it was to be bequeathed to Christ's 
College, Cambridge. 

+ Written on the opposite page to that in which the 
previous affectionate banter appears. 



LETTERS TO MR. AND MRS. MOXON AND CARY. 



275 



" We have not heard from Cambridge. I 
will write the moment we do. 

" Edmonton, 24th July, twenty minutes 
past three by Emma's watch." 



Miss Lamb was in the sad state of mental 
estrangement up to the day of the wedding ; 
but then in the constant companionship of 
her brother at Edmonton. The following 
cluster of little letters to the new married 
pair — the first from Charles, introducing one 
from Mary — shows the happy effect of the 
news on her mental health. 

TO MR. AND MRS. MOXON. 

"August,. 1833. 

" Dear Mr. and Mrs. Moxon, — Time very 
short. I wrote to Miss Fryer, and had the 
sweetest letter about you, Emma, that ever 
friendship dictated. 'I am full of good 
wishes, I am crying with good wishes,' she 
says ; but you shall see it. 

" Dear Moxon, — I take your writing most 
kindly, and shall most kindly your writing 
from Paris. 

" I want to crowd another letter to Miss 
Fryer into the little time after dinner, before 
post-time. So with twenty thousand con- 
gratulations, Yours, C. L. 

" I am calm, sober, happy. Turn over for 
the reason. I got home from Dover Street, 
by Evans, half as sober as a judge. I am 
turning over a new leaf, as I hope you will 
now.-" 



The turn of the leaf presented the follow- 
ing from Miss Lamb : — 

" My dear Emma and Edward Moxon, — 
Accept my sincere congratulations, and 
imagine more good wishes than my weak 
| nerves will let me put into good set words. 
The dreary blank of unanswered questions 
which I ventured to ask in vain, was cleared 
up on the wedding-day by Mrs. W.* taking a 
glass of wine, and, with a total change of 
countenance, begging leave to drink Mr. and 
Mrs. Moxon's health. It restored me from 

* The -wife of the landlord of the house at Edmonton. 



that moment, as if by an electrical stroke, to 
the entire possession of my senses, I never 
felt so calm and quiet after a similar illness 
as I do now. I feel as if all tears were wiped 
from my eyes, and all care from my heart. 
" Mary Lamb." 



At the foot of this letter is the following 
by Charles : — 

" Wednesday. 

" Dears, again, — Your letter interrupted a 
seventh game at picquet which vje were 
having, after walking to Wright's and 
purchasing shoes. We pass our time in 
cards, walks, and reading. We attack Tasso 
soon. t C. L. 

" Never was such a calm, or such a re- 
covery. 'Tis her own words, undictated." 



Lamb's latter days were brightened by the 
frequent — latterly periodical — hospitality of 
the admirable translator of Dante, at the 
British Museum. The following was ad- 
dressed to this new friend lately acquired, 
but who became an old friend at once, while 
Mr. and Mrs. Moxon were on their wedding 
tour : — 

TO REV. H. F. CARY. 

"Sept. 9th, 1833. 

" Dear Sir, — Your packet I have only just 
received, owing, I suppose, to the absence of 
Moxon, who is flaunting it about d la 
Parisienne, with his new bride, our Emma, 
much to his satisfaction, and not a little to 
our dulness. We shall be quite well by the 
time you return from Worcestershire, and 
most, most (observe the repetition) glad to 
see you here, or anywhere. 

" I will take my time with Darley's act. I 
wish poets would write a little plainer ; he 
begins some of his words with a letter which 
is unknown to the English typography. 

" Yours, most truly, C. Lamb. 

" P.S. — Pray let me know when you return. 
We are at Mr. Walden's, Church-street, 
Edmonton ; no longer at Enfield. You will 
be amused to hear that my sister and I have, 
with the aid of Emma, scrambled through 
the ' Inferno,' by the blessed furtherance of 
your polar-star translation. I think we 



276 



LETTERS TO MOXON. 



scarce left anything unmadeout. But our 
partner has left us, and we have not yet 
resumed. Mary's chief pride in it was that 
she should some day brag of it to you. Your 
'Dante' and Sandys' 'Ovid' are the only 
helpmates of translations. Neither of you 
shirk a word. 

" Fairfax's ' Tasso ' is no translation 
at all. It's better in some places, but it 
merely observes the number of stanzas ; 
as for images, similes, &c, he finds 'em 
himself, and never 'troubles Peter for the 
matter.' 

" In haste, dear Cary, yours ever, 

" C. Lamb. 

" Has M. sent you ' Elia,' second volume 1 
if not he shall." 



Miss Lamb did not escape all the cares of 
housekeeping by the new arrangement : the 
following little note shows the grotesque 
uses to which Lamb turned the smaller 
household anxieties : — 



TO MR. MOXON. 



1833. 



" Dear M., — Mary and I are very poorly. 
"We have had a sick child, who, sleeping or 
not sleeping, next me, with a pasteboard par- 
tition between, killed my sleep. The little 
bastard is gone. My bedfellows are cough 
and cramp ; we sleep three in a bed. Domes- 
tic arrangements (baker, butcher, and all) de- 
volve on Mary. Don't come yet to this house 
of pest and age ! "We propose, when you and 
E. agree on the time, to come up and meet 

you at the B 's, say a week hence, but do 

you make the appointment. 

" Mind, our spirits are good, and we are 
happy in your happinesses. C. L. 

" Our old and ever loves to dear Emma." 



The following is Lamb's reply to a wel- 
come communication of Sonnets, addressed 
by the bridegroom to the fair object of 
Lamb's regard — beautiful in themselves — 
and endeared to Lamb by honoured memo- 
ries and generous hopes : — 



TO MR. MOXON. 

"Nov. 29th, 1833. 

" Mary is of opinion with me, that two of 
these Sonnets are of a higher grade than any 
poetry you have done yet. The one to Emma 
is so pretty ! I have only allowed myself to 
transpose a word in the third line. Sacred 
shall it be from any intermeddling of mine. 
But we jointly beg that you will make four 
lines in the room of the four last. Eead 
'Darby and Joan,' in Mrs. Moxon's first 
album. There you'll see how beautiful in 
age the looking back to youthful years in an 
old couple is. But it is a violence to the 
feelings to anticipate that time in youth. I 
hope you and Emma will have many a quarrel 
and many a make-up (and she is beautiful 
in reconciliation !) before the dark days 
shall come, in which ye shall say ' there is 
small comfort in them.' You have begun a 
sort of character of Emma in them, very 
sweetly ; carry it on, if you can through the 
last lines. 

" I love the sonnet to my heart, and you 
shall finish it, and I'll be hanged if I furnish 
a line towards it. So much for that. The 
next best is to the Ocean. 

' Ye gallant winds, if e'er your lusty cheeks 
Blew longing lover to his mistress' side, 
O, puff your loudest, spread the canvas wide,' 

is spirited. The last line I altered, and have 
re-altered it as it stood. It is closer. These 
two are your best. But take a good deal of 
time in finishing the first. How proud should 
Emma be of her poets ! 

" Perhaps ' O Ocean ' (though I like it) is 
too much of the open vowels, which Pope 
objects to. ' Great Ocean ! ' is obvious. To 
save sad thoughts I think is better (though 
not good) than for the mind to save herself. 
But 'tis a noble Sonnet. ' St. Cloud ' I have 
no fault to find with. 

" If I return the Sonnets, think it no dis- 
respect, for I look for a printed copy. You 
have done better than ever. And now for a 
reason I did not notice 'em earlier. On 
Wednesday they came, and on Wednesday I 
was a-gadding. Mary gave me a holiday, 
and I set off to Snow Hill. From Snow Hill 
I deliberately was marching down, with noble 
Holborn before me, framing in mental cogi-, 
tation a map of the dear London in prospect 



* 



LETTER TO ROGERS. 



277 



thinking to traverse Wardour- street, &c, 
when, diabolically, I was interrupted by 

Heigh-ho ! 
Little Barrow ! — 

Emma knows him — and prevailed on to spend 
the day at his sister's, where was an album, 
and (O, march of intellect !) plenty of lite- 
rary conversation, and more acquaintance 
with the state of modern poetry than I could 
keep up with. I was positively distanced. 
Knowles' play, which, epilogued by me, lay 
on the Piano, alone made me hold up my 
head. When I came home, I read your 
letter, and glimpsed at your beautiful sonnet, 

' Fair art thou as the morning, my young bride,' 

and dwelt upon it in a confused brain, but 
determined not to open them all next day, 
being in a state not to be told of at Chatteris. 
Tell it not in Gath, Emma, lest the daughters 
triumph ! I am at the end of my tether. I 
wish you could come on Tuesday with your 
fair bride. Why can't you ! Do. We are 
thankful to your sister for being of the party. 
Come, and bring a sonnet on Mary's birth- 
day. Love to the whole Moxonry, and tell 
E. I every day love her more, and miss her 
less. Tell her so, from her loving uncle, as 
she has let me call myself. I bought a fine 
embossed card yesterday, and wrote for the 
Pawnbrokeress's album. She is a Miss 
Brown, engaged to a Mr. White. One of the 
lines was (I forgot the rest — but she had 
them at twenty-four hours' notice ; she is 
going out to India with her husband) : — 

" May your fame, 
And fortune, Frances, Whiten with your name ! ' 

Not bad as a pun. I will expect you before 
two on Tuesday. I am well and happy, 
tell E." 



The following is Lamb's letter of acknow- 
ledgment to the author of the " Pleasures of 
Memory," for an early copy of his " Illus- 
trated Poems," of a share in the publication 
of which, Mr. Moxon was "justly vain." The 
artistical allusions are to Stothard ; the allu- 
sions to the poet's own kindnesses need no 
explanation to those who have been enabled 
by circumstances, which now and then trans- 
pire, to guess at the generous course of his life. 



TO MR. ROGERS. 



Dec. 1833. 



" My dear Sir, — Your book, by the unre- 
mitting punctuality of your publisher, has 
reached me thus early. I have not opened 
it, nor will till to-morrow, when I promise 
myself a thorough reading of it. The 
'Pleasures of Memory ' was the first school- 
present I made to Mrs. Moxon ; it has those 
nice woodcuts, and I believe she keeps it 
still. Believe me, that all the kindness you 
have shown to the husband of that excellent 
person seems done unto myself. I have tried 
my hand at a somiet in the ' Times.' But the 
turn I gave it, though I hoped it would not 
displease you, I thought might not be equally 
agreeable to your artist. I met that dear old 
man at poor Henry's, with you, and again at 
Cary's, and it was sublime to see him sit, 
deaf, and enjoy all that was going on in mirth 
with the company. He reposed upon the 
many graceful, many fantastic images he had 
created ; with them he dined, and took wine. 
I have ventured at an antagonist copy of 
verses, in the ' Athenaeum,' to him, in which 
he is as everything, and you as nothing. He 
is no lawyer who cannot take two sides. 
But I am jealous of the combination of the 
sister arts. Let them sparkle apart. What 
injury (short of the theatres) did not Boy- 
dell's Shakspeare Gallery do me with Shak- 
speare 1 to have Opie's Shakspeare, North- 
cote's Shakspeare, light-headed Fuseli's Shak- 
speare, heavy-headed Eomney's Shakspeare, 
wooden-headed West's Shakspeare (though 
he did the best in Lear), deaf-headed Rey- 
nolds's Shakspeare, instead of my, and 
everybody's Shakspeare ; to be tied down to 
an authentic face of Juliet ! to have Imogen's 
portrait ! to confine the illimitable ! I like 
you and Stothard (you best), but ' out upon 
this half-faced fellowship ! ' Sir, when I 
have read the book, I may trouble you, 
through Moxon, with some faint criticisms. 
It is not the flatteringest compliment in a 
letter to an author to say, you have not read 
his book yet. But the devil of a reader he 
must be, who prances through it in five 
minutes ; and no longer have I received the 
parcel. It was a little tantalising to me to 
receive a letter from Landor, Gebir Landor, 
from Florence, to say he was just sitting 
down to read my 'Elia,' just received ; but 



278 



LETTERS TO MISS FRYER AND WORDSWORTH. 



the letter was to go out before the reading. 
There are calamities in authorship which 
only authors know. I am going to call on 
Moxon on Monday, if the throng of carriages 
in Dover-street, on the morn of publication, 
do not barricade me out. 

" With many thanks, and most respectful 
remembrances to your sister, 

" Yours, C. Lamb. 

" Have you seen Coleridge's happy exem- 
plification in English of the Ovidian Elegiac 
metre ? 

In the Hexameter rises the fountain's silvery current, 
In the Pentameter aye falling in melody down. 

" My sister is papering up the book — care- 
ful soul!" 



Lamb and his sister were now, for the last 
year of their united lives, always together. 
What his feelings were in this companion- 
ship, when his beloved associate was deprived 
of reason, will be seen in the following most 
affecting letter, to an old schoolfellow and 
very dear friend of Mrs. Moxon's — since 
dead — who took an earnest interest in their 
welfare. 

TO MISS FRYER. 

"Feb. 14, 1834. 
" Dear Miss Fryer, — Your letter found me 
just returned from keeping my birthday 
(pretty innocent !) at Dover-street. I see 
them pretty often. I have since had letters 
of business to write, or should have replied 
earlier. In one word, be less uneasy about 
me ; I bear my privations very well ; I am 
not in the depths of desolation, as heretofore. 
Your admonitions are not lost upon me. 
Your kindness has sunk into my heart. 
Have faith in me ! It is no new thing for 
me to be left to my sister. When she is not 
violent, her rambling chat is better to me 
than the sense and sanity of this world. 
Her heart is obscured, not buried ; it breaks 
out occasionally ; and one can discern a 
strong mind struggling with the billows that 
have gone over it. I could be nowhere hap- 
pier than under the same roof with her. 
Her. memory is unnaturally strong ; and 
from ages past, if we may so call the earliest 
records of our poor life, she fetches thousands 



of names and things that never would have 
dawned upon me again, and thousands from 
the ten years she lived before me. What 
took place from early girlhood to her coming 
of age principally, lives again (every important 
thing, and every trifle) in her brain, with the 
vividness of real presence. For twelve hours 
incessantly she will pour out without inter- 
mission, all her past life, forgetting nothing, 
pouring out name after name to the Waldens, 
as a dream ; sense and nonsense ; truths and 
errors huddled together ; a medley between 
inspiration and possession. What things we 
are ! I know you will bear with me, talking 
of these things. It seems to ease me, for I 
have nobody to tell these things to now. 
Emma, I see, has got a harp ! and is learning 
to play. She has framed her three Walton 
pictures, and pretty they look. That is a 
book you should read ; such sweet religion 
in it, next to Woolman's ! though the subject 
be baits, and hooks, and worms, and fishes. 
She has my copy at present, to do two more 
from. 

« Yery, very tired ! I began this epistle, 
having been epistolising all the morning, and 
very kindly would I end it, could I find 
adequate expressions to your kindness. We 
did set our minds on seeing you in spring. 
One of us will indubitably. But I am not 
skilled in almanac learning, to know when 
spring precisely begins and ends. Pardon 
my blots ; I am glad you like your book. I 
wish it had been half as worthy of your 
acceptance as John Woolman. But 'tis a 
good-natured book." 



A few days afterwards Lamb's passionate 
desire to serve a most deserving friend 
broke out in the following earnest little 
letter : — 

TO MR. WORDSWORTH. 

" Church-street, Edmonton, 

"February 22, 1834. 

"Dear Wordsworth, — I write from a house 
of mourning. The oldest and best friends I 
have left are in trouble. A branch of them 
(and they of the best stock of God's creatures, 
I believe) is establishing a school at Carlisle ; 

her name is L M ; her address, 75, 

Castle-street, Carlisle; her qualities (and 
her motives for this exertion) are the most 



LETTERS TO GARY AND MRS. DYER. 



amiable, most upright. For thirty years she 
has been tried by me, and on her behaviour 
I would stake my soul. O, if you can recom- 
mend her, how would I love you — if I could 
love you better ! Pray, pray, recommend 
her. She is as good a human creature, — 
next to my sister, perhaps, the most exem- 
plary female I ever knew. Moxon tells me 
you would like a letter from me ; you shall 
have one. This I cannot mingle up with 
any nonsense which you usually tolerate from 
C. Lamb. Need he add loves to wife, sister, 
and all ? Poor Mary is ill again, after a 
short lucid interval of four or five months. 
In short, I may call her half dead to me. 
How good you are to me. Yours with fer- 
vour of friendship, for ever, C. L. 

"If you want references, the Bishop of 

Carlisle may be one. L 's sister (as good 

as she, she cannot be better though she tries) 
educated the daughters of the late Earl of 
Carnarvon, and he settled a handsome annuity 
on her for life. In short, all the family are 
a sound rock." 



A quiet dinner at the British Museum with 
Mr. Cary once a month, to which Lamb 
looked forward with almost boyish eager- 
ness, was now almost his only festival. In a 
little note to his host about this time, he 
hints at one of his few physical tastes. — " We 
are thinking," he says, " of roast shoulder of 
mutton with onion sauce, but I scorn to 
prescribe to the hospitalities of mine host." 
The following, after these festivities had been 
interrupted by Mr. Gary's visit to the Conti- 
nent, is their last memorial : — 

TO MR. CARY. 

"Sept. 12, 1834. 

" By Cot's plessing we will not be absence 
at the grace." 

" Dear C.,— We long to see you, and hear 
account of your peregrinations, of the Tun at 
Heidelburg, the Clock at Strasburg, the 
statue at Eotterdam, the dainty Ehenish, and 
poignant Moselle wines, Westphalian hams, 
and Botargoes of Altona. But perhaps you 
have seen, not tasted any of these things. 

" Yours, very glad to chain you back again 
to your proper centre, books and Bibliothecee, 
" C. and M. Lamb. 



CHAPTER THE LAST. 

LAMB'S WEDNESDAY NIGHTS COMTARED WITH THE EVEN- 
INGS OF HOLLAND HOUSE HIS DEAD COMPANIONS, 

DYER, GODWIN, THELWALL, HAZLITT, BARNES, HAY- 
DON, COLERIDGE, AND OTHERS LAST GLIMPSES OF 

CHARLES AND MARY LAMB. 



Gone ; all are gone, the old familiar faces ! 



Two circles of rare social enjoyment — dif- 
fering as widely as possible in all external 
circumstances — but each superior in its kind 
to all others, during the same period frankly 
opened to men of letters — now existing only 
in the memories of those who are fast depart- 
ing from us — may, without offence, be placed 
side by side in grateful recollection; they 
are the dinners at Holland House and the 
suppers of "the Lambs" at the Temple, 
Great Russell-street, and Islington. Strange, 
at first, as this juxta-position may seem, a 



" I have only got your note just now per 
negligentia/m periniqui Moxoni" 



The following little note has a mournful 
interest, as Lamb's last scrap of writing. It 
is dated on the very day on which erysipelas 
followed the accident, apparently trifling, 
which, five days after, terminated in his 
death. It is addressed to the wife of his 
oldest surviving friend : — 

TO MRS. DYER. 

"Dec. 22nd, 1834. 

"Dear Mrs. Dyer, — I am very uneasy 
about a Book which I either have lost or left 
at your house on Thursday. It was the 
book I went out to fetch from Miss Buffam's, 
while the tripe was frying. It is called 
' Phillip's Theatrum Poetarum,' but it is an 
English book. I think I left it in the parlour. 
It is Mr. Cary's book, and I would not lose 
it for the world. Pray, if you find it, book it 
at the Swan, Snow Hill, by an Edmonton 
stage immediately, directed to Mr. Lamb, 
Church-street, Edmonton, or write to say 
you cannot find it. I am quite anxious about 
it. If it is lost, I shall never like tripe again. 

" With kindest love to Mr. Dyer and all, 
"Yours truly, C. Lamb." 



2S0 



HOLLAND HOUSE -LAMB'S SUPPERS. 



little reflection will convince the few sur- 
vivors who have enjoyed both, that it in- 
volves no injustice to either; while with 
those who are too young to have been ad- 
mitted to these rare festivities, we may 
exercise the privilege of age by boasting what 
good fellowship was once enjoyed, and what 
" good talk " there was once in the world ! 

But let us call to mind the aspects of each 
scene, before we attempt to tell of the con- 
versation, which will be harder to recall and 
impossible to characterise. And first, let us 
invite the reader to assist at a dinner at 
Holland House in the height of the London 
and Parliamentary season, say a Saturday in 
June. It is scarcely seven — for the luxuries 
of the house are enhanced by a punctuality 
in the main object of the day, which yields to 
no dilatory guest of whatever pretension — 
and you are seated in an oblong room, rich 
in old gilding, opposite a deep recess, pierced 
by large old windows through which the rich 
branches of trees bathed in golden light, just 
admit the faint outline of the Surrey Hills. 
Among the guests are some perhaps of the 
highest rank, always some of high political 
importance, about whom the interest of busy 
life gathers, intermixed with others eminent 
already in literature or art, or of that dawn- 
ing promise which the hostess delights to 
discover and the host to smile on. All are 
assembled for the purpose of enjoyment ; the 
anxieties of the minister, the feverish strug- 
gles of the partisan, the silent toils of the 
artist or critic, are finished for the week ; 
professional and literary jealousies are hushed; 
sickness, decrepitude, and death are silently 
voted shadows ; and the brilliant assemblage 
is prepared to exercise to the highest degree 
the extraordinary privilege of mortals to live 
in the knowledge of mortality without its 
consciousness, and to people the present hour 
with delights, as if a man lived and laughed 
and enjoyed in this world for ever. Every 
appliance of physical luxury which the most 
delicate art can supply, attends on each ; 
every faint wish which luxury creates is 
anticipated ; the noblest and most gracious 
countenance in the world smiles over the 
happiness it is diffusing, and redoubles it by 
cordial invitations and encouraging words, 
which set the humblest stranger guest at 
perfect ease. As the dinner merges into the 
dessert, and the sunset casts a richer glow on 



the branches, still, or lightly waving in the 
evening light, and on the scene within, the 
harmony of all sensations becomes more per- 
fect ; a delighted and delighting chuckle in- 
vites attention to some joyous sally of the 
richest intellectual wit reflected in the faces 
of all, even to the favourite page in green, 
who attends his mistress with duty like that 
of the antique world ; the choicest wines are 
enhanced in their liberal but temperate use 
by the vista opened in Lord Holland's tales 
of bacchanalian evenings at Brookes's, with 
Fox and Sheridan, when potations deeper 
and more serious rewarded the Statesman's 
toils and shortened his days ; until at length 
the serener pleasure of conversation, of the 
now carelessly scattered groups, is enjoyed in 
that old, long, unrivalled library in which 
Addison mused, and wrote, and drank ; 
where every living grace attends ; " and 
more than echoes talk along the walls." One 
happy peculiarity of these assemblies was, 
the number of persons in different stations 
and of various celebrity, who were gratified 
by seeing, still more, in hearing and knowing 
each other ; the statesman was relieved from 
care by association with the poet of whom he 
had heard and partially read ; and the poet 
was elevated by the courtesy which " bared 
the great heart" which "beats beneath a 
star ;" and each felt, not rarely, the true 
dignity of the other, modestly expanding 
under the most genial auspices. 

Now turn to No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, at 
ten o'clock, when the sedater part of the 
company are assembled, and the happier 
stragglers are dropping in from the play. 
Let it be any autumn or winter month, when 
the fire is blazing steadily, and the clean- 
swept hearth and whist-tables speak of the 
spirit of Mrs. Battle, and serious looks require 
" the rigour of the game." The furniture is 
old-fashioned and worn ; the ceiling low, and 
not wholly unstained by traces of " the great 
plant," though now virtuously forborne : but 
the Hogarths, in narrow black frames, 
abounding in infinite thought, humour and 
pathos, enrich the walls ; and all things wear 
' an air of comfort and hearty English welcome. 
; Lamb himself, yet unrelaxed by the glass, is 
1 sitting with a sort of Quaker primness at the 
I whist-table, the gentleness of his melancholy 
' smile half lost in his intentness on the 
I game ; his partner, the author of " Political 



LAMB'S SUPPERS. 



281 



Justice," (the majestic expression of his large 
head not disturbed by disproportion of his 
comparatively diminutive stature,) is regard- 
ing his hand with a philosophic but not a 
careless eye ; Captain Burney, only not vener- 
able because so young in spirit, sits between 
them ; and H. C. R., who alone now and then 
breaks the proper silence, to welcome some 
incoming guest, is his happy partner — true 
winner in the game of life, whose leisure 
achieved early, is devoted to his friends ! At 
another table, just beyond the circle which 
extends from the fire, sit another four. The 
broad, burly, jovial bulk of John Lamb, the 
Ajax Telamon of the slender clerks of the 
old South Sea House, whom he sometimes 
introduces to the rooms of his younger 
brother, surprised to learn from them that 
he is growing famous, confronts the stately 
but courteous Alsager; while P.,"his few hairs 
bristling " at gentle objurgation, watches his 
partner M. B., dealing, with "soul more 
white " * than the hands of which Lamb once 
said, " M., if dirt was trumps, what hands 
you would hold ! " In one corner of the 
room, you may see the pale earnest counte- 
nance of Charles Lloyd, who is discoursing 
" of fate, free-will, fore-knowledge absolute," 
with Leigh Hunt ; and, if you choose to 
listen, you will scarcely know which most to 
admire — the severe logic of the melancholy 
reasoner, or its graceful evasion by the trick- 
some fantasy of the joyous poet. Basil 
Montague, gentle enthusiast in the cause of 
humanity, which he has lived to see 
triumphant, is pouring into the outstretched 
ear of George Dyer some tale of legalised 
injustice, which the recipient is vainly en- 
deavouring to comprehend. Soon the room 
nils; in slouches Hazlitt from the theatre, 
where his stubborn anger for Napoleon's 
defeat at Waterloo has been softened by Miss 
Stephens's angelic notes, which might " chase 
anger, and grief, and fear, and sorrow, and 
pain from mortal or immortal minds ; " 
Kenney, with a tremulous pleasure, an- 
nounces that there is a crowded house to the 
ninth representation of his new comedy, of 
which Lamb lays down his cards to inquire ; 
or Ayrton, mildly radiant, whispers the con- 

* Lamb's Sonnet, dedicatory of his first volume of 
prose to this cherished friend, thus concludes : — ■ 

" Free from self-seeking, envy, low design, 
I have not found a whiter soul than thine." 



tinual triumph of " Don Giovanni," for which 
Lamb, incapable of opera, is happy to take 
his word. Now and then an actor glances 
on us from " the rich Cathay " of the world 
behind the scenes, with news of its brighter 
human-kind, and with looks reflecting the 
public favour — Liston, grave beneath the 
weight of the town's regards — or Miss Kelly, 
unexhausted in spirit by alternating the 
drolleries of high farce with the terrible 
pathos of melodrama, — or Charles Kemble 
mirrors the chivalry of thought, and ennobles 
the party by bending on them looks beaming 
with the aristocracy of nature. Meanwhile 
Becky lays the cloth on the side-table, under 
the direction of the most quiet, sensible, and 
kind of women — who spon compels the 
younger and more hungry of the guests to 
partake largely of the cold roast lamb or 
boiled beef, the heaps of smoking roasted 
potatoes, and the vast jug of porter, often 
replenished from the foaming pots, which the 
best tap of Fleet-street supplies. Perfect 
freedom prevails, save when the hospitable 
pressure of the mistress excuses excess ; and 
perhaps, the physical enjoyment of the play- 
goer exhausted with pleasure, or of the 
author jaded with the labour of the brain, is 
not less than that of the guests at the most 
charming of aristocratic banquets. As the 
hot water and its accompaniments appear, 
and the severities of whist relax, the light 
of conversation thickens : Hazlitt, catching 
the influence of the spirit from which he has 
lately begun to abstain, utters some fine 
criticism with struggling emphasis ; Lamb 
stammers out puns suggestive of wisdom, for 
happy Barron Field to admire and echo ; the 
various driblets of talk combine into a stream, 
while Miss Lamb moves gently about to see 
that each modest stranger is duly served ; 
turning, now and then, an anxious loving eye 
on Charles, which is softened into a half 
humorous expression of resignation to inevit- 
able fate, as he mixes his second tumbler ! 
This is on ordinary nights, when the accus- 
tomed Wednesday-men assemble ; but there is 
a difference on great extra nights, gladdened 
by " the bright visitations" of Wordsworth or 
Coleridge : — the cordiality of the welcome is 
the same, but a sedater wisdom prevails. 
Happy hours were they for the young disciple 
of the then desperate, now triumphant cause 
of Wordsworth's genius, to be admitted to 



2S2 



SOCIAL COMPARISON. 



the presence of the poet who had opened a 
new world for him in the undiscovered riches 
of his own nature, and its affinities with the 
outer universe ; whom he worshipped the 
more devoutly for the world's scorn ; for 
whom he felt the future in the instant, and 
anticipated the " All hail hereafter ! " which 
the great poet has lived to enjoy ! To win 
him to speak of his own poetry — to hear him 
recite its noblest passages — and to join in his 
brave defiance of the fashion of the age — was 
the solemn pleasure of such a season ; and, of 
course, superseded all minor disquisitions. 
So, when Coleridge came, argument, wit, 
humour, criticism were hushed ; the pertest, 
smartest, and the cleverest felt that all were 
assembled to listen ; and if a card-table had 
been filled, or a dispute begun before he was 
excited to continuous speech, his gentle voice, 
undulating in music, soon 

" Suspended whist, and took with, ravishment 
The thronging audience." 

The conversation which animated each of 
these memorable circles, approximated, in 
essence, much more nearly than might be 
surmised from the difference in station of the 
principal talkers, and the contrast in physical 
appliances; that of the bowered saloon of 
Holland House having more of earnestness 
and depth, and that of the Temple-attic more 
of airy grace than would be predicated by a 
superficial observer. The former possessed 
the peculiar interest of directly bordering on 
the scene of political conflict — gathering to- 
gether the most eloquent leaders of the Whig 
party, whose repose from energetic action 
spoke of the week's conflict, and in whom. the 
moment's enjoyment derived a peculiar charm 
from the perilous glories of the struggle which 
the morrow was to renew — when power was 
just within reach, or held with a convulsive 
grasp — like the eager and solemn pleasure of 
the soldiers' banquet in the pause of victory. 
The pervading spirit of Lamb's parties was 
also that of social progress ; but it was the 
spirit of the dreamers and thinkers, not of 
the combatants of the world — men who, it 
may be, drew their theories from a deeper 
range of meditation, and embraced the future 
with more comprehensive hope — but about 
whom the immediate interest of party did 
not gather ; whose victories were all within ; 
whose rewards were visions of blessings 



for their species in the furthest horizon 
of benevolent prophecy. If a profounder 
thought was sometimes dragged to light in 
the dim circle of Lamb's companions than was 
native to the brighter sphere, it was still a 
rare felicity to watch there the union of 
elegance with purpose in some leader of 
party — the delicate, almost fragile grace of 
illustration in some one, perhaps destined to 
lead advancing multitudes or to withstand 
their rashness ; — to observe the growth of 
strength in the midst of beauty expanding 
from the sense of the heroic past, as the 
famed Basil tree of Boccaccio grew from the 
immolated relic beneath it. If the alterna- 
tions in the former oscillated between wider 
extremes, touching on the wildest farce and 
most earnest tragedy of life ; the rich space 
of brilliant comedy which lived ever between 
them in the latter, was diversified by serious 
interests and heroic allusions. Sydney 
Smith's wit — not so wild, so grotesque, so 
deep-searching as Lamb's — had even more 
quickness of intellectual demonstration ; 
wedded moral and political wisdom to hap- 
piest language, with a more rapid perception 
of secret affinities ; was capable of producing 
epigrammatic splendour reflected more per- 
manently in the mind, than the fantastic 
brilliancy of those rich conceits which Lamb 
stammered out with his painful smile. 
Mackintosh might vie with Coleridge in vast 
and various knowledge ; but there the com- 
petition between these great talkers ends, 
and the contrast begins ; the contrast be - 
tween facility and inspiration ; between the 
ready access to each ticketed and labelled 
compartment of history, science, art, criticism, 
and the genius that fused and renovated all. 
But then a younger spirit appeared at Lord 
Holland's table to redress the balance — not 
so poetical as Coleridge, but more lucid — in 
whose vast and joyous memory all the 
mighty past lived and glowed anew ; whose 
declamations presented, not groups tinged 
with distant light, like those of Coleridge, 
but a series of historical figures in relief, ex- 
hibited in bright succession, as if by dioramic 
art there glided before us embossed surfaces 
of heroic life.* Kogers too, was there — con- 
necting the literature of the last age with 

* I take leave to copy the glowing picture of the 
evenings of Holland House and of its admirable master, 
drawn by this favourite guest himself, from an article 



SOCIAL COMPARISON. 



283 



this, partaking of some of the "best character- 
istics of both — whose first poem sparkled in 
the closing darkness of the last century 
" like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear," and 
who was advancing from a youth which had 
anticipated memory, to an age of kindness 
and hope ; and Moore, who paused in the 

which adorned the " Edinburgh Review," just after 
Lord Holland's death. 

" The time is coming when, perhaps a few old men, 
the last survivors of our generation, will in vain seek, 
amidst new streets, and squares, and railway stations, 
for the site of that dwelling which was in their youth 
the favourite resort of wits and beauties — of painters 
and poets — of scholars, philosophers, and statesmen. 
They will then remember, with strange tenderness, 
many objects once familiar to them — the avenue and 
the terrace, the busts and the paintings ; the carving, 
the grotesque gilding, and the enigmatical mottoes. 
With peculiar fondness, they will recal that venerable 
chamber, in which all the antique gravity of a college 
library was so singularly blended with all that female 
grace and wit could devise to embellish a drawing-room. 
They will recollect, not unmoved, those shelves loaded 
with the varied learning of many lands and many ages ; 
those portraits in which were preserved the features of 
the best and wisest Englishmen of two generations. 
They will recollect how many men who have guided the 
polities of Europe — who have moved great assemblies 
by reason and eloquence — who have put life into bronze 
and canvas, or who have left to posterity things so. 
written as it shall not willingly let them die — were 
there mixed with all that was loveliest and gayest in 
the society of the most splendid of capitals. They will 
remember the singular character which belonged to that 
circle, in which every talent and accomplishment, every 
art and science, had its place. They will remember how 
the last debate was discussed in one corner, and the last 
comedy of Scribe in another ; while Wilkie gazed with 
modest admiration on Reynolds' Baretti ; while Mackin- 
tosh turned over Thomas Aquinas to verify a quotation ; 
while Talleyrand related his conversations with Barras 
at the Luxemburg, or his ride with Lannes over the 
field of Austerlitz. They will remember, above all, 
the grace — and the kindness, far more admirable than 
grace — with which the princely hospitality of that 
ancient mansion was dispensed. They will remember 
the venerable and benignant countenance, and the 
cordial voice of him who bade them welcome. They 
will remember that temper which years of pain, of sick- 
ness, of lameness, of confinement, seemed only to make 
sweeter and sweeter ; and that frank politeness, which 
at once relieved all the embarrassment of the youngest 
and most timid writer or artist, who found himself for 
the first time among Ambassadors and Earls. They will 
remember that constant flow of conversation, so natural, 
so animated, so various, so rich with observation and 
anecdote ; that wit which never gave a wound ; that 
exquisite mimicry which ennobled, instead of degrading ; 
that goodness of heart which appeared in every look 
and accent, and gave additional value to every talent 
and acquirement. They will remember, too, that he 
whose name they hold in reverence was not less distin- 
guished by the inflexible uprightness of his political 
conduct, than by his loving disposition and his winning 
manners. They will remember that, in the last lines 
which he traced, he expressed his joy that he had done 
nothing unworthy of the friend of Fox and Grey ; and 
they will have reason to feel similar joy, if, in looking 
back on many troubled years, they cannot accuse them- 
selves of having done anything unworthy of men who 
were distinguished by the friendship of Lord Holland." 



, fluttering expression of graceful trifles, to 
whisper some deep-toned thought of Ireland's 
wrongs and sorrows. 

Literature and Art supplied the favourite 
topics to each of these assemblies, — both 
discussed with earnest admiration, but sur- 
veyed in different aspects. The conversation 
at Lord Holland's was wont to mirror the 
happiest aspects of the living mind ; to cele- 
brate the latest discoveries in science ; to 
echo the quarterly decisions of imperial 
criticism ; to reflect the modest glow of 
young reputations ; — all was gay, graceful, 
decisive, as if the pen of Jeffrey could have 
spoken ; or, if it reverted to old times, it re- 
joiced in those classical associations which 
are always young. At Lamb's, on the other 
hand, the topics were chiefly sought among 
the obscure and remote ; the odd, the quaint, 
the fantastic were drawn out from their 
dusty recesses ; nothing could be more 
foreign to its embrace than the modern 
circulating library, even when it teemed with 
the Scotch novels. Whatever the subject was, 
however, in the more aristocratic, or the 
humbler sphere, it was always discussed by 
those best entitled to talk on it ; no others 
had a chance of being heard. This remark- 
able freedom from bores was produced in 
Lamb's circle by the authoritative texture of 
its commanding minds ; in Lord Holland's, 
by the more direct, and more genial in- 
fluence of the hostess, which checked that 
tenacity of subject and opinion which some- 
times broke the charm of Lamb's parties by 
" a duel in the form of a debate." Perhaps 
beyond any other hostess, — certainly far be- 
yond any host, Lady Holland possessed the 
tact of perceiving, and the power of evoking 
the various capacities which lurked in every 
part of the brilliant circles over which she 
presided, and restrained each to its appro- 
priate sphere, and portion of the evening. 
To enkindle the enthusiasm of an artist on 
the theme over which he had achieved the 
most facile mastery ; to set loose the heart of 
the rustic poet, and imbue his speech with 
the freedom of his native hills ; to draw from 
the adventurous traveller a breathing picture 
of his most imminent danger ; or to embolden 
the bashful soldier to disclose his own share 
in the perils and glories of some famous 
battle-field ; to encourage the generous praise 
of friendship when the speaker and the 



264 



SOCIAL COMPARISON. 



subject reflected interest on each other ; or win 
from an awkward man of science the secret 
history of a discovery which had astonished 
the world ; to conduct these brilliant deve- 
lopments to the height of satisfaction, and 
then to shift the scene by the magic of a 
word, were among her nightly successes. 
And if this extraordinary power over the 
elements of social enjoyment was sometimes 
wielded without the entire concealment of 
its despotism ; if a decisive check sometimes 
rebuked a speaker who might intercept the 
variegated beauty of Jeffrey's indulgent 
criticism, or the jest announced and self- 
rewarded in Sydney Smith's cordial and 
triumphant laugh, the authority was too 
clearly exerted for the evening's prosperity, 
and too manifestly impelled by an urgent 
consciousness of the value of these golden 
hours which were fleeting within its confines, 
to sadden the enforced silence with more than 
a momentary regret. If ever her prohibition 
— clear, abrupt, and decisive, — indicated 
more than a preferable regard for livelier dis- 
course, it was when a depreciatory tone was 
adopted towards genius, or goodness, or 
honest endeavour, or when some friend, per- 
sonal or intellectual, was mentioned in 
slighting phrase. Habituated to a generous 
partisanship, by strong sympathy with a 
great political cause, she carried the fidelity 
of her devotion to that cause into her social 
relations, and was ever the truest and the 
fastest of friends. The tendency, often more 
idle than malicious, to soften down the in- 
tellectual claims of the absent, which so 
insidiously besets literary conversation, and 
teaches a superficial insincerity, even to sub- 
stantial esteem and regard, and which was 
sometimes insinuated into the conversation 
of Lamb's friends, though never into his own, 
found no favour in her presence ; and hence 
the conversations over which she presided, 
perhaps beyond all that ever flashed with a 
kindred splendour, were marked by that in- 
tegrity of good nature which might admit 
of their exact repetition to every living indi- 
vidual whose merits were discussed, without 
the danger of inflicting pain. Under her 
auspices, not only all critical, but all personal 
talk was tinged with kindness ; the strong 
interest which she took in the happiness of 
her friends, shed a peculiar sunniness over the 
aspects of life presented by the common 



topics of alliances, and marriages, and pro- 
motions ; and there was not a hopeful en- 
gagement, or a happy wedding, or a promo- 
tion of a friend's son, or a new intellectual 
triumph of any youth with whose name and 
history she was familiar, but became an event 
on which she expected and required congra- 
tulation as on a part of her own fortune. 
Although there was necessarily a preponder- 
ance in her society of the sentiment of 
popular progress, which once was cherished 
almost exclusively by the party to whom 
Lord Holland was united by sacred ties, no 
expression of triumph in success, no viru- 
lence in sudden disappointment, was ever 
permitted to wound the most sensitive ears 
of her conservative guests. It might be that 
some placid comparison of recent with former 
times, spoke a sense of freedom's peaceful 
victory ; or that, on the giddy edge of some 
great party struggle, the festivities of the 
evening might take a more serious cast, as 
news arrived from the scene of contest, and 
the pleasure might be deepened by the peril ; 
but the feeling was always restrained by the 
supremacy given to those permanent solaces 
for the mind, in the beautiful and the great, 
which no political changes disturb. Although 
the death of the noble master of the venerated 
mansion closed its portals for ever on the 
exquisite enjoyments to which they had been 
so generously expanded, the art of conversa- 
tion lived a little longer in the smaller circle 
which Lady Holland still drew almost daily 
around her ; honouring his memory by fol- 
lowing his example, and struggling against 
the perpetual sense of unutterable bereave- 
ment, by rendering to literature that honour 
and those reliefs, which English aristocracy 
has too often denied it ; and seeking conso- 
lation in making others proud and happy. 
That lingering happiness is extinct now ; 
Lamb's kindred circle — kindred, though so 
difl'erent — dispersed almost before he died ; 
the " thoughts that wandered through eter- 
nity," are no longer expressed in time ; the 
fancies and conceits, " gay creatures of the 
element" of social delight, "that in the 
colours of the rainbow lived, and played in 
the plighted clouds," flicker only in the back- 
ward perspective of waning years ; and for 
the survivors, I may venture to affirm, no such 
conversation as they have shared in either 
circle will ever be theirs again in this world ! 



GEORGE DYER. 



2£5 



Before closing these last Memorials of 
Charles and Mary Lamb, it may be permitted 
me to glance separately at some of the 
friends who are grouped around them in 
memory, and who, like them, live only in 
recollection, and in the works they have 
left behind them. 

George Dyer was one of the first objects 
of Lamb's youthful reverence, for he had 
attained the stately rank of Grecian in the 
venerable school of Christ's Hospital, when 
Charles entered it, a little, timid, affectionate 
child ; but this boyish respect, once amount- 
ing to awe, gave place to a familiar habit of 
loving banter, which, springing from the 
depths of old regard, approximated to school- 
boy roguery, and, now and then, though very 
rarely, gleamed on the consciousness of the 
ripe scholar. No contrast could be more 
vivid than that presented by the relations of 
each to the literature they both loved ; one 
divining its inmost essences, plucking out 
the heart of its mysteries, shedding light on 
its dimmest recesses ; the other devoted, 
with equal assiduity, to its externals. Books, 
to Dyer, " were a real world, both pure and 
good ; " among them he passed, unconscious 
of time, from youth to extreme age, vege- 
tating on their dates and forms, and " trivial 
fond records," in the learned air of great 
libraries, or the dusty confusion of his own, 
with the least possible apprehension of any 
human interest vital in their pages, or of any 
spirit of wit or fancy glancing across them. 
His life was an Academic pastoral. Me- 
thinks I see his gaunt, awkward form, set 
off by trousers too short, like those outgrown 
by a gawky lad, and a rusty coat as much 
too large for the wearer, hanging about him 
like those garments which the aristocratic 
Milesian peasantry prefer to the most com- 
fortable rustic dress ; his long head silvered 
over with short yet straggling hair, and his 
dark grey eyes glistening with faith and 
wonder, as Lamb satisfies the curiosity 
which has gently disturbed his studies as to 
the authorship of the Waverley Novels, by 
telling him, in the strictest confidence, that 
they are the works of Lord Castlereagh, just 
returned from the Congress of Sovereigns at 
Vienna ! Off he runs, with animated stride 
and shambling enthusiasm, nor stops till he 
reaches Maida Hill, and breathes his news 
into the startled ear of Leigh Hunt, who, 



" as a public writer," ought to be possessed 
of the great fact with which George is laden ! 
Or shall I endeavour to revive the bewildered 
look with which, just after he had been an- 
nounced as one of Lord Stanhope's executors 
and residuary legatees, he received Lamb's 
grave inquiry, "Whether it was true, as 
commonly reported, that he was to be made 
a Lord V " O dear no ! Mr. Lamb," re- 
sponded he with earnest seriousness, but not 
without a moment's quivering vanity, " I 
could not think of such a thing ; it is not 
true, I assure you." " I thought not," said 
Lamb, " and I contradict it wherever I go ; 
but the government will not ask your con- 
sent ; they may raise you to the peerage 
without your even knowing it." " I hope 
not, Mr. Lamb ; indeed, indeed, I hope not ; 
it would not suit me at all," responded Dyer, 
and went his way, musing on the possibility 
of a strange honour descending on his re- 
luctant brow. Or shall I recall the visible 
presentment of his bland unconsciousness of 
evil when his sportive friend taxed it to the 
utmost, by suddenly asking what he thought 
of the murderer Williams, who, after de 
stroying two families in Batcliffe Highway, 
had broken prison by suicide, and whose 
body had just before been conveyed, in shock- 
ing procession, to its cross-road grave ! The 
desperate attempt to compel the gentle 
optimist to speak ill of a mortal creature 
produced no happier success than the answer, 
" Why, I should think, Mr. Lamb, he must 
have been rather an eccentric character." 
This simplicity of a nature not only unspotted 
by the world, but almost abstracted from it, 
will seem the more remarkable, when it is 
known that it was subjected, at the entrance 
of life, to a hard battle with fortune. Dyer 
was the son of very poor parents, residing 
in an eastern suburb of London, Stepney or 
Bethnal-greenward, where he attracted the 
attention of two elderly ladies as a serious 
child, with an extraordinary love for books. 
They obtained for him a presentation to 
Christ's Hospital, which he entered at seven 
year ( s of age; fought his way through its 
sturdy ranks to its head ; and, at nineteen, 
quitted it for Cambridge, with only an ex- 
hibition and his scholarly accomplishments 
to help him. On he went, however, placid, 
if not rejoicing, through the difficulties 
of a life illustrated only by scholarship ; 



28G 



WILLIAM GODWIN. 



encountering tremendous labours ; unresting 
yet serene ; until at eighty-five he breathed 
out the most blameless of lives, which began 
in a struggle to end in a learned dream ! 

Mr. Godwin, who during the happiest 
period of Lamb's weekly parties, was a con- 
stant assistant at his whist-table, resembled 
Dyer in simplicity of manner and devotion 
to letters ; but the simplicity was more 
superficial, and the devotion more profound 
than the kindred qualities in the guileless 
scholar ; and, instead of forming the entire 
being, only marked the surface of a nature 
beneath which extraordinary power lay 
hidden. As the absence of worldly wisdom 
subjected Dyer to the sportive sallies of 
Lamb, so a like deficiency in Godwin ex- 
posed him to the coarser mirth of Mr. Home 
Tooke, who was sometimes inclined to seek 
relaxation for the iron muscles of his imper- 
turbable mind in trying to make a philosopher 
look foolish. To a stranger's gaze the author 
of the " Political Justice " and " Caleb 
Williams," as he appeared in the Temple, 
always an object of curiosity except to his 
familiars, presented none of those charac- 
teristics with which fancy had invested the 
daring speculator and relentless novelist ; 
nor, when he broke silence, did his language 
tend to reconcile the reality with the expec- 
tation. The disproportion of a frame which, 
low of stature, was surmounted by a massive 
head which might befit a presentable giant, 
was rendered almost imperceptible, not by 
any vivacity of expression, (for his coun- 
tenance was rarely lighted up by the 
deep-seated genius within,) but by a 
gracious suavity of manner which many 
" a fine old English gentleman " might envy. 
His voice was small ; the topics of his 
ordinary conversation trivial, and discussed 
with a delicacy and precision which might 
almost be mistaken for finical ; and the pre- 
sence of the most interesting persons in 
literary society, of which he had enjoyed 
the best, would not prevent him from falling 
after dinner into the most profound sleep. 
This gentle, drowsy, spiritless demeanour, 
presents a striking contrast to a reputation 
which once filled Europe with its echoes ; 
but it was, in truth, when rightly under- 
stood, perfectly consistent with those in- 
tellectual elements which in some raised the 
most enthusiastic admiration, and from 



1 others elicited the wildest denunciations of 
visionary terror. 



In Mr. Godwin's mind, the faculty of 
abstract reason so predominated over all 
others, as practically to extinguish them ; 
and his taste, akin to this faculty, sought 
only for its development through the medium 
of composition for the press. He had no 
imagination, no fancy, no wit, no humour ; 
or if he possessed any of those faculties, they 
were obscured by that of pure reason ; and 
being wholly devoid of the quick sensibility 
which irritates speech into eloquence, and 
of the passion for immediate excitement and 
applause, which tends to its presentment 
before admiring assemblies, he desired no 
other audience than that which he could 
silently address, and learned to regard all 
things through a contemplative medium. In 
this sense, far more than in the extravagant 
application of his wildest theories, he levelled 
all around him ; admitted no greatness but 
that of literature ; and neither desired nor 
revered any triumphs but those of thought. 
If such a reasoning faculty, guided by such a 
disposition, had been applied to abstract 
sciences, no effect remarkable beyond that 
of rare excellence, would have been produced ; 
but the apparent anomalies of Mr. Godwin's 
intellectual history arose from the applica- 
tion of his power to the passions, the 
interests, and the hopes of mankind, at a 
time when they enkindled into frightful 
action, and when he calmly worked out his 
problems among their burning elements with ' 
the "ice-brook's temper," and the severest 
logic. And if some extreme conclusions were 
inconsistent with the faith and the duty which 
alone can sustain and regulate our nature, 
there was no small compensation in the 
severity of the process to which the student 
was impelled, for the slender peril which 
might remain lest the results should be 
practically adopted. A system founded on 
pure reason, which rejected the impulses of 
natural affection, the delights of gratitude, 
the influences of prejudice, the bondage of 
custom, the animation of personal hope ; 
which appealed to no passion — which 
suggested no luxury — which excited no 
animosities — and which offered no prize for 
the observance of its laws, except a par- 
ticipation in the expanding glories of progres- 
sive humanity, was little calculated to allure 



WILLIAM GODWIN. 



287 



from the accustomed paths of ancient ordi- 
nance any man disposed to walk in them by 
the lights from heaven. On the other hand, 
it was a healthful diversion from those 
seductions in which the heart secretly ener- 
vates and infects the understanding, to invite 
the revolutionary speculator to the contem- 
plation of the distant and the refined ; by 
the pursuit of impracticable error to brace 
the mind for the achievement of everlasting 
truth ; and on the " heat and flame of the 
distemper " of an impassioned democracy to 
" sprinkle cool patience." The idol Political 
Justice, of which he was the slow and 
laborious architect, if it for a while enchanted, 
did not long enthral or ever debase its 
worshippers ; " its bones were marrowless, its 
blood was cold," — but there was surely 
"speculation in its eyes" which "glared 
withal " into the future. Such high casuistry 
as it evoked has always an ennobling ten- 
dency, even when it dallies with error ; the 
direction of thought in youth is of less con- 
sequence than the mode of its exercise ; and 
it is only when the base interests and sensual 
passions of mortality pander to the under- 
standing that truth may fear for the issue. 

The author of this cold and passionless 
intellectual phantasy looked out upon the 
world he hoped to inform from recesses 
of contemplation which the outward inci- 
dents of life did not disturb, and which, when 
closed, left him a common man, appearing to 
superficial observers rather below than above 
the level of ordinary talkers. To his inward 
gaze the stupendous changes which agitated 
Europe, at the time he wrote, were silent as 
a picture. The pleasure of his life was to 
think ; its business was to write ; all else in 
it was vanity. Kegarding his own being 
through the same spiritualising medium, he 
saw no reason why the springs of its exist- 
ence should wear out, and, in the spring-time 
of his speculation, held that man might 
become immortal on earth by the effort of 
the will. His style partook of the quality of 
his intellect and the character of its purposes 
— it was pure, simple, colourless. His most 
imaginative passages are inspired only by a 
logic quickened into enthusiasm by the 
anticipation of the approaching discovery of 
truth — the dawning Eureka of the reasoner ; 
they are usually composed of " line upon 
line and precept upon precept," without an 



involution of style, or an eddy in the thought. 
He sometimes complained, though with the 
benignity that always marked his estimate 
of his opponents, that Mr. Malthus's style 
was too richly ornamented for argument ; 
and certainly, with all its vivacity of illus- 
tration it lacks the transparent simplicity 
of his own. The most palpable result which 
he ever produced by his writings was the 
dark theory in the first edition of the work 
on Population, which was presented as an 
answer to his reasoning on behalf of the 
perfectibility of man ; and he used to smile 
at his ultimate triumph, when the writer, 
who had only intended a striking paradox, 
tamed it down to the wisdom of economy, 
and adapted it to Poor-law uses ; neutralised 
his giant spectres of Vice and Misery by the 
practical intervention of Moral Eestraint ; 
and left the optimist, Godwin, still in 
unclouded possession of the hope of universal 
peace and happiness, postponed only to that 
time when passion shall be subjected to 
reason, and population, no more rising like a 
resistless tide, between adamantine barriers 
to submerge the renovated earth, shall obey 
the commands of wisdom ; rise and fall as 
the means of subsistence expand or contract ; 
and only contribute an impulse to the 
universal harmony. 

The persons of Mr. Godwin's romances — 
stranger still — are the naked creations of 
the same intellectual power, marvellously 
endowed with galvanic life. Though with 
happier symmetry, they are as much made 
out of chains and links of reasoning, as the 
monster was fashioned by the chemistry 
of the student, in the celebrated novel of 
his gifted daughter. Falkland, and Caleb 
Williams, are the mere impersonations of 
the unbounded love of reputation, and 
irresistible curiosity ; these ideas are de- 
veloped in each with masterly iteration — to 
the two ideas all causes give way ; and 
materials are subjected, often of remarkable 
coarseness, to the refinement of the concep- 
tion. Hazlitt used to observe of these two 
characters, that the manner they are played 
into each other, was equal to anything of 
the kind in the drama ; and there is no doubt 
that the opposition, though at the cost of 
probability, is most powerfully maintained : 
but the effect is partly owing to the absence 
of all extrinsic interest which could interfere 



2S3 



JOHN THELWALL. 



with the main purpose ; the beatings of the 
heart become audible, not only from their 
own intensity, but from the desolation which 
the author has expanded around them. The 
consistency in each is that of an idea, not of 
a character ; and if the effect of form and 
colour is produced, it is, as in line engraving, 
by the infinite minuteness and delicacy of 
the single strokes. In like manner, the 
incidents by which the author seeks to 
exemplify the wrongs inflicted by power on 
goodness in civilised society, are utterly 
fantastical ; nothing can be more minute, 
nothing more unreal ; the youth being in- 
volved by a web of circumstances woven to 
immesh him, which the condition of society 
that the author intends to repudiate, renders 
impossible ; and which, if true, would prove 
not that the framework of law is tyrannous, 
but that the will of a single oppressor may 
elude it. The subject of " St. Leon " is 
more congenial to the author's power ; but 
it is, in like manner, a logical development 
of the consequences of a being prolonged on 
earth through ages ; and, as the dismal vista 
expands, the skeleton speculators crowd in 
to mock and sadden us ! 

Mr. Godwin was thus a man of two 
beings, which held little discourse with each 
other — the daring inventor of theories con- 
structed of air-drawn diagrams — and the 
simple gentleman, who suffered nothing to 
disturb or excite him, beyond his study. He 
loved to walk in the crowded streets of Lon- 
don, not like Lamb, enjoying the infinite 
varieties of many-coloured life around him, 
but because he felt, amidst the noise, and 
crowd, and glare, more intensely the imper- 
turbable stillness of his own contemplations. 
His means of comfortable support were 
mainly supplied by a shop in Skinner-street, 
where, under the auspices of" M. J. Godwin 
& Co.," the prettiest and wisest books for 
children issued, which old-fashioned parents 
presented to their children, without suspect- 
ing that the graceful lessons of piety and 
goodness which charmed away the selfishness 
of infancy, were published, and sometimes 
revised, and now and then written, by a 
philosopher whom they would scarcely 
venture to name ! He met the exigencies 
which the vicissitudes of business sometimes 
caused, with the trusting simplicity which 
marked his course — he asked his friends for 



aid without scruple, considering that their 
means were justly the due of one who toiled 
in thought for their inward life, and had 
little time to provide for his own outward 
existence ; and took their excuses, when 
offered, without doubt or offence. The very 
next day after I had been honoured and 
delighted by an introduction to him at 
Lamb's chambers, I was made still more 
proud and happy by his appearance at my 
own on such an errand — which my poverty, 
not my will, rendered abortive. After some 
pleasant chat on indifferent matters, he care- 
lessly observed, that he had a little bill for 
150?. falling due on the morrow, which he 
had forgotten till that morning, and desired 
the loan of the necessary amount for a few 
weeks. At first, in eager hope of being able 
thus to oblige one whom I regarded with 
admiration akin to awe, I began to consider 
whether it was possible for me to raise such 
a sum ; but, alas ! a moment's reflection 
sufficed to convince me that the hope was 
vain, and I was obliged, with much confusion, 
to assure my distinguished visitor how glad 
I should have been to serve him, but that I 
was only just starting as a special pleader, 
was obliged to write for magazines to help 
me on, and had not such a sum in the world. 
" Oh dear," said the philosopher, " I thought 
you were a young gentleman of fortune — 
don't mention it — don't mention it ; I shall 
do very well elsewhere : " — and then, in the 
most gracious manner, reverted to our former 
topics ; and sat in my small room for half an 
hour, as if to convince me that my want of 
fortune made no difference in his esteem. A 
slender tribute to the literature he had 
loved and served so well, was accorded to 
him in the old age to which he attained, by 
the gift of a sinecure in the Exchequer, of 
about 2001. a-year, connected with the 
custody of the Records ; and the last time I 
saw him, he was heaving an immense key 
to unlock the musty treasures of which he 
was guardian — how unlike those he had 
unlocked, with finer talisman, for the 
astonishment and alarm of one generation, 
and the delight of all others ! 

John Thelwall, who had once exulted in 
the appellation of Citizen Thelwall, having 
been associated with Coleridge and Southey 
in their days of enthusiastical dreaming, 
though a more precise and practical reformer 



JOHN THELWALL. 



289 



than either, was introduced by them to Lamb, 
and was welcomed to his circle, in the true 
Catholicism of its spirit, although its master 
cared nothing for the Eoman virtue which 
Thelwall devotedly cherished, and which 
Home Tooke kept in uncertain vibration be- 
tween a rebellion and a hoax. Lamb justly 
esteemed Thelwall as a thoroughly honest 
man ; — not honest merely in reference to the 
moral relations of life, but to the processes 
of thought ; one whose mind, acute, vigorous, 
and direct, perceived only the object imme- 
diately before it, and, undisturbed by colla- 
teral circumstances, reflected, with literal 
fidelity, the impression it received, and main- 
tained it as sturdily against the beauty that 
might soften it, or the wisdom that might 
mould it, as against the tyranny that would 
stifle its expression. " If to be honest as the 
world goes, is to be one man picked out of 
ten thousand," to be honest as the mind 
works is to be one man of a million ; and 
such a man was Thelwall. Starting with 
imperfect education from the thraldom of 
domestic oppression, with slender knowledge,, 
but with fiery zeal, into the dangers of poli- 
tical enterprise, and treading fearlessly on 
the verge of sedition, he saw nothing before 
him but powers which he assumed to be 
despotism and vice, and rushed headlong to 
crush them. The point of time — just that 
when the accumulated force of public opinion 
had obtained a virtual mastery over the 
accumulated corruptions of ages, but when 
power, still unconvinced of its danger, pre- 
sented its boldest front to opposing intellect, 
or strove to crush it in the cruelty of 
awaking fear — gave scope for the ardent 
temperament of an orator almost as poor in 
scholastic cultivation as in external fortune ; 
but strong in integrity, and rich in burning 
words. 

Thus passionate, Thelwall spoke boldly 
and vehemently — at a time when indignation 
was thought to be virtue ; but there is no 
reason to believe he ever meditated any 
treason except that accumulated in the archi- 
tectural sophistry of Lord Eldon, by which 
he proved a person who desired to awe 
the Government into a change of policy 
to be guilty of compassing the king's death 
■ — as thus : — that the king must resist the 
proposed alteration in his measures — that 
resisting he must be deposed — and that being 



! deposed, he must necessarily die ; — though 
his boldness of speech placed him in jeopardy 
I even after the acquittals of his simple- 
minded associate Hardy, and his enigmatical 
instructor Tooke, who forsook him, and left 
I him, when acquitted, to the mercy of the 
| world. His life, which before this event had 
been one of self-denial and purity remarkable 
in a young man who had imbibed the im- 
pulses of revolutionary France, partook of 
considerable vicissitude. At one time, he 
was raised by his skill in correcting im- 
pediments of speech, and teaching elocution 
as a science, into elegant competence — at 
other times saddened by the difficulties of 
poorly requited literary toil and wholly un- 
requited patriotism ; but he preserved his 
integrity and his cheerfulness — "a man of 
hope and forward-looking mind even to the 
last." Unlike Godwin, whose profound 
thoughts slowly struggled into form, and 
seldom found utterance in conversation, — 
speech was, in him, all in all, his delight, his 
profession, his triumph, with little else than 
passion to inspire or colour it. The flaming 
orations of his "Tribune," rendered more 
piquant by the transparent masquerade of 
ancient history, which, in his youth, " touched 
monied worldlings with dismay," and infected 
the poor with dangerous anger, seemed vapid, 
spiritless, and shallow when addressed 
through the press to the leisure of the 
thoughtful. The light which glowed with 
so formidable a lustre before the evening 
audience, vanished on closer examination, 
and proved to be only a harmless phantom- 
vapour which left no traces of destructive 
energy behind it. 

Thelwall, in person small, compact, mus- 
cular — with a head denoting indomitable 
resolution, and features deeply furrowed by 
the ardent workings of the mind, — was as 
energetic in all his pursuits and enjoyments 
as in political action. He was earnestly de- 
voted to the Drama, and enjoyed its greatest 
representations with the freshness of a boy 
who sees a play for the first time. He hailed 
the kindred energy of Kean with enthu- 
siastic praise ; but abjuring the narrowness 
of his political vision in matters of taste, did 
justice to the nobler qualities of Mrs. Siddons 
and her brothers. In literature and art also, 
he relaxed the bigotry of his liberal intoler- 
ance, and expatiated in their wider fields 



290 



WILLIAM HAZLITT. 



with a taste more catholic. Here Lamb was 
ready with his sympathy, which indeed even 
the political zeal, that he did not share, was 
too hearted to repel. Although generally de- 
testing lectures on literature as superficial 
and vapid substitutes for quiet reading, and 
recitations as unreal mockeries of the true 
Drama, he sometimes attended the enter- 
tainments, composed of both, which Thelwall, 
in the palmy days of his prosperity, gave at 
his house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, not on 
politics, which he had then forsaken for 
elocutionary science, though maintaining the 
principles of his youth, but partly on elocu- 
tion, and partly on poetry and acting, into 
which he infused the fiery enthusiasm of his 
nature. Sometimes, indeed, his fervour 
animated his disquisitions on the philosophy 
of speech with greater warmth than he re- 
served for more attractive themes ; the 
melted vowels were blended into a rainbow, 
or dispersed like fleecy clouds ; and the 
theory of language was made interesting by 
the honesty and vigour of the speaker. Like 
all men who have been chiefly self-taught, 
he sometimes presented common-places as 
original discoveries, with an air which 
strangers mistook for quackery ; but they 
were unjust ; to the speaker these were the 
product of his own meditation, though 
familiar to many, and not rarely possessed 
the charm of originality in their freshness. 
Lamb at least, felt that it was good, among 
other companions of richer and more com- 
prehensive intelligence, to have one friend 
who was undisturbed by misgiving either for 
himself or his cause ; who enunciated wild 
paradox and worn-out common-place with 
equal confidence ; and who was ready to 
sacrifice ease, fortune, fame — everything but 
speech, and, if it had been possible, even that 
— to the cause of truth or friendship. 

William Hazlitt was, for many years, 
one of the brightest and most constant orna- 
ments of Lamb's parties ; — linked to him in 
the firm bond of intellectual friendship— 
which remained unshaken in spite of some 
superficial differences, " short and far be- 
tween," arising from Lamb's insensibility to 
Hazlitt's political animosities and his ad- 
herence to Southey, Wordsworth, and Cole- 
ridge, who shared them. Hazlitt in his 
boyhood had derived from his father that 
attachment to abstract truth for its own sake, 



and that inflexible determination to cherish 
it, which naturally predominated in the 
being of the minister of a small rural con- 
gregation, who cherished religious opinions 
adverse to those of the great body of his 
countrymen, and waged a spiritual warfare 
throughout his peaceful course. Thus dis- 
ciplined, he was introduced to the friendship 
of youthful poets, in whom the dawn of 
the French Eevolution had enkindled hope, 
and passion, and opinions tinctured with 
hope and passion, which he eagerly em- 
braced ; and when changes passed over the 
prospects of mankind, which induced them, 
in maturer years, to modify the doctrines 
they had taught, he resented these defections 
almost as personal wrongs, and, when his 
pen found scope, and his tongue utterance, 
wrote and spoke of them with such bitter- 
ness as can only spring from the depths of 
old affection. No writer, however, except 
Wilson, did such noble justice to the poetry 
of Wordsworth, when most despised, and to 
the genius of Coleridge, when most obscured ; 
he cherished a true admiration for each in 
"the last recesses of the mind," and defended 
them with dogged resolution against the 
scorns and slights of the world. Still the 
superficial difference was, or seemed, too wide 
to admit of personal intercourse ; and I do 
not think that during the many years which 
elapsed between my introduction to Lamb 
and Hazlitt's death, he ever met either of 
the poets at the rooms of the man they united 
in loving. 

Although Mr. Hazlitt was thus staunch in 
his attachment to principles which he re- 
verenced as true, he was by no means rigid 
in his mode of maintaining and illustrating 
them ; but, on the contrary, frequently 
diminished the immediate effect of his 
reasonings by the prodigality and richness 
of the allusions with which he embossed 
them. He had as unquenchable a desire for 
truth as others have for wealth, or power, or 
fame ; he pursued it with sturdy singleness 
of purpose ; and enunciated it without favour 
or fear. But, besides that love of truth, that 
sincerity in pursuing it, and that boldness in 
telling it, he had also a fervent aspiration 
after the beautiful ; a vivid sense of pleasure, 
and an intense consciousness of his own indi- 
vidual being, which sometimes produced 
obstacles to the current of speculation, by 



WILLIAM HAZLITT. 



201 



which it was broken into dazzling eddies or 
urged into devious windings. Acute, fervid, 
vigorous, as his mind was, it wanted the one 
great central power of Imagination, which 
brings all the other faculties into harmonious 
action ; multiplies them into each other ; 
makes truth visible in the forms of beauty, 
and substitutes intellectual vision for proof. 
Thus, in him, truth and beauty held divided 
empire. ' In him, the spirit was willing, but 
the flesh was strong ; and, when these con- 
tend, it is not difficult to anticipate the result ; 
" for the power of beauty shall sooner trans- 
form honesty from what it is into a bawd, 
than the person of honesty shall transform 
beauty into its likeness." This " sometime 
paradox " was vividly exemplified in Hazlitt's 
personal history, his conversation, and his 
writings. To the solitudes of the country 
in which he mused on "fate, free-will, fore- 
knowledge absolute," a temperament of un- 
usual ardour had given an intense interest, 
akin to that with which Rousseau has 
animated and oppressed the details of his 
early years. 

He had not then, nor did he find till long 
afterwards, power to embody his meditations 
and feelings in words. The consciousness 
of thoughts which he could not hope ade- 
quately to express, increased his natural 
reserve, and he turned for relief to the art of 
painting, in which he might silently realise 
his dreams of beauty, and repay the loveli- 
ness of nature by fixing some of its fleeting 
aspects in immortal tints. A few old prints 
from the old masters awakened the spirit of 
emulation within him ; the sense of beauty 
became identified in his mind with that of 
glory and duration ; while the peaceful 
labour he enjoyed calmed the tumult in his 
veins, and gave steadiness to his pure and 
distant aim. He pursued the art with an 
earnestness and patience which he vividly 
describes in his essay, " On the Pleasure of 
Painting ; " and to which he frequently re- 
verted in the happiest moods of his conver- 
sation ; and, although in this, his chosen 
pursuit, he failed, the passionate desire for 
success, and the long struggle to attain it, 
left deep traces in his mind, heightening his 
keen perception of external things, and 
mingling with all his speculations airy shapes 
and hues which he had vainly striven to 
transfer to canvas. A painter may acquire 



a Que insight into the nice distinctions of 

character, — he may copy manners in words 
as he does in colours, — but it may be appre- 
hended that his course as a severe reason* i- 
will be somewhat "troubled with thick- 
coming fancies." And if the successful 
pursuit of art may thus disturb the pro- 
of abstract contemplation, how much more 
may an unsatisfied ambition ruffle it ; bid 
the dark threads of thought glitter with 
radiant fancies unrealised, and clothe the 
diagrams of speculation with the fragments 
of picture which the mind cherishes the more 
fondly, because the hand refused to realise ? 
What wonder, if, in the mind of an ardent 
youth, thus struggling in vain to give palpable 
existence to the shapes of loveliness which 
haunted him, "the homely beauty of the 
good old cause" should assume the fasci- 
nations not properly its own % 

This association of beauty with reason 
diminished the immediate effect of Mr. 
Hazlitt's political essays, while it enhanced 
their permanent value. It was the fashion, 
in his lifetime, to denounce him as a sour 
Jacobin ; but no description could be more 
unjust. Under the influence of some bitter 
feeling, or some wayward fancy, he occasion- 
ally poured out a furious invective against 
those whom he regarded as the enemies of 
liberty, or as apostates from her cause ; but, 
in general, the force of his expostulation, or 
his reasoning, was diverted (unconsciously to 
himself) by figures and phantasies, by fine 
and quaint allusions, by quotations from his 
favourite authors, introduced with singular 
felicity, as respects the direct link of associa- 
tion, but tending, by their very beauty, to 
unnerve the mind of the reader, and substi- 
tute the sense of luxury for clear conviction, 
or noble anger. In some of his essays, where 
the reasoning is most cogent, every other 
sentence contains some exquisite passage 
from Shakspeare, or Fletcher, or Words- 
worth, trailing after it a line of golden asso- 
ciations ; or some reference to a novel, over 
which we have a thousand times forgotten 
the wrongs of mankind ; till, in the recurring 
shocks of pleasurable surprise, the main argu- 
ment is forgotten. When, for example, he 
compares the position of certain political 
waverers to that of Clarissa Harlowe con- 
fronting the ravisher who would repeat his 
outrage, with the penknife pointed to her 



u 2 



292 



WILLIAM HAZLITT. 



breast, and her eyes uplifted to Heaven, and 
describes them as having been, like her, 
trepanned into a house of ill-fame, near Pall 
Mall, and there defending their soiled virtue 
with their penknives ; what reader, at the 
suggestion of the stupendous scene which the 
allusion directly revives, can think or care 
about the renegade of yesterday 1 Here, 
again, is felt the want of that Imagination 
which brings all things into one, tinges all 
our thoughts and sympathies with one hue, 
and rejects every ornament which does not 
heighten or prolong the feeling which it seeks 
to embody. 

Even when he retaliates on Southey for 
attacking his old co-patriots, the poetical 
associations which bitter remembrance sug- 
gests, almost neutralise the vituperation ; he 
brings every " flower which sad embroidery 
wears to strew the laureate hearse," where 
ancient regards are interred ; and merges all 
the censure of the changed politician in praise 
of the simple dignity and the generous labours 
of a singularly noble and unsullied life. So 
little does he regard the unity of sentiment 
in his compositions, that in his "Letter to 
Gifford," after a series of just and bitter 
retorts on his maligner as "the fine link 
which connects literature with the police," 
he takes a fancy to teach that " ultra-erepi- 
darian critic " his own theory of the natural 
disinterestedness of the human mind, and 
develops it, not in the dry, hard, mathematical 
style in which it was first enunciated, but 
"o'er informed" with the glow of sentiment, 
and terminating in an eloquent rhapsody. 
This latter portion of the letter is one of the 
noblest of his effusions, but it entirely destroys 
the first in the mind of the reader ; for who, 
when thus contemplating the living wheels 
on which human benevolence is borne onwards 
in its triumphant career, and the spirit with 
which they are instinct, can think of the lite- 
rary wasp which had settled for a moment 
upon them, and who had just before been 
mercilessly transfixed with minikin arrows ? 

But the most signal example of the in- 
fluences which " the show of things " exer- 
cised over Mr. Hazlitt's mind was the setting 
up the Emperor Napoleon as his idol. He 
strove to justify this predilection to himself 
by referring it to the revolutionary origin of 
his hero, and the contempt with which he 
trampled upon the claims of legitimacy, and 



humbled the pride of kings. But if his " only 
love " thus sprung " from his only hate," it 
was not cherished in its blossom by antipa- 
thies. If there had been nothing in his mind 
which tended to aggrandisement and glory, 
and which would fain reconcile the principles 
of freedom with the lavish accumulation of 
power, he might have desired the triumph of 
young tyranny over legitimate thrones ; but 
he would scarcely have watched its progress 
and its fall " like a lover and a child." His 
feeling for Bonaparte in exile was not a sen- 
timent of respect for fallen greatness ; not a 
desire to trace "the soul of goodness in 
things evil ;" not a loathing of the treatment 
the Emperor received from "his cousin kings" 
in the day of adversity ; but entire affection 
mingling with the current of the blood, and 
pervading the moral and intellectual being. 
Nothing less than this strong attachment, at 
once personal and refined, would have enabled 
him to encounter the toil of collecting and 
arranging facts and dates for four volumes of 
narrative, which constitute his "Life of 
Napoleon ;" — a drudgery too abhorrent to his 
habits of mind as a thinker, to be sustained 
by any stimulus which the prospect of remu- 
neration or the hope of applause could supply. 
It is not so much in the ingenious excuses 
which he discovers for the worst acts of his 
hero — offered even for the midnight execution 
of the Duke d'Enghien and the invasion of 
Spain — that the stamp of personal devotion 
is obvious, as in the graphic force with which 
he has delineated the short-lived splendours 
of the Imperial Court, and " the trivial fond 
records " he has gathered of every vestige of 
human feeling by which he could reconcile 
the Imperial Cynic to the species he scorned. 
The first two volumes of his work, although 
redeemed by scattered thoughts of true ori- 
ginality and depth, are often confused and 
spiritless ; the characters of the principal 
revolutionists are drawn too much in the 
style of awkward, sprawling caricatures ; but 
when the hero casts all his rivals into the 
distance, erects himself the individual enemy 
of England, consecrates his power by religious 
ceremonies, and defines it by the circle of a 
crown, the author's strength becomes concen- 
trated ; his narrative assumes an epic dignity 
and fervour; dallies with the flowers of 
usurped prerogative, and glows with "the 
long-resounding march and energy divine." 



WILLIAM HAZLITT. 



293 



How happy and proud is he to picture the 
meeting of the Emperor with the Pope, and 
the grandeurs of the coronation ! How he 
grows wanton in celebrating the fetes of the 
Tuileries, as "presenting all the elegance of 
enchanted pageants," and laments them as 
" gone like a fairy revel ! " How he " lives 
along the line" of Austerlitz, and rejoices 
in its thunder, and hails its setting sun, and 
exults in the minutest details of the subse- 
quent meeting of the conquered sovereigns at 
the feet of the conqueror ! How he expa- 
tiates on the fatal marriage with " the deadly 
Austrian," (as Mr. Cobbett justly called 
Maria Louisa), as though it were a chapter 
in romance, and sheds the grace of beauty on 
the imperial picture ! How he kindles with 
martial ardour as he describes the prepara- 
tions against Russia ; musters the myriads of 
barbarians with a show of dramatic justice ; 
and fondly lingers among the brief triumphs 
of Moskwa on the verge of the terrible catas- 
trophe ! The narrative of that disastrous 
expedition is, indeed, written with a master's 
hand ; we see the " grand army " marching 
to its destruction through the immense per- 
spective : the wild hordes flying before the 
terror of its " coming ;" the barbaric magni- 
ficence of Moscow towering in the remote 
distance ; and when we gaze upon the sacri- 
ficial conflagration of the Kremlin, we feel 
that it is worthy to become the funeral pile 
of the conqueror's glories. It is well for the 
readers of this splendid work, that there is 
more in it of the painter than of the meta- 
physician; that its style glows with the 
fervour of battle, or stiffens with the spoils of 
victory ; yet we wonder that this monument 
to imperial grandeur should be raised from 
the dead level of jacobinism by an honest 
and profound thinker. The solution is, that 
although he was this, he was also more — 
that, in opinion, he was devoted to the cause 
of the people ; but that, in feeling, he required 
some individual object of worship ; that he 
selected Napoleon as one in whose origin and 
career he might at once impersonate his 
principles and gratify his affections ; and 
that he adhered to his own idea with heroic 
obstinacy, when the " child and champion of 
the Eepublic " openly sought to repress all 
feeling and thought, but such as he could 
cast in his own iron moulds, and scoffed 
at popular enthusiasm even while it bore 



him to the accomplishment of his loftiest 
desires. 

Mr. Hazlitt had little inclination to talk or 
write about contemporary authors, and still 
less to read them. He was with difficulty 
persuaded to look into the Scotch novels, but 
when he did so, he found them old in sub- 
stance though new in form, read them with 
as much avidity as the rest of the world, and 
expressed better than any one else what all 
the world felt about them. His hearty love 
of them, however, did not diminish, but 
aggravate his dislike of the political opinions 
so zealously and consistently maintained, of 
their great author : and yet the strength of 
his hatred towards that which was accidental 
and transitory only set off the unabated 
power of his regard for the great and the 
lasting. Coleridge and Wordsworth were 
not moderns to him, for they were the 
inspirers of his youth, which was his own 
antiquity, and the feelings which were the 
germ of their poetry had sunk deep into his 
heart. With the exception of the works of 
these, and of his friends Barry Cornwall and 
Sheridan Knowles, in whose successes he re- 
joiced, he held modern literature in slight 
esteem, and regarded the discoveries of 
science and the visions of optimism with an 
undazzled eye. His "large discourse of 
reason " looked not before, but after. He 
felt it a sacred duty, as a lover of genius and 
art, to defend the fame of the mighty dead. 
When the old painters were assailed in 
"The Catalogue Raisonne of the British 
Institution," he was "touched with noble 
anger." All his own vain longings after the 
immortality of the works which were libelled, 
— all the tranquillity and beauty they had 
shed into his soul, — all his comprehension of 
the sympathy and delight of thousands, 
which, accumulating through long time, had 
attested their worth — were fused together to 
dazzle and subdue the daring critic who 
would disturb the judgment of ages. So, 
when a popular poet assailed the fame of 
Rousseau, seeking to reverse the decision of 
posterity on what that great though unhappy 
writer had achieved by suggesting the opinion 
of people of condition in his neighbourhood 
on the figure he made to their apprehensions 
while in the service of Madame de Warrens, 
he vindicated the prerogatives of genius 
with the true logic of passion. Few things 



294 



AVILLIAM HAZLITT. 



irritated him more than the claims set up for 
the present generation to be wiser and better 
than those -which have gone before it. He 
had no power of imagination to embrace the | 
golden clouds which hung over the Future, 
but he rested and expatiated in the Past. To 
his apprehension human good did not appear 
a slender shoot of yesterday, like the bean- 
stalk in the fairy tale, aspiring to the skies, 
and leading to an enchanted castle, but a huge 
growth of intertwisted fibres, grasping the 
earth by numberless roots of custom, habit, 
and affection, and bearing vestiges of "a 
thousand storms, a thousand thunders." 

When I first met Hazlitt, in the year 1815, 
he was staggering under the blow of Water- 
loo. The re-appearance of his imperial idol 
on the coast of France, and his triumphant 
march to Paris, like a fairy vision, had ex- 
cited his admiration and sympathy to the 
utmost pitch ; and though in many respects 
sturdily English in feeling, he could scarcely 
forgive the valour of the conquerors ; and 
bitterly resented the captivity of the Emperor 
in St. Helena, which followed it, as if he had 
sustained a personal wrong. On this subject 
only, he was " eaten up with passion ; " on 
all others he was the fairest, the most candid 
of reasoners. His countenance was then 
handsome, but marked by a painful expres- 
sion ; his black hah', which had curled stiffly 
over his temples, had scarcely received its 
first tints of grey ; his gait was awkward ; 
his dress was neglected ; and, in the com- 
pany of strangers, his bashfulness was almost 
painful — but when, in the society of Lamb 
and one or two others, he talked on his 
favourite themes of old English books, or old 
Italian pictures, no one's conversation could 
be more delightful. The poets, from inter- 
course with whom he had drawn so much of 
his taste, and who had contributed to shed 
the noble infection of beauty through his 
reasoning faculties, had scarcely the oppor- 
tunity of appreciating their progress. It 
was, in after years, by the fire-side of " the 
Lambs," that his tongue was gradually 
loosened, and his passionate thoughts found 
appropriate words. There, his struggles to 
express the fine conceptions with which his 
mind was filled were encouraged by entire 
sympathy; there he began to stammer out 
his just and original conceptions of Chaucer 
and Spenser, and other English poets and 



prose writers, more talked of, though not 
better known, by their countrymen ; there 
he was thoroughly understood and dexter- 
ously cheered by Miss Lamb, whose nice 
discernment of his first efforts in conversa- 
tion were dwelt upon by him with affectionate 
gratitude, even when most out of humour 
with the world. When he mastered his 
diffidence, he did not talk for effect, to dazzle, 
or surprise, or annoy, but with the most sim- 
ple and honest desire to make his view of the 
subject in hand entirely apprehended by his 
hearer. There was sometimes an obvious 
struggle to do this to his own satisfaction ; 
he seemed labouring to drag his thought to 
light from its deep lurking-place ; and, with 
timid distrust of that power of expression 
which he had found so late in life, he often 
betrayed a fear lest he had failed to make 
himself understood, and recurred to the sub- 
ject again and again, that he might be assured 
he had succeeded. With a certain dogged- 
ness of manner, he showed nothing prag- 
matical or exclusive ; he never drove a prin- 
ciple to its utmost possible consequences 
but, like Locksley, " allowed for the wind." 
For some years previous to his death he ob- 
served an entire abstinence from fermented 
liquors, which he had once quaffed with the 
proper relish he had for all the good things 
of this life, but which he courageously re- 
signed when he found the indulgence perilous 
to his health and faculties. The cheerful- 
ness with which he made this sacrifice was 
one of the most amiable traits in his cha- 
racter. He had no censure for others, who, 
in the same dangers, were less wise or less 
resolute ; nor did he think he had earned, 
by his own constancy, any right to intrude 
advice which he knew, if wanted, must be 
unavailing. Nor did he profess to be a con- 
vert to the general system of abstinence, 
which was advanced by one of his kindest 
and staunchest friends ; he avowed that he 
yielded to necessity ; and instead of avoiding 
the sight of that which he could no longer 
taste, he was seldom so happy as when he 
sat with friends at their wine, participating 
the sociality of the time, and renewing his 
own past enjoyment in that of his compa- 
nions, without regret and without envy. 
Like Dr. Johnson, he made himself poor 
amends for the loss of wine by drinking tea, 
not so largely, indeed, as the hero of Boswell, 



WILLIAM HAZLITT. 



295 



but at least of equal potency ; for he might 
have challenged Mrs. Thrale and all her sex 
to make stronger tea than his own. In 
society, as in politics, he was no flincher. 
He loved " to hear the chimes at midnight," 
without considering them as a summons to 
rise. At these seasons, when in his happiest 
mood, he used to dwell on the conversational 
powers of his friends, and live over again the 
delightful hours he had passed with them ; 
repeat the pregnant puns that one had made ; 
tell over again a story with which another 
had convulsed the room ; or expatiate on the 
eloquence of a third ; always best pleased 
when he could detect some talent which was 
unregarded by the world, and giving alike, 
to the celebrated and the unknown, due 
honour. 

Mr. Hazlitt delivered three courses of lec- 
tures at the Surrey Institution, on The Eng- 
lish Poets ; on The English Comic Writers; 
and on The Age of Elizabeth; which Lamb 
(under protest against lectures in general) 
regularly attended, an earnest admirer, amidst 
crowds with whom the lecturer had " au im T 
perfect sympathy." They consisted chiefly 
of Dissenters, who agreed with him in his 
hatred of Lord Castlereagh, and his love of 
religious freedom, but who " loved no plays ; " 
of Quakers, who approved him as the earnest 
opponent of slavery and capital punishment, 
but who " heard no music ; " of citizens, 
devoted to the main chance, who had a 
hankering after "the improvement of the 
mind ; " but to whom his favourite doctrine 
of its natural disinterestedness was a riddle ; 
of a few enemies who came to sneer ; and a 
few friends, who were eager to learn and to | 
admire. The comparative insensibility of 
the bulk of his audience to his finest pas- [ 
sages sometimes provoked him to awaken ! 
their attention by points which broke the 
train of his discourse ; after which, he could 
make himself amends by some abrupt para- 
dox which might set their prejudices on edge, 
and make them fancy they were shocked. 
He startled many of them at the onset, by 
observing, that, since Jacob's dream, " the ! 
heavens have gone farther off, and become ' 
astronomical : " a fine extravagance, which ; 
the ladies and gentlemen, who had grown { 
astronomical themselves under the preceding 
lecturer, felt called on to resent as an attack j 
on their severer studies. When he read a 



well-known extract from Cowper, comparing 
a poor cottager with Voltaire, and had pro- 
nounced the line: "A truth the brilliant 
Frenchman never knew," they broke into a 
joyous shout of self-gratulation, that they 
were so much wiser than the scornful French- 
man. When he passed by Mrs. Hannah 
More with observing that " she had written 
a great deal which he had never read," a 
voice gave expression to the general commi- 
seration and surprise, by calling out " More 
pity for you ! " They were confounded at 
his reading with more emphasis, perhaps, 
than discretion, Gay's epigrammatic lines on 
Sir Richard Blackstone, in which scriptural 
persons are too freely hitched into rhyme ; 
but he went doggedly on to the end, and, by 
his perseverance, baffled those who, if he had 
acknowledged himself wrong, by stopping, 
would have visited him with an outburst of 
displeasure which he felt to be gathering. 
He once had a more edifying advantage over 
them. He was enumerating the humanities 
which endeared Dr. Johnson to his mind, 
and at the close of an agreeable catalogue, 
mentioned, as last and noblest, "his carry- 
ing the poor victim of disease and dissipation 
on his back, through Fleet-street," at which 
a titter arose from some, who were struck 
by the picture, as ludicrous, and a murmur 
from others, who deemed the allusion unfit 
for ears polite : he paused for an instant, and 
then added, in his sturdiest and most impres- 
1 sive manner, — " an act which realises the 
| parable of the Good Samaritan ; " at which 
his moral and his delicate hearers shrunk, 
rebuked, into deep silence. He was not elo- 
j quent, in the true sense of the term ; for his 
thoughts were too weighty to be moved along 
by the shallow stream of feeling which an 
evening's excitement can rouse. He wrote 
all his lectures, and read them as they were 
written ; but his deep voice and earnest man- 
ner suited his matter well. He seemed to 
dig into his subject, and not in vain. In 
delivering his longer quotations, he had 
scarcely continuity enough for the versifica- 
tion of Shakspeare and Milton, " with linked 
sweetness long drawn out ; " but he gave 
Pope's brilliant satire and delightful compli- 
ments, which are usually complete within 
the couplet, with an elegance and point which 
the poet himself, could he have heard, would 
have felt as indicating their highest praise. 



296 



THOMAS BARNES. 



Mr. Hazlitt, having suffered for many- 
years from derangement of the digestive 
organs, for which perhaps a moderate use of 
fermented liquors would have been prefer- 
able to abstinence, solaced only by the in- 
tense tincture of tea in which he found re- 
fuge, worn out at last, died on 18th Sept., 
1830, at the age of fifty-two. Lamb fre- 
quently visited him during his sufferings, 
which were not, as has been erroneously 
suggested, aggravated by the want of need- 
ful comforts ; for although his careless habits 
had left no provision for sickness, his friends 
gladly acknowledged, by their united aid, the 
deep intellectual obligations due to the great 
thinker. In a moment of acute pain, when 
the needless apprehension for the future 
rushed upon him, he dictated a brief and 
peremptory letter to the editor of the " Edin- 
burgh Eeview," requiring a considerable re- 
mittance, to which he had no claim but that 
of former remunerated services, which the 
friend, who obeyed his bidding, feared might 
excite displeasure ; but he mistook Francis 
Jeffrey ; the sum demanded was received by 
return of post, with the most anxious wishes 
for Hazlitt's recovery — -just too late for him 
to understand his error. Lamb joined a few 
friends in attending his funeral in the church- 
yard of St. Anne's Soho, where he was in- 
terred, and felt his loss — not so violently at 
the time, as mournfully in the frequent re- 
currence of the sense that a chief source of 
intellectual pleasure was stopped. His per- 
sonal frailties are nothing to us now ; his 
thoughts survive ; in them we have his better 
part entire, and in them must be traced his 
true history. The real events of his life are 
not to be traced in its external changes ; as 
his engagement by the "Morning Chronicle," 
or his transfer of his services to the "Times," 
or his introduction to the " Edinburgh Ee- 
view ; " but in the progress and develop- 
ment of his fine understanding as nurtured 
and checked and swayed by his affections. 
His warfare was within ; its spoils are ours ! 

One of the soundest and most elegant 
scholars whom the school of Christ's Hospital 
ever produced, Mr. Thomas Barnes, was a 
frequent guest at Lamb's chambers in the 
Temple ; and though the responsibilities he 
undertook, before Lamb quitted that, his 
happiest abode, prevented him from visiting 
often at Great Russell-street, at Islington, 



or Enfield, he was always ready to assist by 
the kind word of the powerful journal in 
which he became most potent, the expanding 
reputation of his school-mate and friend. 
After establishing a high social and intel- 
lectual character at Cambridge, he had en- 
tered the legal profession as a special pleader, 
but was prevented from applying the need- 
ful devotion to that laborious pursuit by 
violent rheumatic affections, which he solaced 
by writing critiques and essays of rare merit. 
So shattered did he appear in health, that 
when his friends learned that he had ac- 
cepted the editorship of the " Times " news- 
paper, they almost shuddered at the attempt 
as suicidal, and anticipated a speedy ruin to 
his constitution from the pressure of constant 
labour and anxiety, on the least healthful 
hours of toil. But he had judged better 
than they of his own physical and intel- 
lectual resources, and the mode in which the 
grave responsibility and constant exertion of 
his office would affect both ; for the regular 
effort consolidated his feverish strength, gave 
evenness and tranquillity to a life of serious 
exertion, and supplied, for many years, power 
equal to the perpetual demand ; affording a 
striking example how, when finely attuned, 
the mind can influence the body to its uses. 
The facile adaptation of his intellect to his 
new duties was scarcely less remarkable 
than the mastery it achieved over his desul- 
tory habits and physical infirmities ; for, 
until then, it had seemed more refined than 
vigorous — more elegant than weighty — too 
fastidious to endure the supervision and 
arrangement of innumerable reports, para- 
graphs, and essays ; but, while a scholarly 
grace was shed by him through all he wrote 
or moulded, the needful vigour was never 
wanting to the high office of superintending 
the great daily miracle ; to the discipline of 
its various contributors ; or to the composi- 
tion of articles which he was always ready, 
on the instant of emergency, to supply. 

Mr. Barnes, linked by school associations 
with Leigh Hunt, filled the theatrical depart- 
ment of criticism in the " Examiner " during 
the period when the Editor's imprisonment 
for alleged libel on the Prince Regent pre- 
cluded his attendance on the theatres. It was 
no easy office of friendship to supply the place 
of Hunt in the department of criticism, he 
may be almost said to have invented ; but 



THOMAS BARNES. 



297 



Mr. Barnes, though in a different style, well 
sustained the attractions of the " Theatrical 
Examiner." Fortunately the appearance of 
Mr. Kean during this interval enabled him 
to gratify the profound enthusiasm of his 
nature, without doing violence to the fasti- 
dious taste to which it was usually subjected. 
He perceived at once the vivid energy of the 
new actor ; understood his faults to be better 
than the excellences of ordinary aspirants ; 
and hailed him with the most generous 
praise — the more valuable as it proceeded 
from one rarely induced to render applause, 
and never yielding it except on the conviction 
of true excellence. Hazlitt, who contributed 
theatrical criticism, at the same time, to the 
" Morning Chronicle," and who astounded the 
tame mediocrity of Mr. Perry's subordinates 
by his earnest eulogy, and Barnes, had the 
satisfaction of first appreciating this un- 
friended performer, and, while many were 
offended by the daring novelty of his style, 
and more stood aloof with fashionable indif- 
ference from a deserted theatre, of awakening 
that spirit which retrieved the fortunes of 
Old Drury — which revived, for a brilliant 
interval, the interest of the English stage, 
and which bore the actor on a tide of in- 
toxicating success that " knew no retiring 
ebb " till it was unhappily checked by his 
own lamentable frailties.* 

The manners of Mr. Barnes, though ex- 
tremely courteous, were so reserved as to 
seem cold to strangers ; but they were 
changed, as by magic, by the contemplation 
of moral or intellectual beauty, awakened 
in a small circle. I well remember him, late 
one evening, in the year 1816, when only 
two or three friends remained with Lamb 
and his sister, long after " we had heard the 
chimes at midnight," holding inveterate but 

* As the essays of Mr. Barnes have never been col- 
lected, I take leave to present to the reader the conclusion 
of his article in the " Examiner " of February 27, 1814, 
on the first appearance of Mr. Kean in Richard : — 

" In the heroic parts, he animated every spectator 
with his own feelings ; when he exclaimed ' that a thou- 
sand hearts were swelling in his bosom,' the house 
shouted to express their accordance to a truth so nobly 
exemplified by the energy of his voice, by the grandeur 
of his mien. His death-scene was the grandest concep- 
tion, and executed in tbe most impressive manner ; it 
was a piece of noble poetry, expressed by action instead 
of language. He fights desperately : he is disarmed and 
exhausted of all bodily strength : he disdains to fall, and 
his strong volition keeps him standing : he fixes that 
head, full of intellectual and heroic power, directly on 
the enemy : he bears up his chest with an expression 



delighted controversy with Lamb, respecting 
the tragic power of Dante as compared with 
that of Shakspeare. Dante was scarcely 
known to Lamb ; for he was unable to read 
the original, and Cary's noble translation 
was not then known to him ; and Barnes 
aspired to the glory of affording him a 
glimpse of a kindred greatness in the mighty 
Italian with that which he had conceived 
incapable of human rivalry. The face of the 
advocate of Dante, heavy when in repose, 
grew bright with earnest admiration as he 
quoted images, sentiments, dialogues, against 
Lamb, who had taken his own immortal 
stand on Lear, and urged the supremacy of 
the child-changed father against all the 
possible Ugolinos of the world. Some re- 
ference having been made by Lamb to his 
own exposition of Lear, which had been 
recently published in a magazine, edited by 
Leigh Hunt, under the title of "The Re- 
flector," touched another and a tenderer 
string of feeling, turned a little the course of 
his enthusiasm the more to inflame it, and 
brought out a burst of affectionate admira- 
tion for his friend, then scarcely known to 
the world, which was the more striking for its 
contrast with his usually sedate demeanour. 
I think I see him now, leaning forward upon 
the little table on which the candles were 
just expiring in their sockets, his fists 
clenched, his eyes flashing, and his face 
bathed in perspiration, exclaiming to Lamb, 
" And do I not know, my boy, that you have 
written about Shakspeare, and Shakspeare's 
own Lear, finer than any one ever did in the 
world, and won't I let the world know it ?" 
He was right ; there is no criticism in the 
world more worthy of the genius it estimates 
than that little passage referred to on Lear ; 
few felt it then like Barnes : thousands have 



which seems swelling with more than human spirit : he 
holds his uplifted arm in calm but dreadful defiance of 
his conqueror. But he is but man, and he falls after 
this sublime effort senseless to the ground. We have 
felt our eyes gush on reading a passage of exquisite 
poetry. We have been ready to leap at sight of a noble 
picture, but we never felt stronger emotion, more over- 
powering sensations, than were kindled by the novel 
sublimity of this catastrophe. In matters of mere 
taste, there will be a difference of opinion ; but here 
there was no room to doubt, no reason could be imprudent 
enough to hesitate. Every heart beat an echo responsive 
to this call of elevated nature, and yearned with fondness 
towards the man who, while he excited admiration for 
himself made also his admirers glow with a warmth of 
conscious superiority, because they were able to appreciate 
such an exalted degree of excellence." 



298 



BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON. 



read it since, here, and tens of thousands in 
America ; and have felt as he did ; and 
will answer for the truth of that excited 
hour. 

Mr. Barnes combined singular acuteness 
of understanding with remarkable simplicity 
of character. If he was skilful in finding out 
those who duped others, he made some amends 
to the world of sharpers by being abundantly 
duped himself. He might caution the public 
to be on their guard against impostors of 
every kind, but his heart was open to every 
species of delusion which came in the shape 
of misery. Poles — real and theatrical — 
refugees, pretenders of all kinds, found their 
way to the " Times' " inner office, and though 
the inexorable editor excluded their lucu- 
brations from the precious space of its 
columns, he rarely omitted to make them 
amends by large contributions from his 
purse. The intimate acquaintance with all 
the varieties of life forced on him by his 
position in the midst of a moving epitome of 
the world, which vividly reflected them all, 
failed to teach him distrust or discretion. 
He was a child in the centre of the most 
feverish agitations ; a dupe in the midst of 
the quickest apprehensions ; and while, with 
unbending pride, he repelled the slightest 
interference with his high functions from the 
greatest quarters, he was open to every tale 
from the lowest which could win from him 
personal aid. Rarely as he was seen in his 
later years in Lamb's circle, he is inde- 
structibly associated with it in the recollec- 
tion of the few survivors of its elder days ; 
and they will lament with me that the in- 
fluences for good which he shed largely on 
all the departments of busy life, should have 
necessarily left behind them such slender 
memorials of one of the kindest, the wisest, 
and the best of men who have ever enjoyed 
signal opportunities of moulding public 
opinion, and who have turned them to the 
noblest and the purest uses. 

Among Lamb's early acquaintances and 
constant admirers was an artist whose 
chequered career and melancholy death gave 
an interest to the recollections with which 
he is linked independent of that which be- 
longs to his pictures — Benjamin Robert 
Haydon. The ruling misfortune of his life 
was somewhat akin to that disproportion in 
Hazlitt's mind to which I have adverted, but 



productive in his case of more disastrous 
results — the possession of two different 
faculties not harmonised into one, and 
struggling for mastery — in that disarrange- 
ment of the faculties in which the unpro- 
ductive talent becomes not a mere negative, 
but neutralises the other, and even turns its 
good into evil. Haydon, the son of a re- 
spectable tradesman at Plymouth, was 
endowed with two capacities, either of which 
exclusively cultivated with the energy of his 
disposition, might have led to fortune — the 
genius of a painter, and the passionate logic 
of a controversialist ; talents scarcely capable 
of being blended in harmonious action except 
under the auspices of prosperity such as 
should satisfy the artist by fame, and appease 
the literary combatant by triumph. 

The combination of a turbulent vivacity 
of mind with a fine aptitude for the most 
serene of arts was rendered more infelicitous 
by the circumstances of the young painter's 
early career. He was destined painfully to 
work his way at once through the lower 
elements of his art and the difficulties of 
adverse fortune ; and though by indomitable 
courage and unwearied industry he became 
master of anatomic science, of colouring, and 
of perspective, and achieved a position in 
which his efforts might be fairly presented 
to the notice of the world, his impetuous 
temperament was yet further ruffled by the 
arduous and complicated struggle. With 
boundless intellectual ambition, he sought to 
excel in the loftiest department of his art ; 
and undertook the double responsibility of 
painting great pictures and of creating the 
taste which should appreciate, and enforcing 
the patronage which should reward them. 

The patronage of high art, not then adopted 
by the government, and far beyond the means 
of individuals of the middle class, necessarily 
appertained to a few members of the aristo- 
cracy, who alone could encourage and remu- 
nerate the painters of history. Although the 
beginning of Mr. Haydon's career was not 
uncheered by aristocratic favour, the con- 
trast between the greatness of his own 
conceptions and the humility of the course 
which prudence suggested as necessary to 
obtain for himself the means of developing 
them on canvas, fevered his nature, which, 
ardent in gratitude for the appreciation and 
assistance of the wealthy to a degree which 



BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON. 



2 9 <J 



might even be mistaken for servility, was 
also impatient of the general indifference 
to the cause of which he sought to be, not 
only the ornament, but unhappily for him, 
also the champion. Alas ! he there " per- 
ceived a divided duty." Had he been con- 
tented silently to paint — to endure obscurity 
and privation for a while, gradually to 
mature his powers of execution and soften 
the rigour of his style and of his virtue, he 
might have achieved works, not only as vast 
in outline and as beautiful in portions as 
those which he exhibited, but so harmonious 
in their excellences as to charm away oppo- 
sition, and ensure speedy reputation, moderate 
fortune, and lasting fame. But resolved to 
battle for that which he believed to be "the 
right," he rushed into a life-long contest with 
the Eoyal Academy ; frequently suspended 
the gentle labours of the pencil for the vehe- 
ment use of the pen ; and thus gave to his 
course an air of defiance which prevented 
the calm appreciation of his nobler works, 
and increased the mischief by reaction. In- 
dignant of the scorns " that patient merit of 
the unworthy takes," he sometimes fancied 
scorns which impatient merit in return 
imputes to the worthy ; and thus instead of 
enjoying the most tranquil of lives (which a 
painter's should be), led one of the most 
animated, restless, and broken. The necessary 
consequence of this disproportion was a 
series of pecuniary embarrassments, the 
direct result of his struggle with fortune ; 
a succession of feverish triumphs and disap- 
pointments, the fruits of his contest with 
power ; and worse perhaps than either, the 
frequent diversion of his own genius from its 
natural course, and the hurried and imper- 
fect development of its most majestic con- 
ceptions. To paint as finely as he sometimes 
did in the ruffled pauses of his passionate 
controversy, and amidst the terrors of im- 
pending want, was to display large innate 
resources of skill and high energy of mind ; 
but how much more unquestionable fame 
might he have attained if his disposition had 
permitted him to be content with charming 
the world of art, instead of attempting also 
to instruct or reform it ! 

Mr. Haydon's course, though thus troubled, 
was one of constant animation, and illus- 
trated by hours of triumph, the more radiant 
because they were snatched from adverse 



fortune and a reluctant people. The exhi- 
bition of a single picture by an artist at war 
with the Academy which exhibited a thou- 
sand pictures at the same price — creating a 
sensation not only among artists and patrons 
of art, but among the most secluded literary 
circles — and engaging the highest powers of 
criticism — was, itself, a splendid occurrence 
in life ; — and, twice at least, in the instance 
of the Entry into Jerusalem, and the Lazarus, 
was crowned with signal success. It was a 
proud moment for the daring painter, when, 
at the opening of the first of these Exhi- 
bitions, while the crowd of visitors, distin- 
guished in rank or talent, stood doubting 
whether in the countenance of the chief 
figure the daring attempt to present an 
aspect differing from that which had en- 
kindled the devotion of ages — to mingle the 
human with the Divine, resolution with 
sweetness, dignified composure with the 
anticipation of mighty suffering — had not 
failed, Mrs. Siddons walked slowly up to the 
centre of the room, surveyed it in silence for 
a minute or two, and then ejaculated, in her 
deep, low, thrilling voice, " It is perfect ! " 
quelled all opposition, and removed the 
doubt, from his own mind at least, for ever. 

Although the great body of artists to 
whose corporate power Mr. Haydon was so 
passionately opposed, naturally stood aside 
from his path, it was cheered by the atten- 
tion and often by the applause of the chief 
literary spirits of the age, who were attracted 
by a fierce intellectual struggle. Sir Walter 
Scott, Wordsworth, Hazlitt, Godwin, Shelley, 
Hunt, Coleridge, Lamb, Keats— and many 
young writers for periodical works, in the 
freshness of unhacknied authorship — took 
an interest in a course so gallant though so 
troublous, which excited their sympathy yet 
did not force them to the irksome duty of 
unqualified praise. Almost in the outset of 
his career, Wordsworth addressed to him a 
sonnet, in heroic strain, associating the 
artist's calling with his own ; making common 
cause with him, "while the whole world 
seems adverse to desert ; " admonishing him 
" still to be strenuous for the bright reward, 
and in. the soul admit of no decay;" and, 
long after, when the poet had, by a wiser 
perseverance, gradually created the taste 
which appreciated his works, he celebrated, in 
another sonnet, the fine autumnal conception 



300 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 



in the picture of Napoleon on the rock of 
St. Helena, with his back to the spectator, 
contemplating the blank sea, left desolate by 
the sunken sun. The Conqueror of Napoleon 
also recognised the artist's claims, and sup- 
plied him with another great subject, in the 
contemplation of the solitude of Waterloo 
by its hero, ten years after the victory. 

Mr. Haydon's vividness of mind burst out 
in his conversation, which, though somewhat 
broken and rugged, like his career, had also, 
like that, a vein of beauty streaking it. 
Having associated with most of the remark- 
able persons of his time, and seen strange 
varieties of " many-coloured life " — gifted 
with a rapid perception of character and a 
painter's eye for effect, — he was able to hit 
off, with startling facility, sketches in words 
which lived before the hearer. His anxieties 
and sorrows did not destroy the buoyancy of 
his spirits or rob the convivial moment of its 
prosperity ; so that he struggled, and toiled, 
and laughed, and triumphed, and failed, and 
hoped on, till the waning of life approached 
and found him still in opposition to the 
world, and far from the threshold of fortune. 
The object of his literary exertions was par- 
tially attained ; the national attention had 
been directed to high art ; but he did not 
personally share in the benefits he had 
greatly contributed to win. Even his cartoon 
of the Curse in Paradise failed to obtain a 
prize when he entered the arena with un- 
fledged youths for competitors ; and the 
desertion of the exhibition of his two pictures 
of Aristides and Nero, at the Egyptian Hall, 
by the public, for the neighbouring exposure 
of the clever manikin, General Tom Thumb, 
quite vanquished him. It was indeed a 
melancholy contrast ; — the unending suc- 
cession of bright crowds thronging the 
levees of the small abortion, and the dim 
and dusty room in which the two latest 
historical pictures of the veteran hung for 
hours without a visitor. Opposition, abuse, 
even neglect he could have borne, but the 
sense of ridicule involved in such a juxta- 
position drove him to despair. No one who 
knew him ever apprehended from his disasters 
such a catastrophe as that which closed them. 
He had always cherished a belief in the 
religion of our Church, and avowed it among 
scoffing unbelievers ; and that belief he 
asserted even in the wild fragments he 



penned in his last terrible hour. His friends 
thought that even the sense of the injustice 
of the world would have contributed with 
his undimmed consciousness of his own 
powers to enable him to endure. In his 
domestic relations also he was happy, blessed 
in the affection of a wife of great beauty and 
equal discretion, who, by gentler temper and 
serener wisdom than his own, had assisted 
and soothed him in all his anxieties and 
griefs, and whose image was so identified in 
his mind with the beautiful as to impress its 
character on all the forms of female loveliness 
he had created. Those who knew him best 
feel the strongest assurance, that notwith- 
standing the appearances of preparation 
which attended his extraordinary suicide, 
his mind was shattered to pieces — all dis- 
torted and broken — with only one feeling 
left entire, the perversion of which led to the 
deed, a hope to awaken sympathy in death 
for those whom living he could not shelter. 
The last hurried lines he wrote, entitled 
" Haydon's last Thoughts," consisted of a 
fevered comparison between the Duke of 
Wellington and Napoleon, in which he 
seemed to wish to repair some supposed 
injustice which in speech or writing he had 
done to the Conqueror. It was enclosed in a 
letter addressed to three friends, written in 
the hour of his death, and containing sad 
fragmental memorials of those passionate 
hopes, fierce struggles, and bitter disappoint- 
ments which brought him through distrac- 
tion to the grave ! 

A visit of Coleridge was always regarded 
by Lamb, as an opportunity to afford a rare 
gratification to a few friends, who, he knew, 
would prize it ; and I well remember the 
flush of prideful pleasure which came over 
his face as he would hurry, on his way to the 
India House, into the office in which I was a 
pupil, and stammer out the welcome invita- 
tion for the evening. This was true self- 
sacrifice ; for Lamb would have infinitely 
preferred having his inspired friend to 
himself and his sister, for a brief renewal 
of the old Salutation delights ; but, I 
believe, he never permitted himself to enjoy 
this exclusive treat. The pleasure he 
conferred was great ; for of all celebrated 
persons I ever saw, Coleridge alone sur- 
passed the expectation created by his 
writings ; for he not only was, but appeared 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 



301 



to be, greater than the noblest things he 
had written. 

Lamb used to speak, sometimes with a 
moistened eye and quivering lip, of Coleridge 
when young, and wish that we could have 
seen him in the spring-time of his genius, at 
a supper in the little sanded parlour of the 
old Salutation hostel. The promise of those 
days was never realised, by the execution of 
any of the mighty works he planned ; but 
the very failure gave a sort of mournful 
interest to the " large discourse, looking 
before and after," to which we were en- 
chanted listeners ; to the wisdom which lives 
only in our memories, and must perish with 
them. 

From Coleridge's early works, some notion 
may be gleaned of what he was ; when the 
steep ascent of fame rose directly before him, 
while he might loiter to dally with the ex- 
pectation of its summit, without ignobly 
shrinking from its labours. His endowments 
at that time — the close of the last century 
— when literature had faded into a fashion 
of poor language, must have seemed, to a 
mind and heart like Lamb's, no less than 
miraculous. 

A rich store of classical knowledge — a 
sense of the beautiful, almost verging on the 
effeminate — a facile power of melody, varying 
from the solemn stops of the organ to a bird- 
like nutter of airy sound — the glorious 
faculty of poetic hope, exerted on human 
prospects, and presenting its results with the 
•vividness of prophecy ; a power of imaginative 
reasoning which peopled the nearer ground 
of contemplation with thoughts 

" All plumed like estriches, like eagles bathed, 
As full of spirit as the month of May, 
And gorgeous as the sun at Midsummer," 

endowed the author of " The Ancient 
Mariner," and " Christabel." Thus gifted, 
he glided from youth into manhood, as a 
fairy voyager on a summer sea, to eddy 
round and round in dazzling circles, and to 
make little progress, at last, towards any of 
those thousand mountain summits which, 
glorified by aerial tints, rose before him at 
the extreme verge of the vast horizon of his 
genius. "The Ancient Mariner," printed 
with the " Lyrical Ballads," one of his earliest 
works, is still his finest poem — at once the 
most vigorous in design and the most chaste 



in execution — developing the intensest human 
affection, amidst the wildest sceneiy of a 
poet's dream. Nothing was too bright to 
hope from such a dawn. The mind of Cole- 
ridge seemed the harbinger of the golden 
years his enthusiasm predicted and painted ; 
— of those days of peace on earth and good 
will among men, which the best and greatest 
minds have rejoiced to anticipate — and the 
earnest belief in which is better than all 
frivolous enjoyments, all worldly wisdom, all 
worldly success. And if the noontide of his 
genius did not fulfil his youth's promise of 
manly vigour, nor the setting of his earthly 
life honour it by an answering serenity of 
greatness — they still have left us abundant 
reason to be grateful that the glorious frag- 
ments of his mighty and imperfect being 
were ours. Cloud after cloud of German 
metaphysics rolled before his imagination— 
which it had power to irradiate with fantastic 
beauty, and to break into a thousand shifting 
forms of grandeur, though not to conquer ; 
mist after mist ascended from those streams 
where earth and sky should have blended in 
one imagery, and were turned by its obscured 
glory to radiant haze ; indulgence in the 
fearful luxury of that talismanic drug, which 
opens glittering scenes of fantastic beauty on 
the waking soul to leave it in arid desolation, 
too often veiled it in partial eclipse, and 
blended fitful light with melancholy blackness 
over its vast domain ; but the great central 
light remained unquenched, and cast its 
gleams through every department of human 
knowledge. A boundless capacity to receive 
and retain intellectual treasure made him the 
possessor of vaster stores of lore, classical, 
antiquarian, historical, biblical, and miscel- 
laneous, than were ever vouchsafed, at least 
in our time, to a mortal being ; goodly 
structures of divine philosophy rose before 
him like exhalations on the table-land of 
that his prodigious knowledge ; but, alas ! 
there was a deficiency of the power of volun- 
tary action which would have left him un- 
able to embody the shapes of a shepherd's 
dreams, and made him feeble as an infant 
before the overpowering majesty of his own ! 
Hence his literary life became one splendid 
and sad prospectus — resembling only the 
portal of a mighty temple which it was for- 
bidden us to enter — but whence strains of 
rich music issuing " took the prisoned soul 



302 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 



and lapped it in Elysium," and fragments of 
oracular wisdom startled the thought they 
could not satisfy. 

Hence the riches of his mind were de- 
veloped, not in writing, but in his speech — 
conversation I can scarcely call it — which no 
one who once heard can ever forget. Unable 
to work in solitude, he sought the gentle 
stimulus of social admiration, and under its 
influence poured forth, without stint, the 
marvellous resources of a mind rich in the 
spoils of time — richer — richer far in its own 
glorious imagination and delicate fancy ! 
There was a noble prodigality in these out- 
pourings ; a generous disdain of self ; an 
earnest desire to scatter abroad the seeds of 
wisdom and beauty, to take root wherever 
they might fall, and spring up without 
bearing his name or impress, which might 
remind the listener of the first days of poetry 
before it became individualised by the press, 
when the Homeric rhapsodist wandered 
through new-born cities and scattered hovels, 
flashing upon the minds of the wondering 
audience the bright train of heroic shapes, 
the series of godlike exploits, and sought no 
record more enduring than the fleshly tablets 
of his hearers' hearts ; no memory but that 
of genial tradition ; when copyright did not 
ascertain the reciter's property, nor marble 
at once perpetuate and shed chillness on his 
fame — 

" His bounty was as boundless as the sea, 
His love as deep." 

Like the ocean, in all its variety of gentle 
moods, his discourse perpetually ebbed and 
flowed, — nothing in it angular, nothing of 
set purpose, but now trembling as the voice 
of divine philosophy, "not harsh nor crab- 
bed, as dull fools suppose, but musical as is 
Apollo's lute," was wafted over the summer 
wave ; now glistening in long line of light 
over some obscure subject, like the path of 
moonlight on the black water ; and, if ever 
receding from the shore, driven by some sud- 
den gust of inspiration, disclosing the trea- 
sures of the deep, like the rich strond in 
Spenser, " far sunken in their sunless trea- 
suries," to be covered anon by the foam of 
the same immortal tide. The benignity of 
his manner befitted the beauty of his disqui- 
sitions ; his voice rose from the gentlest 
pitch of conversation to the height of im- 
passioned eloquence without effort, as his 



language expanded from some common topic 
of the day to the loftiest abstractions ; as- 
cending by a winding track of spiral glory to 
the highest truths which the naked eye could 
discern, and suggesting starry regions, be- 
yond, which his own telescopic gaze might 
possibly decipher. If his entranced hearers 
often were unable to perceive the bearings 
of his argument— too mighty for any grasp 
but his own — and sometimes reaching be- 
yond his own — they understood "a beauty 
in the words, if not the words ; " and a wis- 
dom and piety in the illustrations, even when 
unable to connect them with the idea which 
he desired to illustrate. If an entire scheme 
of moral philosophy was never developed by 
him either in speaking or writing, all the 
parts were great : vast biblical knowledge, 
though sometimes eddying in splendid con- 
jecture, was always employed with pious 
reverence ; the morality suggested was at 
once elevated and genial ; the charity hoped 
all things ; and the mighty imaginative rea- 
soner seemed almost to realise the condition 
suggested by the great Apostle, "that he 
understood all mysteries and all knowledge, 
and spake with the tongues both of men and 
angels ! " 

After Coleridge had found his last earthly 
refuge, under the wise and generous care of 
Mr. Gilman, at Highgate, he rarely visited 
Lamb, and my opportunities of observing 
him ceased. From those who were more 
favoured, as well as from the fragments I 
have seen of his last effusions, I know that, * 
amidst suffering and weakness, his mighty 
mind concentrated its energies on the highest 
subjects which had ever kindled them ; that 
the speculations, which sometimes seemed 
like paradox, because their extent was too 
vast to be comprehended in a single grasp of 
intellectual vision, were informed by a serener 
wisdom ; that his perceptions of the central 
truth became more undivided, and his piety 
more profound and humble. His love for 
Charles and Mary Lamb continued, to the 
last, one of the strongest of his human affec- 
tions—of which, by the kindness of a friend,* 
I possess an affecting memorial under his 
hand, written in the margin of a volume of 
his "Sybilline Leaves," which — after his 

* Mr. Richard Welsh, of Reading, editor of tbe Berk- 
shire Chronicle — one of the ablest productions of tbe 
Conservative Periodical Press. 






LAMB'S DEAD COMPANIONS. 



303 



life-long habit — he has enriched by manuscript 
annotations. The poem, beside which it is 
inscribed, is entitled " The Lime-Tree Bower 
my Prison," composed by the poet in June, 
1796, when Charles and Mary Lamb, who 
were visiting at his cottage near Bristol, had 
left him for a walk, which an accidental 
lameness prevented him from sharing. The 
visitors are not indicated by the poem, except 
that Charles is designated by the epithet, 
against which he jestingly remonstrated, as 
" gentle-hearted Charles ; " and is repre- 
sented as "winning his way, with sad and 
patient soul, through evil and pain, and 
strange calamity." Against the title is 
written as follows : — 

CH. & MARY LAMB, 

dear to my heart, yea, 

as it were, my heart, 

S. T. C. JEt. 63. 1834. 

1797 

1834. 

37 years ! 

This memorandum, which is penned with 
remarkable neatness, must have been made 
in Coleridge's last illness, as he suffered 
acutely for several months before he died, in 
July of this same year, 1834. "What a space 
did that thirty-seven years of fond regard for 
the brother and sister occupy in a mind like 
Coleridge's, peopled with immortal thoughts 
which might multiply in the true time, 
dialled in heaven, its minutes into years ! 

These friends of Lamb's whom I have 
ventured to sketch in companionship with 
him, and Southey also, whom I only once 
saw, are all gone ; — and others of less note 
in the world's eye have followed them. 
Among those of the old set who are gone, 
is Manning, perhaps, next to Coleridge, the 
dearest of them, whom Lamb used to speak 
of as marvellous in a tete-d-tete, but who, in 
company, seemed only a courteous gentle- 
man, more disposed to listen than to talk. 
In good old age departed Admiral Burney, 
frank-hearted voyager with Captain Cook 
round the world, who seemed to unite our 
society with the circle over which Dr. John- 
son reigned ; who used to tell of school-days 
under the tutelage of Eugene Aram ; how 
he remembered the gentle usher pacing the 
play-ground arm-in-arm with some one of 
the elder boys, and seeking relief from the 



unsuspected burthen of his conscience by 
talking of strange murders, and how he, a 
child, had shuddered at the handcuffs on his 
teacher's hands when taken away in the 
post-chaise to prison ; — the Admiral being 
himself the centre of a little circle which his 
sister, the famous authoress of "Evelina," 
" Cecilia," and " Camilla," sometimes graced. 
John Lamb, the jovial and burly, who dared 
to argue with Hazlitt on questions of art ; 
Barron Field, who with veneration enough 
to feel all the despised greatness of Words- 
worth, had a sparkling vivacity, and, con- 
nected with Lamb by the link of Christ's 
Hospital associations, shared largely in his 
regard ; Eickman, the sturdiest of jovial 
companions, severe in the discipline of whist 
as at the table of the House of Commons, ot 
which he was the principal clerk ; and Al- 
sager, so calm, so bland, so considerate — all 
are gone. These were all Temple guests — 
friends of Lamb's early days ; but the com- 
panions of a later time, who first met in 
Great Russell-street, or Dalston, or Isling- 
ton, or Enfield, have been wofully thinned ; 
Allan Cunningham, stalwart of form and 
stout of heart and verse, a ruder Burns ; 
Cary, Lamb's "pleasantest of clergymen," 
whose sweetness of disposition and manner 
would have prevented a stranger from guess- 
ing that he was the poet who had rendered 
the adamantine poetry of Dante into Eng- 
lish with kindred power; Hood, so grave 
and sad and silent, that you were astonished 
to recognise in him the outpourer of a thou- 
sand wild fancies, the detector of the inmost 
springs of pathos, and the powerful vindi- 
cator of poverty and toil before the hearts of 
the prosperous ; the Reverend Edward Ir- 
ving, who, after fulfilling an old prophecy he 
made in Scotland to Hazlitt, that he would 
astonish and shake the world by his preach- 
ing, sat humbly at the feet of Coleridge to 
listen to wisdom, — all are gone ; the forms 
of others associated with Lamb's circle by 
more accidental links (also dead) come throng- 
ing on the memory from the mist of years — 
Alas ; it is easier to count those that are left 
of the old familiar faces ! 

The story of the lives of Charles and Mary 
Lamb is now told ; nothing more remains to 
be learned respecting it. The known col- 
lateral branches of their stock are extinct, 
and their upward pedigree lost in those 



304 



LAMB FULLY KNOWN. 



humble tracks on which the steps of Time 
leave so light an impress, that the dust of a 
few years obliterates all trace, and affords 
no clue to search collaterally for surviving 
relatives. The world has, therefore, all the 
materials for judging of them which can be 
possessed by those, who, not remembering 
the delightful peculiarities of their daily 
manners, can only form imperfect ideas of 
what they were. Before bidding them a last 
adieu, we may be allowed to linger a little 
longer and survey their characters by the 
new and solemn lights which are now, for 
the first time, fully cast upon them. 

Except to the few who were acquainted 
with the tragical occurrences of Lamb's early 
life, some of his peculiarities seemed strange 
— to be forgiven, indeed, to the excellences 
of his nature, and the delicacy of his genius, 
— but still, in themselves, as much to be won- 
dered at as deplored. The sweetness of his 
character, breathed through his writings, was 
felt even by strangers ; but its heroic aspect 
was unguessed, even by many of his friends. 
Let them now consider it, and ask if the 
annals of self-sacrifice can show anything in 
human action and endurance more lovely 
than its self-devotion exhibits ! It was not 
merely that he saw (which his elder brother 
cannot be blamed for not immediately per- 
ceiving) through the ensanguined cloud of 
misfortune which had fallen upon his family, 
the unstained excellence of his sister, whose 
madness had caused it ; that he was ready to 
take her to his own home with reverential 
affection, and cherish her through life ; that 
he gave up, for her sake, all meaner and more 
selfish love, and all the hopes which youth 
blends with the passion which disturbs and 
ennobles it : not even that he did all this 
cheerfully, and without pluming himself upon 
his brotherly nobleness as a virtue, or seek- 
ing to repay himself (as some uneasy martyrs 
do) by small instalments of long repining, — 
but that he carried the spirit of the hour in 
which he first knew and took his course, to 
his last. So far from thinking that his sacri- 
fice of youth and love to his sister gave him 
a licence to follow his own caprice at the ex- 
pense of her feelings, even in the lightest 
matters, he always wrote and spoke of her 
as his wiser self ; his generous benefactress, 
of whose protecting care he was scarcely 
worthy. How his pen almost grew wanton 



in her praise, even when she was a prisoner 
in the Asylum after the fatal attack of 
lunacy, his letters of the time to Coleridge 
show ; but that might have been a mere 
temporary exaltation — the attendant fervour 
of a great exigency and a great resolution. 
It was not so ; nine years afterwards (1805), 
in a letter to Miss "Wordsworth, he thus 
dilates on his sister's excellences, and exag- 
gerates his own frailties : — 

" To say all that I know of her would be 
more than I think anybody could believe or 
even understand ; and when I hope to have 
her well again with me, it would be sinning 
against her feelings to go about to praise 
her ; for I can conceal nothing that I do 
from her. She is older, and wiser, and better 
than I, and all my wretched imperfections I 
cover to myself by resolutely thinking on 
her goodness. She would share life and 
death, heaven and hell, with me. She lives 
but for me ; and I know I have been wasting 
and teasing her life for five years past in- 
cessantly with my cursed ways of going on. 
But even in this upbraiding of myself I am 
offending against her, for I know that she 
has cleaved to me for better, for worse ; and 
if the balance has been against her hitherto, 
it l was a noble trade.' " 

Let it also be remembered that this devo- 
tion of the entire nature was not exercised 
merely in the consciousness of a past tragedy ; 
but during the frequent recurrences of the 
calamity which caused it, and the constant 
apprehension of its terrors ; and this for a 
large portion of life, in poor lodgings, where 
the brother and sister were, or fancied them- 
selves, " marked people ; " where from an 
income incapable of meeting the expense of 
the sorrow without sedulous privations, he 
contrived to hoard, not for holiday enjoy- 
ment, or future solace, but to provide for 
expected distress. Of the misery attendant 
on this anticipation, aggravated by jealous 
fears lest some imprudence or error of his 
own should have hastened the inevitable 
evil, we have a glimpse in the letter to Miss 
Wordsworth above quoted, and which seems 
to have been written in reply to one which 
that excellent lady had addressed to Miss 
Lamb, and which had fallen into the brother's 
care during one of her sad absences. 



LAMB FULLY KNOWN. 



305 



"Your long kind letter has not been 
thrown away, but poor Mary, to whom it is 
addressed, cannot yet relish it. She has 
been attacked by one of her severe illnesses, 
and is at present from home. Last Monday 
week was the day she left me ; and I hope I 
may calculate upon having her again in a 
month or little more. I am rather afraid 
late hours have, in this case, contributed to 
her indisposition. But when she begins to 
discover symptoms of approaching illness, it 
is not easy to say what is best to do. Being 
by ourselves is bad, and going out is bad. I 
get so irritable and wretched with fear, that 
I constantly hasten on the disorder. You 
cannot conceive the misery of such a fore- 
sight. I am sure that, for the week before 
she left me, I was little better than light- 
headed. I now am calm, but sadly taken 
down and flat. I have every reason to sup- 
pose that this illness, like all her former ones, 
will be but temporary. But I cannot always 
feel so. Meantime she is dead to me ! " 

The constant impendency of this giant 
sorrow saddened to " the Lambs " even their 
holidays ; as the journey which they both 
regarded as the relief and charm of the year 
was frequently followed by a seizure ; and, 
when they ventured to take it, a strait- 
waistcoat, carefully packed by Miss Lamb 
herself, was their constant companion. Sad 
experience, at last, induced the abandonment 
of the annual excursion, and Lamb was con- 
tented with walks in and near London, 
during the interval of labour. Miss Lamb 
experienced, and full well understood pre- 
monitory symptoms of the attack, in rest- 
lessness, low fever, and the inability to sleep ; 
and, as gently as possible, prepared her 
brother for the duty he must soon perform ; 
and thus, unless he could stave off the terrible 
separation till Sunday, obliged him to ask 
leave of absence from the office as if for a 
day's pleasure — a bitter mockery ! On one 
occasion Mr. Charles Lloyd met them, slowly 
pacing together a little footpath in Hoxton 
fields, both weeping "bitterly, and found on 
joining them, that they were taking their 
solemn way to the accustomed Asylum \^ 

Will any one, acquainted with these secret 
passages of Lamb's history, wonder that, 
with a strong physical inclination for the 
stimulus and support of strong drinks — 



which man is framed moderately to rejoice 
in — he should snatcli some wild pleasure 
" between the acts " (as he called them) " of 
his distressful drama," and that, still more, 
during the loneliness of the solitude created 
by his sister's absences, he should obtain the 
solace of an hour's feverish dream ? That, 
notwithstanding that frailty, he performed 
the duties of his hard lot with exemplary 
steadiness and discretion is indeed wonderful 
— especially when it is recollected that he 
had himself been visited, when in the dawn 
of manhood, with his sister's malady, the 
seeds of which were lurking in his frame. 
While that natural predisposition may ex- 
plain an occasional flightiness of expression 
on serious matters, fruit of some wayward 
fancy, which flitted through his brain, with- 
out disturbing his constant reason or reaching 
his heart, and some little extravagances of 
fitful mirth, how does it heighten the moral 
courage by which the disease was controlled 
and the severest duties performed ! Never 
surely was there a more striking example of 
the power of a virtuous, rather say, of a 
pious, wish to conquer the fiery suggestions 
of latent insanity than that presented by 
Lamb's history. Nervous, tremulous, as he 
seemed — so slight of frame that he looked 
only fit for the most placid fortune — when 
the dismal emergencies which chequered his 
life arose, he acted with as much promptitude 
and vigour as if he had never penned a 
stanza nor taken a glass too much, or was 
strung with herculean sinews. None of 
those temptations, in which misery is the 
most potent, to hazard a lavish expenditure 
for an enjoyment to be secured against fate 
and fortune, ever tempted him to exceed his 
income, when scantiest, by a shilling. He 
had always a reserve for poor Mary's periods 
of seclusion, and something in hand besides 
for a friend in need ; — and on his retirement 
from the India House, he had amassed, by 
annual savings, a sufficient sum (invested 
after the prudent and classical taste of Lord 
S to well, in "the elegant simplicity of the 
Three per Cents.") to secure comfort to Miss 
Lamb, when his pension should cease with 
him, even if the India Company, his great 
employers, had not acted nobly by the 
memory of their inspired clerk — as they did 
— and gave her the annuity to which a wife 
would have been entitled — but of which he 



306 



LAMB FULLY KNOWN. 



could not feel assured. Living among 
literary men, some less distinguished and 
less discreet than those whom we have men- 
tioned, he was constantly importuned to 
relieve distresses which an improvident 
speculation in literature produces, and which 
the recklessness attendant on the empty 
vanity of self-exaggerated talent renders 
desperate and merciless ; — and to the impor- 
tunities of such hopeless petitioners he gave 
too largely — though he used sometimes to 
express a painful sense that he was diminish- 
ing his own store without conferring any 
real benefit. " Heaven," he used to say, 
"does not owe me sixpence for all I have 
given, or lent (as they call it) to such impor- 
tunity ; I only gave it because I could not 
bear to refuse it ; and I have done good by 
my weakness." On the other hand, he used 
to seek out occasions of devoting a part of 
his surplus to those of his friends whom he 
believed it would really serve, and almost 
forced loans, or gifts in the disguise of loans, 
upon them. If he thought one, in such a 
position, would be the happier for 501. oi 
1001., he would carefully procure a note for 
the sum, and, perhaps, for days before he 
might meet the object of his friendly purpose, 
keep the note in his waistcoat pocket, burning 
in it to be produced, and, when the occasion 
arrived — "in the sweet of the night" — he 
would crumple it up in his hand and stammer 
out his difficulty of disposing of a little 
money ; " I don't know what to do with it — 
pray take it — pray use it — you will do me a 
kindness if you will " — he would say ; and 
it was hard to disoblige him ! Let any one 
who has been induced to regard Lamb as a 
poor, slight, excitable, and excited being, 
consider that such acts as these were not in- 
frequent — that he exercised hospitality of a 
substantial kind, without stint, all his life — 
that he spared no expense for the comfort of 
his sister, there only lavish — and that he died 
leaving sufficient to accomplish all his wishes 
for survivors — and think what the sturdy 
quality of his goodness must have been 
amidst all the heart-aches and head-aches of 
his life — and ask the virtue which has been 
supported by strong nerves, whether it has 
often produced any good to match it 1 

The influence of the events now disclosed 
may be traced in the development and direc- 
tion of Lamb's faculties and tastes, and in 



the wild contrasts of expression which some- 
times startled strangers. The literary pre- 
ferences disclosed in his early letters, are 
often inclined to the superficial in poetry 
and thought — the theology of Priestley, 
though embraced with pious earnestness — 
the "divine chit-chat" of Cowper — the 
melodious sadness of Bowles ; and his own 
style, breathing a graceful and modest sweet- 
ness, is without any decided character. But 
by the terrible realities of his experience, he 
was turned to seek a kindred interest in the 
" sterner stuff" of old tragedy — to cata^ 
trophes more fearful even than his own — to 
the aspects of " pale passion " — to shapes of 
heroic daring and more heroic suffering — to 
the agonising contests of opposing affections, 
and the victories of the soul over calamity 
and death, which the old English drama dis- 
closes, and in the contemplation of which he 
saw his own suffering nature at once mirrored 
and exalted. Thus, instead of admiring, as 
he once admired, Bowe and Otway, even 
Massinger seemed too declamatory to satisfy 
him ; in Ford, Decker, Marlowe and Webster, 
he found the most awful struggles of affec- 
tion, and the "sad embroidery" of fancy- 
streaked grief, and expressed his kindred 
■feelings in those little quintessences of criti- 
cism which are appended to the noblest 
scenes in his " Specimens ; " and, seeking 
amidst the sunnier and more varied world of 
Shakspeare for the profoundest and most 
earnest passion developed there, obtained 
that marvellous insight into the soul of Lear 
which gives to his presentment of its riches 
almost the character of creation. On the 
other hand, it was congenial pastime with 
him to revel in the opposite excellences of 
Beaumont and Fletcher, who changed the 
domain of tragedy into fairy-land ; turned all 
its terror and its sorrow " to favour and to 
prettiness ; " shed the rainbow hues of spor- 
tive fancy with equal hand among tyrants 
and victims, the devoted and the faithless, 
suffering and joy ; represented the beauty of 
goodness as a happy accident, vice as a way- 
ward aberration, and invoked the remorse of 
a moment to change them as with a har- 
lequin's wand ; unrealised the terrible, and 
left "nothing serious in mortality," but 
reduced the struggle of life to a glittering 
and heroic game to be played splendidly out, 
and quitted without a sigh. But neither 



I 



LAMB FULLY KNOWN. 






Lamb's own secret griefs, nor the tastes 
which they nurtured, ever shook his faith 
in the requisitions of duty, or induced him 
to dally with that moral paradox to which 
near acquaintance with the great errors of 
mighty natures is sometimes a temptation. 
Never, either in writing or in speech did he 
purposely confound good with evil. For the 
new theories of morals which gleamed out 
in the conversation of some of his friends, he 
had no sympathy ; and, though in his bound- 
less indulgence to the perversities and faults 
of those whom long familiarity had endeared 
to him, he did not suffer their frailties to 
impair his attachment to the individuals, he 
never palliated the frailties themselves ; still 
less did he emblazon them as virtues. 

No one, acquainted with Lamb's story, will 
wonder at the eccentric wildness of his mirth 
— his violent changes from the serious to the 
farcical — the sudden reliefs of the "heat- 
oppressed brain," and heart weighed down 
by the sense of ever-impending sorrow. His 
whim, however, almost always bordered on 
wisdom. It was justly said of him by Hazlitt, 
"His serious conversation, like his serious 
writing, is his best. No one ever stam- 
mered out such fine, piquant, deep, eloquent 
things in half-a-dozen half sentences ; his 
jests scald like tears, and he probes a ques- 
tion with a play on words." 

Although Lamb's conversation vibrated 
between the intense and the grotesque, his 
writings are replete with quiet pictures of 
the humbler scenery of middle life, touched 
with a graceful and loving hand. We may 
trace in them the experience of a nature 
bred up in slender circumstances, but imbued 
with a certain innate spirit of gentility 
suggesting a respect for all its moderate 
appliances and unambitious pleasures. The 
same spirit pervaded all his own domestic 
arrangements, so that the intensity of his 
affliction was ameliorated by as much comfort 
as satisfaction in the outward furniture of 
life can give to slender fortune. 

The most important light, however, shed 
on Lamb's intellectual life by a knowledge of 
his true history, is that which elucidates the 
change from vivid religious impressions, 
manifested in his earlier letters, to an 
apparent indifference towards immortal in- 
terests and celestial relations, which he 



confesses in a letter to Mr. Walter Wilson.* 
The truth is, not thai lie became an 
unbeliever, or even a sceptic, but that the 
peculiar disasters in which In- was plunged, 

and the tendency of his nature to sick 
immediate solaces, induced an habitual 

reluctance to look boldly into futurity. That 
conjugal love, which anticipates with fiuv 
looking eye prolonged existence in posterity, 
was denied to his self-sacrifice ; irksome 
labour wearied out the heart of his days ; 
and over his small household, Madness, like 
Death in the vision of Milton, continually 
" shook its dart," and- only, at the best, 
" delayed to strike." Not daring to look 
onward, even for a little month, he acquired 
the habitual sense of living entirely in the 
present ; enjoying with tremulous zest the 
security of the moment, and making some 
genial, but sad, amends for the want of all 
the perspective of life, by cleaving, witli 
fondness, to its nearest objects, and becoming 
attached to them, even when least interest- 
ing in themselves. 

This perpetual grasping at transient relief 
from the minute and vivid present, associated 
Lamb's affections intimately and closely with 
the small details of daily existence ; these 
became to him the "jutting frieze " and 
" coigne of vantage " in which his home-bred 
fancy " made its bed and procreant cradle ;" 
these became imbued with his thoughts, and 
echoed back to him old feelings and old 
loves, till his inmost soul shivered at the 
prospect of being finally wrenched from 
them. Enthralled thus in the prison of an 
earthly home, he became perplexed and 
bewildered at the idea of an existence 
which, though holier and happier, would 
doubtless be entirely different from that to 
which he was bound by so many delicate 
films of custom. n Ah ! " he would say, " we 
shall have none of these little passages of 
this life hereafter — none of our little quarrels 
and makings-up — no questionings about 
sixpence at whist ;" and, thus repelled, he 
clung more closely to " the bright minutes " 
which he strung "on the thread of keen 
domestic anguish ! " It is this intense feel- 
ing of the " nice regards of flesh and blood ;" 
this dwelling in petty felicities ; -which makes 
us, apart from religious fears, unwilling to 

* Page 224. 



308 



MARY LAMB. 



die. Small associations make death terrible, 
because we know, that parting with this life, 
we part from their company ; whereas great 
thoughts make death less fearful, because we 
feel that they will be our companions in all 
worlds, and link our future to our present 
being in all ages. Such thoughts assuredly 
were not dead in a heart like Lamb's ; they 
were only veiled by the nearer presences of 
familiar objects, and sometimes, perhaps, 
bursting in upon him in all their majesty, 
produced those startling references to sacred 
things, in which, though not to be quoted 
with approval, there was no conscious pro- 
faneness, but rather a wayward, fitful, dis- 
turbed piety. If, indeed, when borne beyond 
the present, he sought to linger in the past ; 
to detect among the dust and cobwebs of 
antiquity, beauty, which had lurked there 
from old time, rather than to " rest and ex- 
patiate in a life to come," no anti- christian 
sentiment spread its dullness over his spirit. 
The shrinking into mortal life was but the 
weakness of a nature which shed the sweet- 
ness of the religion of its youth through the 
sorrows and the snatches of enjoyment which 
crowded his after years, and only feebly per- 
ceived its final glories, which, we may humbly 
hope, its immortal part is now enjoying. 

Shortly before his death, Lamb had bor- 
rowed of Mr. Cary, Phillips's "Theatrum 
Poetarum Anglicanorum," which, when re- 
turned by Mr. Moxon, after the event, was 
found with the leaf folded down at the 
account of Sir Philip Sydney. Its receipt 
was acknowledged by the following lines : — 

" So should it be, my gentle friend ; 
Thy leaf last closed at Sydney's end. 
Thou too, like Sydney, wouldst have given 
The water, thirsting and near heaven ; 
Nay, -were it wine, fill'd to the brim, 
Tbou hadst looked hard, but given, like him. 

And art thou mingled then among 

Those famous sons of ancient song ? 

And do they gather round, and praise 

Thy relish of their nobler lays ? 

W T axing in mirth to hear thee tell 

With what strange mortals thou didst dwell ; 

At thy quaint sallies more delighted, 

Than any's long among them lighted ! 

'Tis done : and thou hast joined a crew, 
To whom thy soul was justly due ; 
And yet I think, where'er thou be, 
They'll scarcely love thee more than we."* 



* These lines, characteristic both of the writer and 
the subject, are copied from the Memoir of the translator 
of Dante, by his son, the Rev. Henry Cary, which, 



Little could any one, observing Miss Lamb 
in the habitual serenity of her demeanour, 
guess the calamity in which she had partaken, 
or the malady which frightfully chequered 
her life. From Mr. Lloyd, who, although 
saddened by impending delusion, was always 
found accurate in his recollection of long past 
events and conversations, I learned that she 
had described herself, on her recovery from 
the fatal attack, as having experienced, while 
it was subsiding, such a conviction that she 
was absolved in heaven from all taint of the 
deed in which she had been the agent — such 
an assurance that it was a dispensation of 
Providence for good, though so terrible — 
such a sense, that her mother knew her entire 
innocence, and shed down blessings upon 
her, as though she had seen the reconcile- 
ment in solemn vision — that she was not 
sorely afflicted by the recollection. It was 
as if the old Greek notion, of the necessity 
for the unconscious shedder of blood, else 
polluted though guiltless, to pass through a 
religious purification, had, in her case, been 
happily accomplished ; so that, not only was 
she without remorse, but without other sor- 
row than attends on the death of an infirm 
parent in a good old age. She never shrank 
from alluding to her mother, when any topic 
connected with her own youth made such 
a reference, in ordinary respects, natural ; 
but spoke of her as though no fearful remem- 
brance was associated with the image ; so 
that some of her most intimate friends, who 
knew of the disaster, believed that she had 
never become aware of her own share in its 
horrors. It is still more singular that, in the 
wanderings of her insanity, amidst all the 
vast throngs of imagery she presented of her 
early days, this picture never recurred, or, if 
ever, not associated with shapes of terror. 

Miss Lamb would have been remarkable 
for the sweetness of her disposition, the 
clearness of her understanding, and the gentle 
wisdom of all her acts and words, even if 
these qualities had not been presented in 
marvellous contrast with the distraction 
under which she suffered for weeks, latterly 
for months, in every year. There was no 
tinge of insanity discernible in her manner 

enriched by many interesting memorials of contempo- 
raries, presents as valuable a picture of rare ability and 
excellence as ever was traced by the fine observation of 
filial love. 



MARY LAMB. 



309 



to the most observant eye ; not even in 
those distressful periods when the premoni- 
tory symptoms had apprised her of its ap- 
proach, and she was making preparations for 
seclusion. In all its essential sweetness, her 
character was like her brother's ; while, by a 
temper more placid, a spirit of enjoyment 
more serene, she was enabled to guide, to 
counsel, to cheer him, and to protect him on 
the verge of the mysterious calamity, from 
the depths of which she rose so often un- 
ruffled to his side. To a friend in any diffi- 
culty she was the most comfortable of 
advisers, the wisest of consolers. Hazlitt 
nsed to say, that he never met with a woman 
who could reason, and had met with only 
one thoroughly reasonable — the sole- excep- 
tion being Mary Lamb. She did not wish, 
however, to be made an exception, to a 
general disparagement of her sex ; for in all 
her thoughts and feelings she was most 
womanly — keeping, under even undue sub- 
ordination, to her notion of a woman's 
province, intellect of rare excellence, which 
flashed out when the restraints of gentle 
habit and humble manner were withdrawn 
by the terrible force of disease. Though her 
conversation in sanity was never marked by 
smartness or repartee, seldom rising beyond 
that of a sensible quiet gentlewoman appre- 
ciating and enjoying the talents of her friends, 
it was otherwise in her madness. Lamb, in 
his letter to a female friend, announcing his 
determination to be entirely with her, speaks 
of her pouring out memories of all the events 
and persons of her younger days ; but he 
does not mention, what I am able from 
repeated experiences to add, that her ram- 
blings often sparkled with brilliant descrip- 
tion and shattered beauty. She would fancy 
herself in the days of Queen Anne or George 
the First, and describe the brocaded dames 
and courtly manners, as though she had been 
bred among them, in the best style of the old 
comedy. It was all broken and disjointed, 
so that the hearer could remember little of 
her discourse ; but the fragments were like 
the jewelled speeches of Congreve, only 
shaken from their setting. There was some- 
times even a vein of crazy logic running 
through them, associating things essentially 
most dissimilar, but connecting them by a 
verbal association in strange order. As a 
mere physical instance of deranged intellect, 



her condition was, I believe, extraordinary ; 
it was as if the finest elements of mind had 
been shaken into fantastic combinations like 
those of a kaleidoscope; — but not for the pur- 
pose of exhibiting a curious phenomenon of 
mental aberration are the aspects of her 
insanity unveiled, but to illustrate the mora] 
force of gentleness by which the faculties 
that thus sparkled when restraining wisdom 
was withdrawn, were subjected to its sway, 
in her periods of reason. 

The following letter from Miss Lamb to 
Miss Wordsworth, on one of the chief exter- 
nal events of Lamb's history, the removal 
from the Temple to Covent Garden, will il- 
lustrate the cordial and womanly strain of 
her observation on the occurrences of daily 
life, and afford a good idea of her habitual 
conversation among her friends. 

" My dear Miss Wordsworth, — Your kind 
letter has given us very great pleasure, the 
sight of your handwriting was a most wel- 
come surprise to us. We have heard good 
tidings of you by all our friends who were so 
fortunate as to visit you this summer, and 
rejoice to see it confirmed by yourself. You 
have quite the advantage, in volunteering a 
letter ; there is no merit in replying to so 
welcome a stranger. 

" We have left the Temple. I think you 
will be sorry to hear this. I know I have 
never been so well satisfied with thinking of 
you at Bydal Mount, as when I could connect 
the idea of you with your own Grasmere 
Cottage. Our rooms were dirty and out of 
repair, and the inconveniences of living in 
chambers became every year more irksome, 
and so, at last, we, mustered up resolution 
enough to leave the good old place, that so 
long had sheltered us, and here we are, 
living at a brazier's shop, No. 20, in Kussell- 
street, Covent-garden, a place all alive with 
noise and bustle ; Drury-lane Theatre in 
sight from our front, and Covent-garden from 
our back windows. The hubbub of the car- 
riages returning from the play does not 
annoy me in the least; strange that it does 
not, for it is quite tremendous. I quite enjoy 
looking out of the window, and listening to 
the calling up of the carriages, and the 
squabbles of the coachmen and linkboys. It 
is the oddest scene to look down upon ; I am 
sure you would be amused with it. It is 



310 



MARY LAMB. 



well I am in a cheerful place, or I should 
have many misgivings about leaving the 
Temple. I look forward with great pleasure 
to the prospect of seeing my good friend, 
Miss Hutchinson. I wish Eydal Mount, with 
all its inhabitants enclosed, were to be trans- 
planted with her, and to remain stationary 
in the midst of Covent-garden. 

#■**•**■ 

" Charles has had all his Hogarths bound 
in a book ; they were sent home yesterday, 
and now that I have them altogether, and 
perceive the advantage of peeping close at 
them through my spectacles, I am reconciled 
to the loss of them hanging ronnd the room, 
which has been a great mortification to me — 
in vain I tried to console myself with looking 
at our new chairs and carpets, for we have 
got new chairs, and carpets covering all over 
our two sitting-rooms ; I missed my old 
friends, and could not be comforted — then I 
would resolve to learn to look out of the 
window, a habit I never could attain in my 
life, and I have given it np as a thing quite 
impracticable — yet when I was at Brighton, 
last summer, the first week I never took my 
eyes off from the ,sea, not even to look in a 
book : I had not seen the sea for sixteen 

years. Mrs. M , who was with us, kept 

her liking, and continued her seat in the 
window till the very last, while Charles and 
I played truants, and wandered among the 
hills, which we magnified into little moun- 
tains, and almost as good as Westmoreland 
scenery : certainly we made discoveries of 
many pleasant walks, which few of the 
Brighton visitors have ever dreamed of — for 
like as is the case in the neighbourhood of 
London, after the first two or three miles we 
were sure to find ourselves in a perfect soli- 
tude. I hope we shall meet before the walk- 
ing faculties of either of us fail ; you say you 
can walk fifteen miles with ease ; that is 
exactly my stint, and more fatigues me ; four 
or five miles every third or fourth day, keep- 
ing very quiet between, was all Mrs. M 

could accomplish. 

"God bless you and yours. Love to all 
and each one. 

" I am ever yours most affectionately, 
« M. Lamb." 

Of that deeper vein of sentiment in Mary 
Lamb, seldom revealed, the following pas- 



sages from a letter to the same lady, refer- 
ring to the death of a brother of her beloved 
correspondent, may be offered as a companion 
specimen. 

" My dear Miss "Wordsworth, — I thank 
you, my kind friend, for your most comfort- 
able letter ; till I saw your own handwriting 
I could not persuade myself that I should do 
well to write to you, though I have often at- 
tempted it ; but I always left off dissatisfied 
with what I had written, and feeling that I 
was doing an improper thing to intrude upon 
your sorrow. I wished to tell you that you 
would one day feel the kind of peaceful state 
of mind and sweet memory of the dead, 
which you so happily describe as now almost 
begun ; but I felt that it was improper, and 
most grating to the feelings of the afflicted, 
to say to them that the memory of their 
affection would in time become a constant 
part, not only of their dream, but of their 
most wakeful sense of happiness. That you \ 
would see every object with and through I 
your lost brother, and that that would at \ 
last become a real and everlasting source of \ 
comfort to you, I felt, and well knew, fromj 
my own experience in sorrow ; but till you 
yourself began to feel this I did not dare tell 
you so ; but I send you some poor lines 
which I wrote under this conviction of mind, 
and before I heard Coleridge was returning 
home. I will transcribe them now, before I 
finish my letter, lest a false shame prevent 
me then, for I know they are much worse 
than they ought to be, written, as they were, 
with strong feeling, and on such a subject ; 
every line seems to me to be borrowed, but 
I had no better way of expressing my 
thoughts, and I never have the power of 
altering or amending anything I have once 
laid aside with dissatisfaction. 

" Why is he wandering on the sea ? — 

Coleridge should now with Wordsworth be. 
By slow degrees he'd steal away 
Their woe, and gently bring a ray 
(So happily he'd time relief,) 
Of comfort from their very grief. 
He'd tell them that their brother dead, 
When years have passed o'er their head, 
Will be remembered with such holy, 
True, and perfect melancholy, 
That ever this lost brother John 
Will be their heart's companion. 
His voice they'll always hear, 

His face they'll always see ; 
There's nought in life so sweet 

As such a memory." 



LAST EAUTHLY REMAINS. 



311 



The excellence of Mary Lamb's nature 
was happily developed in her portion of those 
books for children — " wisest, virtuousest, 
discreetest, best," — which she wrote in con- 
junction with her brother, the " Poetry for 
Children," the "Tales from Shakspeare," and 
"Mrs. Leicester's School." How different 
from the stony nutriment provided for those 
delicate,. apprehensive, affectionate creatures, 
in the utilitarian books, which starve their 
little hearts, and stuff their little heads with 
shallow science, and impertinent facts, and 
selfish morals ! One verse, which she did not 
print — the conclusion of a little poem sup- 
posed to be expressed in a letter by the son 
of a family who, when expecting the return 
of its father from sea, received news of his 
death, — recited by her to Mr. Martin Bur- 
ney, and retained in his fond recollection, 
may afford a concluding example of the 
healthful wisdom of her lessons : — 

" I can no longer feign to be 
A thoughtless child in infancy ; 
I tried to write like young Marie, 

But I am James her brother ; 
And I can feel — but she's too young — 
Yet blessings on her prattling tongue, 

She sweetly soothes my mother." 

Contrary to Lamb's expectation, who 
feared (as also his friends feared with him) 
the desolation of his own survivorship, which 
the difference of age rendered probable, Miss 
Lamb survived him for nearly eleven years. 
When he died she was mercifully in a state 
of partial estrangement, which, while it did 
not wholly obscure her mind, deadened her 
feelings, so that as she gradually regained 
her perfect senses she felt as gradually the 
full force of the blow, and was the better 
able calmly to bear it. For awhile she 
declined the importunities of her friends, 
that she would leave Edmonton for a resi- 
dence nearer London, where they might 
more frequently visit her. He was there, 
asleep in the old churchyard, beneath the 
turf near which they had stood together, 
and had selected for a resting-place ; to this 
spot she used, when well, to stroll out mourn- 
fully in the evening, and to this spot she 
would contrive to lead any friend who came 
in the summer evenings to drink tea and 
went out with her afterwards for a walk.* 

* The following Sonnet, by Mr. Moxon, written at 



At length, as her illness became more fre- 
quent, and her frame much weaker, she was 
induced to take up her abode under genial 
care, at a pleasant house in St. John's Wood, 
where she was surrounded by the old books 
and prints, and was frequently visited by her 
reduced number of surviving friends. Re- 
peated attacks of her malady weakened her 
mind, but she retained to the last her sweet- 
ness of disposition unimpaired, and gently 
sunk into death on the 20th May, 1847. 

A few survivors of the old circle, now 
sadly thinned, attended her remains to the 
spot in Edmonton churchyard, where they 
were laid above those of her brother. With 
them was one friend of later days — but who 
had become to Lamb as one of his oldest 
companions, and for whom Miss Lamb che- 
rished a strong regard — Mr. John Forster, 
the author of " The Life of Goldsmith," in 
which Lamb would have rejoiced, as written 
in a spirit congenial with his own. In ac- 
cordance with Lamb's own feeling, so far as 
it could be gathered from his expressions on 
a subject to which he did not often, or wil- 
lingly, refer, he had been interred in a deep 
grave, simply dug, and wattled round, but 
without any affectation of stone or brick- 
work to keep the human dust from its kin- 
dred earth. So dry, however, is the soil of 
the quiet churchyard that the excavated 
earth left perfect walls of stiff clay, and per- 
mitted us just to catch a glimpse of the still 
untarnished edges of the coffin in which all 
the mortal part of one of the most delightful 
persons who ever lived was contained, and 
on which the remains of her he had loved 
with love " passing the love of woman " were 

this period of tranquil sadness in Miss Lamb's life, so 
beautifully embodies the reverential love with which the 
sleeping and the mourning were regarded by one of their 
nearest friends, that I gratify myself by extracting it 
from the charming little volume of his Sonnets, which it 
adorns : — 

Here sleeps, beneath this bank, where daisies grow, 

The kindliest sprite earth holds within her breast ; 

In such a spot I would this frame should rest, 
When I to join my friend far hence shall go. 
His only mate is now the minstrel lark, 

Who chants her morning music o'er his bed, 
Save she who comes each evening, ere the bark 

Of watch-dog gathers drowsy folds, to shed 
A sister's tears. Kind Heaven, upon her head, 

Do thou in dove-like guise thy spirit pour, 
And in her aged path some flowerets spread 

Of earthly joy, should Time for her in store 
Have weary days and nights, ere she shall greet 
Him whom she longs in Paradise to meet. 



312 



LAST EARTHLY REMAINS. 



henceforth to rest ; — the last glances we shall 
ever have even of that covering ; — concealed 
from us as we parted by the coffin of the 
sister. We felt, I believe, after a moment's 
strange shuddering, that the re-union was 
well accomplished ; and although the true- 
hearted son of Admiral Burney, who had 
known and loved the pair we quitted from a 



child, and who had been among the dearest 
objects of existence to him, refused to be 
comforted, — even he will now join the scanty 
remnant of their friends in the softened re- 
membrance that " they were lovely in their 
lives," and own with them the consolation 
of adding, at last, " that in death they are 
not divided ! " 






THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 



Reader, in thy passage from the Bank — 
where thou hast been receiving thy half- 
yearly dividends (supposing thou art a lean 
annuitant like myself) — to the Flower Pot, 
to secure a place for Dalston, or Shackleweli; 
or some other thy suburban retreat northerly, 
— didst thou never observe a melancholy- 
looking, handsome, brick and stone edifice, 
to the left — where Threadneedle-street abuts 
upon Bishopsgate ? I dare say thou hast 
often admired its magnificent portals ever 
gaping wide, and disclosing to view a grave 
court, with cloisters, and pillars, with few or 
no traces of goers-in or comers-out — a desola- 
tion something like Balclutha's.* 

This was once a house of trade, — a centre 
of busy interests. The throng of merchants 
was here — the quick pulse of gain — and here 
some forms of business are still kept up, 
though the soul be long since fled. Here are 
still to be seen stately porticos ; imposing 
staircases, offices roomy as the state apart- 
ments in palaces — deserted, or thinly peopled 
with a few straggling clerks ; the still more 
sacred interiors of court and committee- 
rooms, with venerable faces of beadles, door- 
keepers—directors seated in form on solemn 
days (to proclaim a dead dividend), at long 
worm-eaten tables, that have been mahogany, 
with tarnished gilt-leather coverings, sup- 
porting massy silver inkstands long since 
dry; — the oaken wainscots hung with 

* I passed by the -walls of Balclutha, and they were 
desolate. — Ossian. 



pictures of deceased governors and sub- 
governors, of Queen Anne, and the two first 
monarchs of the Brunswick dynasty : — huge 
charts, which subsequent discoveries have 
antiquated ; dusty maps of Mexico, dim as 
dreams, — and soundings of the Bay of 
Panama ! The long passages hung with 
buckets, appended, in idle row, to walls, 
whose substance might defy any, short of the 
last, conflagration : — with vast ranges of 
cellarage under all, where dollars and pieces- 
of-eight once lay, an " unsunned heap," for 
Mammon to have solaced his solitary heart 
withal, — long since dissipated, or scattered 
into air at the blast of the breaking of that 

famous Bubble. 

Such is the South-Sea House. At least, 
such it was forty years ago, when I knew it, 
— a magnificent relic ! What alterations 
may have been made in it since, I have had 
no opportunities of verifying. Time, I take 
for granted, has not freshened it. No wind 
has resuscitated the face of the sleeping 
waters. A thicker crust by this time stag- 
nates upon it. The moths, that were then 
battening upon its obsolete ledgers and day- 
books, have rested from their depredations, 
but other light generations have succeeded, 
making fine fretwork among their single and 
double entries. Layers of dust have accu- 
mulated (a superfcetation of dirt !) upon the 
old layers, that seldom used to be disturbed, 
save by some curious finger, now and then, 
inquisitive to explore the mode of book- 



316 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 



keeping in Queen Anne's reign ; or, with less 
h .allowed curiosity, seeking to unveil some 
of the mysteries of that tremendous hoax, 
whose extent the petty peculators of our day 
look back upon with the same expression of 
incredulous admiration, and hopeless ambi- 
tion of rivalry, as would become the puny 
face of modern conspiracy contemplating the 
Titan size of Vaux's superhuman plot. 

Peace to the manes of the Bubble ! Silence 
and destitution are upon thy walls, proud 
house, for a memorial ! 

Situated as thou art, in the very heart of 
stirring and living commerce, — amid the fret 
and fever of speculation — with the Bank, 
and the 'Change, and the India-House about 
thee, in the hey-day of present prosperity, 
with their important faces, as it were, in- 
sulting thee, their poor neighbour out of busi- 
ness — to the idle and merely contemplative, 
— to such as me, old house ! there is a charm 
in thy quiet : a cessation — a coolness from 
business — an indolence almost cloistral — 
which is delightful ! With what reverence 
have I paced thy great bare rooms and 
courts at eventide ! They spoke of the past : 
— the shade of some dead accountant, with 
visionary pen in ear, would flit by me, stiff 
as in life. Living accounts and accountants 
puzzle me. I have no skill in figuring, But 
thy great dead tomes, which scarce three 
degenerate clerks of the present day could 
lift from their enshrining shelves — with then- 
old fantastic flourishes, and decorative rubric 
interfacings — their sums in triple columnia- 
tions, set down with formal superfluity of 
ciphers — with pious sentences at the be- 
ginning, without which our religious ances- 
tors never ventured to open a book of busi- 
ness, or bill of lading — the costly vellum 
covers of some of them almost persuading 
us that we are got into some better library, — 
are very agreeable and edifying spectacles. 
I can look upon these defunct dragons with 
complacency. Thy heavy odd-shaped ivory- 
handled pen-knives (our ancestors had every- 
thing on a larger scale than we have hearts 
for) are as good as anything from Hercu- 
laneum. The pounce-boxes of our days have 
gone retrograde. 

The very clerks which I remember in the 
South-Sea House — I speak of forty years 
back — had an air very different from those 
in the public offices that I have had to do 



with since. They partook of the genius of 
the place ! 

They were mostly (for the establishment did 
not admit of superfluous salaries) bachelors. 
Generally (for they had not much to do) 
persons of a curious and speculative turn of 
mind. Old-fashioned, for a reason mentioned 
before. Humourists, for they were of all 
descriptions ; and, not having been brought 
together in early life (which has a tendency 
to assimilate the members of corporate bodies 
to each other), but, for the most part, placed 
in this house in ripe or middle age, they 
necessarily carried into it their separate 
habits and oddities, unqualified, if I may so 
speak, as into a common stock. Hence they 
formed a sort of Noah's ark. Odd fishes. 
A lay-monastery. Domestic retainers in a 
great house, kept more for show than use. 
Yet pleasant fellows, full of chat — and not 
a few among them had arrived at considerable 
proficiency on the German flute. 

The cashier at that time was one Evans, a 
Cambro-Briton. He had something of the 
choleric complexion of his countrymen 
stamped on his visage, but was a worthy 
sensible man at bottom. He wore his hair, 
to the last, powdered and frizzed out, in 
the fashion which I remember to have seen 
in caricatures of what were termed, in my 
young days, Maccaronies. He was the last 
of that race of beaux. Melancholy as a gib- 
cat over his counter all the forenoon, I think 
I see him, making up his cash (as they call 
it) with tremulous fingers, as if he feared 
every one about him was a defaulter ; in his 
hypochondry ready to imagine himself one ; 
haunted, at least, with the idea of the possi- 
bility of his becoming one ; his tristful 
visage clearing up a little over his roast neck 
of veal at Anderton's at two (where his 
picture still hangs, taken a little before his 
death by desire of the master of the coffee- 
house, which he had frequented for the last 
five-and-twenty years), but not attaining the 
meridian of its animation till evening brought 
on the hour of tea and visiting. The simul- 
taneous sound of his well-known rap at the 
door with the stroke of the clock announcing 
six, was a topic of never-failing mirth in the 
families which this dear old bachelor glad- 
dened with his presence. Then was his 
forte, his glorified hour ! How would he 
chirp, and expand, over a muffin! How 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 



317 



would he dilate into secret history ! His 
countryman, Pennant himself, in particular, 
could not be more eloquent than he in 
relation to pld and new London — the site 
of old theatres, churches, streets gone to 
decay — where Rosamond's Pond stood — the 
Mulberry gardens — and the Conduit in 
Cheap — with many a pleasant anecdote, 
derived , from paternal tradition, of those 
grotesque figures which Hogarth has im- 
mortalised in his picture of Noon, — the 
worthy descendants of those heroic con- 
fessors, who, flying to this country, from 
the wrath of Louis the Fourteenth and his 
dragoons, kept alive the flame of pure reli- 
gion in the sheltering obscurities of Hog- 
lane, and the vicinity of the Seven Dials ! 

Deputy, under Evans, was Thomas Tame. 
He had the air and stoop of a nobleman. 
You would have taken him for one, had you 
met him in one of the passages leading to 
Westminster-hall. By stoop, I mean that 
gentle bending of the body forwards, which, 
in great men, must be supposed to be the 
effect of an habitual condescending atten- 
tion to the applications of their inferiors. 
"While he held you in converse, you felt 
strained to the height in the colloquy. The 
conference over, you were at leisure to smile 
at the comparative insignificance of the pre- 
tensions which had just awed you. His 
intellect was of the shallowest order. It did 
not reach to a saw or a proverb. His mind 
was in its original state of white paper. A 
sucking-babe might have posed him. What 
was it then ? Was he rich ? Alas, no ! 
Thomas Tame was very poor. Both he and 
his wife looked outwardly gentlefolks, when I 
fear all was not well at all times within. She 
had a neat meagre person, which it was 
evident she had not sinned in over-pamper- 
ing ; but in its veins was noble blood. She 
traced her descent, by some labyrinth of 
relationship, which I never thoroughly under- 
stood, — much less can explain with any 
heraldic certainty at this time of day, — to 
the illustrious, but unfortunate house of 
Derwentwater. This was the secret of 
Thomas's stoop. This was the thought — 
the sentiment — the bright solitary star of 
your lives, — ye mild and happy pair, — which 
cheered you in the night of intellect, and in 
the obscurity of your station ! This was to 
you instead of riches, instead of rank, instead 



of glittering attainments: and it was worth 
them all together. You insulted none with 
it ; but, while you wore it as a piece of defen- 
sive armour only, no insult likewise could 
reach you through it. Decus et solamen. 

Of quite another stamp was the then ac- 
countant, John Tipp. He neither pretended to 
high blood, nor, in good truth, cared one fig 
about the matter. He " thought an accoun- 
tant the greatest character in the world, and 
himself the greatest accountant in it." Yet 
John was not without his hobby. The fiddle 
relieved his vacant hours. He sang, certainly, 
with other notes than to the Orphean lyre. 
He did, indeed, scream and scrape most 
abominably. His fine suite of official rooms 
in Threadneedle-street, which, without any- 
thing very substantial appended to them, 
were enough to enlarge a man's notions of 
himself that lived in them, (I know not who 
is the occupier of them now,) resounded 
fortnightly to the notes of a concert of " sweet 
breasts," as our ancestors would have called 
them, culled from club-rooms and orchestras 
— chorus-singers — first and second violon- 
cellos — double-basses — and clarionets — who 
ate his cold mutton, and drank his punch, and 
praised his ear. He sate like Lord Midas 
among them. But at the desk Tipp was quite 
another sort of creature. Thence all ideas, 
that were purely ornamental, were banished. 
You could not speak of anything romantic 
without rebuke. Politics were excluded. A 
newspaper was thought too refined and 
abstracted. The whole duty of man con- 
sisted in writing off dividend warrants. The 
striking of the annual balance in the com- 
pany's books (which, perhaps, differed from 
the balance of last year in the sum of 
25£. Is. 6d.) occupied his days and nights for 
a month previous. Not that Tip was blind 
to the deadness of things (as they call them 
in the city) in his beloved house, or did not 
sigh for a return of the old stirring days 
when South-Sea hopes were young — (he was 
indeed equal to the wielding of any the most 
intricate accounts of the most flourishing 
company in these or those days) : — but to a 
genuine accountant the difference of proceeds 
is as nothing. The fractional farthing is as 
dear to his heart as the thousands which 
stand before it. He is the time actor, who, 
whether his part be a prince or a peasant, 
must act it with like intensity. With Tipp 



31S 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 



form was everything. His life was formal. 
His actions seemed ruled with a ruler. His 
pen was not less erring than his heart. He 
made the best executor in the world ; he 
was plagued with incessant executorships 
accordingly, which excited his spleen and 
soothed his vanity in equal ratios. He would 
swear (for Tipp swore) at the little orphans, 
whose rights he would guard with a tenacity 
like the grasp of the dying hand, that com- 
mended their interests to his protection. 
With all this there was about him a sort of 
timidity — (his few enemies used to give it a 
worse name) — a something which, in reve- 
rence to the dead, we will place, if you please, 
a little on this side of the heroic. Nature 
certainly had been pleased to endow John 
Tipp with a sufficient measure of the 
principle of self-preservation. There is a 
cowardice which we do not despise, because 
it has nothing base or treacherous in its 
elements ; it betrays itself, not you : it is 
mere temperament ; the absence of the 
romantic and the enterprising ; it sees a lion 
in the way, and will not, with Fortinbras, 
" greatly find quarrel in a straw," when some 
supposed honour is at stake. Tipp never 
mounted the box of a stage-coach in his life ; 
or leaned against the rails of a balcony ; or 
walked upon the ridge of a parapet ; or 
looked down a precipice ; or let off a gun ; 
or went upon a water-party ; or would 
willingly let you go, if he could have helped 
it : neither was it recorded of him, that for 
lucre, or for intimidation, he ever forsook 
friend or principle. 

Whom next shall we summon from the 
dusty dead^ in whom common qualities 
become uncommon ? Can I forget thee, 
Henry Man, the wit, the polished man of 
letters, the author, of the South-Sea House ? 
who never enteredst thy office in a morning, 
or quittedst it in mid-day — (what didst thou 
in an office ?) — without some quirk that left 
a sting 1 Thy gibes and thy jokes are now 
extinct, or survive but in two forgotten 
volumes, which I had the good fortune to 
rescue from a stall in Barbican, not three 
days ago, and found thee terse, fresh, epigram- 
matic, as alive. Thy wit is a little gone by 
in these fastidious days — thy topics are staled 
by the " new-born gauds " of the time : — but 
great thou used to be in Public Ledgers, and 
in Chronicles, upon Chatham, and Shelburne, 



and Rockingham, and Howe, and Burgoyne, 
and Clinton, and the war which ended in 
the tearing from Great Britain her rebellious 
colonies, — and Keppel, and Wilkes, and 
Sawbridge, and Bull, and Dunning, and 
Pratt, and Bichmond, — and such small 
politics. 

A little less facetious, and a great deal 
more obstreperous, was fine rattling, rattle- 
headed Plvmier. He was descended, — not 
in a right line, reader, (for his lineal preten- 
sions, like his personal, favoured a little of 
the sinister bend,) from the Plumers of 
Hertfordshire. So tradition gave him out ; 
and certain family features not a little 
sanctioned the opinion. Certainly old Walter 
Plumer (his reputed author) had been a rake 
in his days, and visited much in Italy, and 
had seen the world. He was uncle, bachelor- 
uncle to the fine old whig still living, who 
has represented the county in so many 
successive parliaments, and has a fine old 
mansion near Ware. Walter flourished in 
George the Second's days, and was the same 
who was summoned before the House of 
Commons about a business of franks, with 
the old Duchess of Marlborough. You may 
read of it in Johnson's Life of Cave. Cave 
came off cleverly in that business. It is 
certain our Plumer did nothing to discoun- 
tenance the rumour. He rather seemed 
pleased whenever it was, with all gentleness, 
insinuated. But, besides his family preten- 
sions, Plumer was an engaging fellow, and 
sang gloriously. 

Not so sweetly sang Plumer as thou 
sangest, mild, child-like, pastoral M— — ; a 
flute's breathing less divinely whispering 
than thy Arcadian melodies, when, in tones 
worthy of Arden, thou didst chant that song 
sung by Amiens to the banished Duke, which 
proclaims the winter wind more lenient than 
for a man to be ungrateful. Thy sire was 
old surly M , the unapproachable church- 
warden of Bishopsgate. He knew not what 
he did, when he begat thee, like spring, 
gentle offspring of blustering winter : — only 
unfortunate in thy ending, which should 
have been mild, conciliatory, swan-like. 

Much remains to sing. Many fantastic 
shapes rise up, but they must be mine in 
private : — already I have fooled the reader to 
the top of his bent ; — else could I omit that 
strange creature Woollett, who existed in 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 



319 



trying the question, and bought litigations ? 
— and still stranger, inimitable, solemn 
Hep worth, from whose gravity Newton 
might have deduced the law of gravitation. 
How profoundly would he nib a pen — 
with what deliberation would he wet a 

wafer ! 

But it is time to close — night's wheels are 
rattling fast over me — it is proper to have 
done with this solemn mockery. 



Reader, what if I have been playing with 
thee all this while ? — perad venture the very 
names, which I have summoned up before 

thee, are fantastic — insubstantial — lik<: 
Henry Pimpernel, and old John Naps of 

Greece : 

Be satisfied that something answering to 
them has had a being. Their importance is 
from the past. 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 



Casting a preparatory glance at the bottom 
of this article — as the wary connoisseur in 
prints, with cursory eye (which, while it 
reads, seems as though it read not), never 
fails to consult the quis sculpsit in the corner, 
before he pronounces some rare piece to be a 

Vivares, or a Woollet methinks I hear 

you exclaim, reader, Who is Elia ? 

Because in my last I tried to divert thee 
with some half-forgotten humours of some 
old clerks defunct, in an old house of busi- 
ness, long since gone to decay, doubtless you 
have already set me down in your mind as 

one of the self-same college a votary of 

the desk — a notched and cropt scrivener — 
one that sucks his sustenance, as certain sick 
people are said to do, through a quill. 

Well, I do agnize something of the sort. I 
confess that it is my humour, my fancy — in 
the fore-part of the day, when the mind of 
your man of letters requires some relaxation 
— (and none better than such as at first sight 
seems most abhorrent from his beloved 
studies) — to while away some good hours of 
my time in the contemplation of indigos, 
cottons, raw silks, piece-goods, flowered or 
otherwise. In the first place * * * * 
and then it sends you home with such in- 
creased appetite to your books * 
not to say, that your outside sheets, and 
waste wrappers of foolscap, do receive into 
them, most kindly and naturally, the impres- 
sion of sonnets, epigrams, essays — so that the 
very parings of a counting-house are, in some 
sort, the settings up of an author. The en- 
franchised quill, that has plodded all the 
morning among the cart-rucks of figures and 
ciphers, frisks and curvets so at its ease over 



the flowery carpet-ground of a midnight dis- 
sertation. — It feels its promotion. * * * 
So that you see, upon the whole, the literary 
dignity of Elia is very little, if at all, com- 
promised in the condescension. 

Not that, in my anxious detail of the many 
commodities incidental to the fife of a public 
office, I would be thought blind to certain 
flaws, which a cunning carper might be able 
to pick in this Joseph's vest. And here I 
must have leave, in the fulness of my soul, to 
regret the abolition, and doing-away-with 
altogether, of those consolatory interstices 
and sprinklings of freedom, through the four 
seasons, — the red-letter days, now become, to 
all intents and purposes, dead-letter days. 
There was Paul, and Stephen, and Barnabas — 

Andrew and John, men famous in old times 

— we were used to keep all their days holy 
as long back as I was at school at Christ's. 
I remember their effigies, by the same token,, 
in the old Basket Prayer Book. There hung 

Peter in his uneasy posture holyBartlemy 

in the troublesome act of flaying, after the 
famous Marsyas by Spagnoletti. 1 ho- 
noured them all, and could almost have wept 
the defalcation of Iscariot — so much did we 
love to keep holy memories sacred : — only 
methought I a little grudged at the coalition 
of the better Jucle with Simon — clubbing (as it 
were) their sanctities together, to make up 
one poor gaudy-day between them — as an 
economy unworthy of the dispensation. 

These were bright visitations in a scholar's 
and a clerk's life — "far off their coming 
shone." — I was as good as an almanac in 
those days. I could have told you such a 



320 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 



saint's day falls out next week, or the week 
after. Peradventure the Epiphany, by some 
periodical infelicity, would, once in six years, 
merge in a Sabbath. Now am I little better 
than one of the profane. Let me not be 
thought to arraign the wisdom of my civil 
superiors, who have judged the further obser- 
vation of these holy tides to be papistical, 
superstitious. Only in a custom of such long 
standing, methinks, if their Holinesses the 
Bishops had, in decency, been first sounded 

but I am wading out of my depths. I 

am not the man to decide the limits of civil 

and ecclesiastical authority 1 am plain 

Elia — no Selden, nor Archbishop Usher — 
though at present in the thick of their books, 
here in the heart of learning, under the 
shadow of the mighty Bodley. 

I can here play the gentleman, enact the 
student. To such a one as myself, who has 
been defrauded in his young years of the 
sweet food of academic institution, nowhere 
is so pleasant, to while away a few idle weeks 
at, as one or other of the Universities. Their 
vacation, too, at this time of the year, falls in 
so pat with ours. Here I can take my walks 
unmolested, and fancy myself of what degree 
or standing I please. I seem admitted ad 
eundem. I fetch up past opportunities. I 
can rise at the chapel-bell, and dream that it 
rings for me. In moods of humility I can be 
a Sizar, or a Servitor. When the peacock 
vein rises, I strut a Gentleman Commoner. 
In graver moments, I proceed Master of 
Arts. Indeed I do not think I am much 
unlike that respectable character. I have 
seen your dim-eyed vergers, and bed-makers 
in spectacles, drop a bow or a curtsy, as I 
pass, wisely mistaking me for something of 
the sort. I go about in black, which favours 
the notion. Only in Christ Church reverend 
quadrangle, I can be content to pass for 
nothing short of a Seraphic Doctor. 

The walks at these times are so'much one's 
own, — the tall trees of Christ's, the groves of 
Magdalen ! The halls deserted, and with 
open doors inviting one to slip in unperceived, 
and pay a devoir to some Founder, or noble 
or royal Benefactress (that should have been 
ours), whose portrait seems to smile upon 
their over-looked beadsman, and to adopt me 
for their own. Then, to take a peep in by 
the way at the butteries, and sculleries, redo- 
lent of antique hospitality : the immense 



caves of kitchens, kitchen fireplaces, cordial 
recesses ; ovens whose first pies were baked 
four centuries ago ; and spits which have 
cooked for Chaucer ! Not the meanest 
minister among the dishes but is hallowed 
to me through his imagination, and the Cook 
goes forth a Manciple. 

-'Antiquity ! thou wondrous charm, what 
art thou? that, being nothing, art every- 
thing ! When thou wert, thou wert not anti- 
quity — then thou wert nothing, but hadst a 
remoter antiquity, as thou calledst it, to look 
back to with blind veneration ; thou thyself 
being to thyself flat, jejune, modern ! What 
mystery lurks in this retroversion ? or what 
half Januses * are we, that cannot look for- 
ward with the same idolatry with which we 
for ever revert ! The mighty future is as 
nothing, being everything ! the past is every- 
thing, being nothing ! 

What were thy dark ages ? Surely the sun 
rose as brightly then as now, and man got 
him to his work in the morning. Why is it 
we can never hear mention of them without 
an accompanying feeling, as though a palpable 
obscure had dimmed the face of things, 
and that our ancestors wandered to and fro 
groping ! 

Above all thy rarities, old Oxenford, what 
do most arride and solace me, are thy 
repositories of mouldering learning, thy 
shelves 

What a place to be in is an old library ! 
It seems as though all the souls of all the 
writers, that have bequeathed their labours 
to these Bodleians, were reposing here, as in 
some dormitory, or middle state. I do not 
want to handle, to profane the leaves, their 
winding-sheets. I could as soon dislodge a 
shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking 
amid their foliage ; and the odour of their 
old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the 
first bloom of those sciential apples which 
grew amid the happy orchard. 

Still less have I curiosity to disturb the 
elder repose of MSS. Those varice lectiones, 
so tempting to the more erudite palates, do 
but disturb and unsettle my faith. I am no 
Herculanean raker. The credit of the three 
witnesses might have slept unimpeached for 
me. I leave these curiosities to Porson, and 
to G. D. — whom, by the way, I found busy as 

* Januses of one face. — Sir Thomas Browne. 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 



321 



a moth over some rotten archive, rummaged 
out of some seldom-explored press, in a nook 
at Oriel. With long poring, he is grown 
almost into a book. He stood as passive as 
one by the side of the old shelves. I longed 
to new coat him in russia, and assign him his 
place. He might have mustered for a tall 
Scapula. 

D. is assiduous in his visits to these seats 
of learning. No inconsiderable portion of 
his moderate fortune, I apprehend, is con- 
sumed in journeys between them and Clif- 
ford's-inn — where, like a dove on the asp's 
nest, he has long taken up his unconscious 
abode, amid an incongruous assembly of 
attorneys, attorneys' clerks, apparitors, pro- 
moters, vermin of the law, among whom he 
sits " in calm and sinless peace." The fangs 
of the law pierce him not — the winds of liti- 
gation blow over his humble chambers — the 
hard sheriff's officer moves his hat as he 
passes — legal nor illegal discourtesy touches 
him — none thinks of offering violence or 
injustice to him — you would as soon " strike 
an abstract idea." 

D. has been engaged, he tells me, through 
a course of laborious years, in an investiga- 
tion into all curious matter connected with 
the two Universities ; and has lately lit upon 
a MS. collection of charters, relative to 
C , by which he hopes to settle some dis- 
puted points — particularly that long contro- 
versy between them as to priority of founda- 
tion. The ardour with which he engages in 
these liberal pursuits, I am afraid, has not 
met with all the encouragement it deserved, 

either here, or at C . Your caputs, and 

heads of colleges, care less than anybody else 
about these questions. — Contented to suck 
the milky fountains of their Alma Maters, 
without inquiring into the venerable gentle- 
women's years, they rather hold such curio- 
sities to be impertinent — unreverend. They 
have their good glebe lands in manu, and 
care not much to rake into the title deeds, I 
gather at least so much from other sources, 
for D. is not a man to complain. 

D. started like an unbroke heifer, when I 
interrupted him. A priori it was not very 
probable that we should have met in Oriel. 
But D. would have done the same, had I 
accosted him on the sudden in his own walks 
in Clifford's-inn, or in the Temple. In addi- 
tion to a provoking short-sightedness (the 



effect of late studies and w&tchings ;it the 
midnight oil) J), is the most absent of men, 
He made a call the other morning at our 
friend M.'s in Bedford-square; and, finding 

nobody at home, was ushered into the hall, 
where, asking for pen and ink, witli greal 
exactitude of purpose he enters me his name 
in the book — which ordinarily lies about in 
such places, to record the failures of the un- 
timely or unfortunate visitor — and takes his 
leave with many ceremonies and professions 
of regret. Some two or three hours after, 
his walking destinies returned him into the 
same neighbourhood again, and again the 
quiet image of the fire-side circle at M.'s — 
Mrs. M. presiding at it like a Queen Lar, 
with pretty A. S. at her side — striking irre- 
sistibly on his fancy, he makes another call 
(forgetting that they were "certainly not 
to return from the country before that day 
week"), and disappointed a second time, 
inquires for pen and paper as before : again 
the book is brought, and in the line just 
above that in which he is about to print 
his second name (his re-script) — his first 
name (scarce dry) looks out upon him like 
another Sosia, or as if a man should sud- 
denly encounter his own duplicate ! — The 
effect may be conceived. D. made many a 
good resolution against any such lapses in 
future. I hope he will not keep them too 
rigorously. 

For with G.D. — to be absent from the 
body is sometimes (not to speak it profanely) 
to be present with the Lord. - At the very 
time when, personally encountering thee, he 

passes on with no recognition or, being 

stopped, starts like a thing surprised— at 
that moment, reader, he is on Mount Tabor 
— or Parnassus — or co-sphered with Plato — . 
or, with Harrington, framing "immortal 
commonwealths" — devising some plan of 
amelioration to thy country, or thy species 
peradventure meditating some indivi- 
dual kindness or courtesy, to be done to thee 
thyself, the returning consciousness of which 
made him to start so guiltily at thy ob- 
truded personal presence. 

D. is delightful anywhere, but he is at the 
best in such places as these. He cares not 
much for Bath. He is out of his element at 
Buxton, at Scarborough, or Harrowgate. 
The Cam and the Isis are to him " better 
than all the waters of Damascus." On the 



322 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO. 



Muses' hill he is happy, and good, as one of 
the Shepherds on the Delectable Mountains ; 
and when he goes about with you to show 



you the halls and colleges, you think you 
have with you the Interpreter at the House 
Beautiful. 



CHEIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO. 



In Mr. Lamb's " Works," published a year 
or two since, I find a magnificent eulogy on 
my old school,* such as it was, or now ap- 
pears to him to have been, between the years 
1782 and 1789. It happens very oddly that 
my own standing at Christ's was nearly cor- 
responding with his ; and, with all gratitude 
to him for his enthusiasm for the cloisters, I 
think he has contrived to bring together 
whatever can be said in praise of them, 
dropping all the other side of the argument 
most ingeniously. 

I remember L. at school, and can well re- 
collect that he had some peculiar advantages, 
which I and others of his schoolfellows had 
not. His friends lived in town, and were 
near at hand ; and he had the privilege of 
going to see them almost as often as he 
wished, through some invidious distinction, 
which was denied to us. The present worthy 
sub-treasurer to the Inner Temple can ex- 
plain how that happened. He had his tea 
and hot rolls in a morning, while we were 
battening upon our quarter of a penny loaf — 
our crug — moistened with attenuated small 
beer, in wooden piggins, smacking of the 
pitched leathern jack it was poured from. 
Our Monday's milk porritch, blue and taste- 
less, and the pease soup of Saturday, coarse 
and choking, were enriched for him with a 
slice of " extraordinary bread and butter," 
from the hot loaf of the Temple. The Wed- 
nesday's mess of millet, somewhat less re- 
pugnant — (we had three banyan to four 
meat days in the week) — was endeared to 
his palate with a lump of double-refined, and 
a smack of ginger (to make it go down the 
more glibly) or the fragrant cinnamon. In 
lieu of our half pickled Sundays, or quite fresh 
boiled beef on Thursdays (strong as caro 
equina), with detestable marigolds floating 
in the pail to poison the broth — our scanty 

* Recollections of Christ's Hospital. 



mutton scrags on Fridays — and rather more 
savoury, but grudging, portions of the same 
flesh, rotten- roasted or rare, on the Tuesdays 
(the only dish which excited our appetites, and 
disappointed our stomachs, in almost equal 
proportion)— he had his hot plate of roast veal, 
or the more tempting griskin (exotics un- 
known to our palates), cooked in the pater- 
nal kitchen (a great thing), and brought him 
daily by his maid or aunt ! I remember the 
good old relative (in whom love forbade 
pride) squatting down upon some odd stone 
in a by-nook of the cloisters, disclosing the 
viands (of higher regale than those cates 
which the ravens ministered to the Tish- 
bite) ; and the contending passions of L. at 
the unfolding. There was love for the 
bringer ; shame for the thing brought, and 
the manner of its bringing ; sympathy for 
those who were too many to share in it ; and, 
at top of all, hunger (eldest, strongest of the 
passions !) predominant, breaking down the 
stony fences of shame, and awkwardness, and 
a troubling over-consciousness. 

I was a poor friendless boy. My parents, 
and those who should care for me, were far 
away. Those few acquaintances of theirs, 
which they could reckon upon being kind to 
me in the great city, after a little forced 
notice, which they had the grace to take of 
me on my first arrival in town, soon grew 
tired of my holiday visits. They seemed to 
them to recur too often, though I thought 
them few enough ; and, one after another, 
they all failed me, and I felt myself alone 
among six hundred playmates. 

O the cruelty of separating a poor lad from 
his early homestead ! The yearnings which 
I used to have towards it in those unfledged 
years ! How, in my dreams, would my native 
town (far in the west) come back, with its 
church, and trees, and faces ! How I would 
wake weeping, and in the anguish of my heart 
exclaim upon sweet Calne in Wiltshire ! 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO. 



323 



To this late hour of my life, I trace im- 
pressions left by the recollection of those 
friendless holidays. The long warm days of 
summer never return but they bring with 
them a gloom from the haunting memory of 
those whole-day leaves, when, by some strange 
arrangement, we were turned out for the 
live-long day, upon our own hands, whether 
we had friends to go to or none. I remember 
those bathing excursions to the New Eiver 
which L. recalls with such relish, better, I 
think, than he can — for he was a home-seek- 
ing lad, and did not much care for such water- 
pastimes : — How merrily we would sally forth 
into the fields ; and strip under the first 
warmth of the sun ; and wanton like young 
dace in the streams ; getting us appetites for 
noon, which those of us that were penniless 
(our scanty morning crust long since ex- 
hausted) had not the means of allaying — 
while the cattle, and the birds, and the fishes 
were at feed about us and we had nothing to 
satisfy our cravings — the very beauty of the 
day, and the exercise of the pastime, and the 
sense of liberty, setting a keener edge upon- 
them ! How faint and languid, finally, we 
would return, towards night-fall, to our 
desired morsel, half-rejoicing, half-reluctant, 
that the hours of our uneasy liberty had ex- 
pired ! 

It was worse in the days of winter, to go 
prowling about the streets objectless — shiver- 
ing at cold windows of print-shops, to extract 
a little amusement ; or haply, as a last resort 
in the hopes of a little novelty, to pay a 
fifty-times repeated visit (where our indivi- 
dual faces should be as well known to the 
warden as those of his own charges) to the 
Lions in the Tower — to whose levee, by 
courtesy immemorial, we had a prescriptive 
title to admission. 

L.'s governor (so we called the patron who 
presented us to the foundation) lived in a | 
manner under his paternal roof. Any com- 
plaint which he had to make was sure of 
being attended to. This was understood at 
Christ's, and was an effectual screen to him 
against the severity of masters, or worse 
tyranny of the monitors. The oppressions 
of these young brutes are heart-sickening to 
call to recollection. I have been called out 
of my bed, and waked for the purpose, in the ! 
coldest winter nights — and this not once, but 
night after night — in my shirt, to receive the ! 



discipline of a leathern thong, with eleven 
other sufferers, because it pleased my callow 
overseer, when there h;is been any talking 
heard after we were gone to bed, to make 
the six last beds in the dormitory, where the 
youngest children of us slept, answerable for 
an offence they neither dared to commit nor 
had the power to hinder. The same execra- 
ble tyranny drove the younger part of us 
from the fires, when our feet were perishing 
with snow ; and, under the cruelest penalties, 
forbade the indulgence of a drink of water 
when we lay in sleepless summer nights 
fevered with the season and the day's sports. 

There was one H , who, I learned, in 

after days was seen expiating some maturer 
offence in the hulks. (Do I flatter myself 
in fancying that this might be the planter of 
that name, who suffered — at Nevis, I think, 
or St. Kitts, — some few years since 1 My 
friend Tobin was the benevolent instrument 
of bringing him to the gallows.) This petty 
Nero actually branded a boy who had offended 
him with a red-hot iron ; and nearly starved 
forty of us with exacting contributions, to 
the one half of our bread, to pamper a young 
ass, which, incredible as it may seem, with 
the connivance of the nurse's daughter (a 
young flame of his) he had contrived to 
smuggle in, and keep upon the leads of the 
ward, as they called our dormitories. This 
game went on for better than a week, till the 
foolish beast, not able to fare well but he 
must cry roast meat — happier than Caligula's 
minion, could he have kept his own counsel 
— but, foolisher, alas ! than any of his species 
in the fables — waxing fat, and kicking, in 
the fulness of bread, one unlucky minute 
would needs proclaim his good fortune to 
the world below ; and, laying out his simple 
throat, blew such a ram's-horn blast, as (top- 
pling down the walls of his own Jericho) set 
concealment any longer at defiance. The 
client was dismissed, with certain attentions, 
to Smithfield ; but I never understood that 
the patron underwent any censure on the 
occasion. This was in the stewardship of 
L.'s admired Perry. 

Under the same facile administration, can 
L. have forgotten the cool impunity with 
which the nurses used to carry away openly, 
in open platters, for their own tables, one 
out of two of every hot joint, which the 
careful matron had been seeing scrupulously 



t 2 



324 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO. 



weighed out for our dinners ? These things 
were daily practised in that magnificent 
apartment which L. grown connoisseur since, 
(we presume) praises so highly for the grand 
paintings "by Verrio, and others," with 
which it is "hung round and adorned." But 
the sight of sleek well-fed blue-coat boys in 
pictures was, at that time, I believe, little 
consolatory to him, or us, the living ones, 
who saw the better part of our provisions 
carried away before our faces by harpies ; 
and ourselves reduced (with the Trojan in 
the hall of Dido) 

To feed our mind -with idle portraiture. 

L. has recorded the repugnance of the 
school to gags, or the fat of fresh beef boiled ; 
and sets it down to some superstition. But 
these unctuous morsels are never grateful to 
young palates (children are universally fat- 
haters), and in strong, coarse, boiled meats, 
unsalted, are detestable. A gag-eater in our 
time was equivalent to a goule, and held in 

equal detestation. suffered under the 

imputation : 

'Twas said 



He ate strange flesh. 

He was observed, after dinner, carefully to 
gather up the remnants left at his table (not 
many nor very choice fragments, you may 
credit me) — and, in an especial manner, these 
disreputable morsels, which he would con- 
vey away and secretly stow in the settle that 
stood at his bedside. None saw when he 
ate them. It was rumoured that he privately 
devoured them in the night. He was watched, 
but no traces of such midnight practices were 
discoverable. Some reported that on leave- 
days he had been seen to carry out of the 
bounds a large blue check handkerchief, full 
of something. This then must be the ac- 
cursed thing. Conjecture next was at work 
to imagine how he could dispose of it. Some 
said he sold it to the beggars. This belief 
generally prevailed. He went about moping. 
None spake to him. No one would play with 
him. He was excommunicated; put out of 
the pale of the school. He was too powerful 
a boy to be beaten, but he underwent every 
mode of that negative punishment, which is 
more grievous than many stripes. Still he 
persevered. At length he was observed by 
two of his schoolfellows, who were deter- 



mined to get at the secret, and had traced 
him one leave-day for the purpose, to enter a 
large worn-out building, such as there exist 
specimens of in Chancery-lane, which are let 
out to various scales of pauperism, with open 
door and a common staircase. After him 
they silently slunk in, and followed by stealth 
up four flights, and saw him tap at a poor 
wicket, which was opened by an aged woman, 
meanly clad. Suspicion was now ripened 
into certainty. The informers had secured 
their victim. They had him in their toils. 
Accusation was formally preferred, and retri- 
bution most signal was looked for. Mr. Hath- 
away, the then steward (for this happened a 
little after my time), with that patient saga- 
city which tempered all his conduct, deter- 
mined to investigate the matter before he 
proceeded to sentence. The result was that 
the supposed mendicants, the receivers or 
purchasers of the mysterious scraps, turned 

out to be the parents of , an honest 

couple come to decay — whom this seasonable 
supply had, in all probability, saved from 
mendicancy ; and that this young stork, at 
the expense of his own good name, had all 
this while been only feeding the old birds ! 
— The governors on this occasion, much to 
their honour, voted a present relief to the 

family of , and presented him with a 

silver medal. The lesson which the steward 
read upon rash judgment, on the occasion 

of publicly delivering the medal to , I 

believe would not be lost upon his auditory. 
— I had left school then, but I well remember 

. He was a tall, shambling youth, with 

a cast in his eye, not at all calculated to con- 
ciliate hostile prejudices. I have since seen 
him carrying a baker's basket. I think I 
heard he did not do quite so well by himself 
as he had done by the old folks. 

I was a hypochondriac lad ; and the sight 
of a boy in fetters, upon the day of my first 
putting on the blue clothes, was not exactly 
fitted to assuage the natural terrors of initia- 
tion. I was of tender years, barely turned of 
seven ; and had only read of such things in 
books, or seen them but in dreams. I was 
told he had run away. This was the punish- 
ment for the first offence. — As a novice I 
was soon after taken to see the dungeons. 
These were little, square, Bedlam cells, where 
a boy could just lie at his length upon straw 
and a blanket — a mattress, I think, was 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO. 



225 



afterwards substituted — with a peep of light, 
let in askance, from a prison-orifice at top, 
barely enough to read by. Here the poor 
boy was locked in by himself all day, without 
sight of any but the porter who brought 
him his bread and water — who might not 
speak to him ; — or of the beadle, who came 
twice a week to call him out to receive his 
periodical chastisement, which was almost 
welcome, because it separated him for a brief 
interval from solitude : — and here he was 
shut up by himself of nights out of the reach 
of any sound, to suffer whatever horrors the 
weak nerves, and superstition incident to 
his time of life, might subject him to.* This 
was the penalty for the second offence. 
Wouldst thou like, reader, to see what 
became of him in the next degree ? 

The culprit, who had been a third time an 
offender, and whose expulsion was at this 
time deemed irreversible, was brought forth, 
as at some solemn auto da fe, arrayed in 
uncouth and most appalling attire — all trace 
of his late " watchet weeds," carefully effaced, 
he was exposed in a jacket resembling those 
which London lamplighters formerly de- 
lighted in, with a cap of the same. The 
effect of this divestiture was such as the 
ingenious devisers of it could have antici- 
pated. With his pale and frighted features, 
it was as if some of those disfigurements in 
Dante had seized upon him. In this dis- 
guisement he was brought into the hall, 
(L.^s favourite state-room), where awaited him 
the whole number of his school-fellows, whose 
joint lessons and sports he was thenceforth 
to share no more ; the awful presence of the 
steward, to be seen for the last time ; of the 
executioner beadle, clad in his state robe for 
the occasion ; and of two faces more, of direr 
import, because never but in these extremities 
visible. These were governors ; two of whom 
by choice, or charter, were always accustomed 
to officiate at these Ultima Swpplicia ; not to 
mitigate (so at least we understood it), but 
to enforce the uttermost stripe. Old Baniber 
Gascoigne, and Peter Aubert, I remember, 
were colleagues on one occasion, when the 

* One or two instances of lunacy, or attempted suicide, 
accordingly, at length convinced the governors of the 
impolicy of this part of the sentence, and the midnight 
torture to the spirits was dispensed with. — This fancy of 
dungeons for children was a sprout of Howard's brain ; 
for which (saving the reverence due to Holy Paul) me- 
thinks, I could willingly spit upon his statue. 



beadle turning rather pale, a glass of brandy 
was ordered to prepare him for the mysteries. 
The scourging was, after the old Roman 
fashion, long and stately. The lictor accom- 
panied the criminal quite round the hull. 
We were generally too faint with attending 
to the previous disgusting circumstances, to 
make accurate report with our eyes of the 
degree of corporal suffering inflicted. Report, 
of course, gave out the back knotty and livid. 
After scourging, he was made over, in hia 
San Benito, to his friends, if he had any (but 
commonly such poor runagates were friend- 
less), or to his parish officer, who, to enhance 
the effect of the scene, had his station allotted 
to him on the outside of the hall gate. 

These solemn pageantries, were not played 
off so often as to spoil the general mirth of 
the community. We had plenty of exercise 
and recreation after school hours ; and, for 
myself, I must confess, that I was never 
happier, than in them. The Upper and the 
Lower Grammar Schools were held in the 
same room ; and an imaginary line only 
divided their bounds. Their character was 
as different as that of the inhabitants on the 
two sides of the Pyrenees. The Eev. James 
Boyer was the Upper Master ; but the Rev. 
Matthew Field presided over that portion of 
the apartment of which I had the good fortune 
to be a member. We lived a life as careless 
as birds. We talked and did just what we 
pleased, and nobody molested us. We carried 
an accidence, or a grammar, for form ; but, 
for any trouble it gave us, we might take 
two years in getting through the verbs depo- 
nent, and another two in forgetting all that 
we had learned about them. There was 
now and then the formality of saying a lesson, 
but if you had not learned it,- a brush across 
the shoulders (just enough to disturb a fly) 
was the sole remonstrance. Field never 
used the rod ; and in truth he wielded the 
\ cane with no great good will — holding it 
j " like a dancer." It looked in his hands 
rather like an emblem than an instrument of 
authority ; and an emblem, too, he was 
ashamed of. He was a good easy man, that 
did not care to ruffle his own peace, nor 
perhaps set any great consideration upon the 
value of juvenile time. He came among us, 
now and then, but often stayed away whole 
days from us ; and when he came it made 
no difference to us — he had his private room 



326 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO. 



to retire to, the short time he stayed, to be 
out of the sound of our noise. Our mirth 
and uproar went on. We had classics of our 
own, without being beholden to "insolent 
Greece or haughty Rome," that passed 
current among us — Peter Wilkins — the 
Adventures of the Hon. Captain Eobert 
Boyle — the Fortunate Blue Coat Boy — and 
the like. Or we cultivated a turn for 
mechanic and scientific operations ; making 
little sun-dials of paper ; or weaving those 
ingenious parentheses called cat-cradles ; or 
making dry peas to dance upon the end of a 
tin pipe ; or studying the art military over 
that laudable game " French and English," 
and a hundred other such devices to pass 
away the time — mixing the useful with the 
agreeable — as would have made the souls of 
Eousseau and John Locke chuckle to have 
seen us. 

Matthew Field belonged to that class of 
modest divines who affect to mix in equal 
proportion the gentleman, the scholar, and the 
Christian; but, I know not how, the first 
ingredient is generally found to be the pre- 
dominating dose in the composition. He 
was engaged in gay parties, or with his 
courtly bow at some episcopal levee, when 
he should have been attending upon us. He 
had for many years the classical charge of a 
hundred children, during the four or five 
first years of their education ; and his very 
highest form seldom proceeded further than 
two or three of the introductory fables of 
Phsedrus. How things were suffered to go 
on thus, I cannot guess. Boyer, who was the 
proper person to have remedied these abuses, 
always affected, perhaps felt, a delicacy in 
interfering in a province not strictly his own. 
I have not been without my suspicions, that 
he was not altogether displeased at the 
contrast we presented to his end of the 
school. We were a sort of Helots to his 
young Spartans. He would sometimes, with 
ironic deference, send to borrow a rod of the 
Under Master, and then, with Sardonic grin, 
observe to one of his upper boys, " how neat 
and fresh the twigs looked." While his pale 
students were battering their brains over 
Xenophon and Plato, with a silence as deep 
as that enjoyed by the Samite, we were 
enjoying ourselves at our ease in our little 
Goshen. We saw a little into the secrets of 
his discipline, and the prospect did but the 



more reconcile us to our lot. His thunders 
rolled innocuous for us : his storms came 
near, but never touched us ; contrary to 
Gideon's miracle, while all around were 
drenched, our fleece was dry.* His boys 
turned out the better scholars ; we, I suspect, 
have the advantage in temper. His pupils 
cannot speak of him without something of 
terror allaying their gratitude ; the remem- 
brance of Field comes back with all the 
soothing images of indolence, and summer 
slumbers, and work like play, and innocent 
idleness, and Elysian exemptions, and life 
itself a " playing holiday." 

Though sufficiently removed from the 
jurisdiction of Boyer, we were near enough 
(as I have said) to understand a little of his 
system. We occasionally heard sounds of 
the Ululantes, and caught glances of Tartarus. 
B. was a rabid pedant. His English style 
was crampt to barbarism. His Easter 
anthems (for his duty obliged him to those 
periodical flights) were grating as scrannel 
pipes.t — He would laugh, ay, and heartily, 
but then it must be at Flaccus's quibble 

about Rex or at the tristis severitas in 

vidtu, or inspicere in patinas, of Terence — 
thin jests, which at their first broaching 
could hardly have had vis enough to move a 
Roman muscle. — He had two wigs, both 
pedantic, but of different omen. The one 
serene, smiling, fresh powdered, betokening 
a mild day. The other, an old, discoloured, 
unkempt, angry caxon, denoting frequent and 
bloody execution. Woe to the school, when 
he made his morning appearance in his passy, 
or passionate wig. No comet expounded 
surer. — J. B. had a heavy hand. I have 
known him double his knotty fist at a poor 
trembling child (the maternal milk hardly 
dry upon its lips) with a " Sirrah, do you 
presume to set your wits at me 1 " — Nothing 
was more common than to see him make a 
headlong entry into the school-room, from 
his inner recess, or library, and, with turbu- 

* Cowley. 
+ In this and everything B. was the antipodes of his 
coadjutor. While the former was digging his brains for 
crude anthems, worth a pig-nut, F. would he recreating 
his gentlemanly fancy in the more flowery walks of the 
Muses. A little dramatic effusion of his, under the name 
of Vertumnus and Pomona, is not yet forgotten by the 
chroniclers of that sort of literature. It was accepted 
by Garrick, but the town did not give it their sanction. — 
B. used to say of it, in a way of half-compliment, half- 
irony, that it was too classical for representation. 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO. 



327 



lent eye, singling out a lad, roar out, " Od's 
my life, sirrah," (his favourite adjuration) 
" I have a great mind to whip you," — then, 
with as sudden a retracting impulse, fling 
back into his lair — and, after a cooling lapse 
of some minutes (during which all but the 
culprit had totally forgotten the context) 
drive headlong out again, piecing out his 
imperfect sense, as if it had been some 
Devil's Litany, with the expletory yell — 
" and I will, too."" — In his gentler moods, 
when the rabidus furor was assuaged, he had 
resort to an ingenious method, peculiar, for 
what I have heard, to himself, of whipping 
the boy, and reading the Debates, at the same 
time ; a paragraph, and a lash between ; 
which in those times, when parliamentary 
oratory was most at a height and flourishing 
in these realms, was not calculated to impress 
the patient with a veneration for the diffuser 
graces of rhetoric. 

Once, and but once, the uplifted rod was 
known to fall ineffectual from his hand — 

when droll squinting W having been 

caught putting the inside of the master's 
desk to a use for which the architect had 
clearly not designed it, to justify himself, 
with great simplicity averred, that he did 
not know that the thing had been forewarned. 
This exquisite irrecognition of any law ante- 
cedent to the oral or declaratory, struck so 
irresistibly upon the fancy of all who heard 
it (the pedagogue himself not excepted) — 
that remission was unavoidable. 

L. has given credit to B.'s great merits as 
an instructor. Coleridge, in his literary life, 
has pronounced a more intelligible and ample 
encomium on them. The author of the 
Country Spectator doubts not to compare 
him with the ablest teachers of antiquity. 
Perhaps we cannot dismiss him better than 
with the pious ejaculation of C. — when he 
heard that his old master was on his death- 
bed : " Poor J. B. ! — may all his faults be 
forgiven ; and may he be wafted to bliss by 
little cherub boys all head and wings, with no 
bottoms to reproach his sublunary infirmities." 

Under him were many good and sound 
scholars bred. — First Grecian of my time 
was Lancelot Pepys Stevens, kindest of boys 
and men, since Co-grammar-master (and 

inseparable companion) with Dr. T e. 

What an edifying spectacle did this brace of 
friends present to those who remembered the 



anti-socialities of their predecessors ! — You 
never met the one by chance in the street 
without a wonder, which was quickly dis- 
sipated by the almost immediate sab-appear- 
ance of the other. Generally arm-in-arm, 
these kindly coadjutors lightened for each 
other the toilsome duties of their profession, 
and when, in advanced age, one found it 
convenient to retire, the other was not long 
in discovering that it suited him to lay down 
the fasces also. Oh, it is pleasant, as it is 
rare, to find the same arm linked in yours at 
forty, which at thirteen helped it to turn 
over the Cicero Be Amicitid, or some tale of 
Antique Friendship, which the young heart 
even then was burning to anticipate ! — 

Co-Grecian with S. was Th , who has 

since executed with ability various diplomatic 

functions at the Northern courts. Th 

was a tall, dark, saturnine youth, sparing of 
speech, with raven locks. — Thomas Fanshaw 
Middleton followed him (now Bishop of 
Calcutta), a scholar and a gentleman in his 
teens. He has the reputation of an excel- 
lent critic ; and is author (besides the 
Country Spectator) of a Treatise on the 
Greek Article, against Sharpe. M. is said 
to bear his mitre high in India, where the 
regni novitas (I dare say) sufficiently justifies 
the bearing. A humility quite as primitive 
as that of Jewel or Hooker might not be 
exactly fitted to impress the minds of those 
Anglo- Asiatic diocesans with a reverence for 
home institutions, and the church which 
those fathers watered. The manners of M. 
at school, though firm, were mild and un- 
assuming. — Next to M. (if not senior to him) 
was Eichards, author of the Aboriginal 
Britons, the most spirited of the Oxford 
Prize Poems ; a pale, studious Grecian. — 

Then followed poor S , ill-fated M ! 

of these the Muse is silent. 

Finding some of Edward's race 
Unhappy, pass their annals by. 

Come back into memory, like as thou wert 
in the day-spring of thy fancies, with hope 
like a fiery column before thee — the dark 
pillar not yet turned— Samuel Taylor Cole- 
ridge — Logician, Metaphysician, Bard ! — 
How have I seen the casual passer through 
the Cloisters stand still, intranced with ad- 
miration (while he weighed the disproportion 
between the speech and the garb of the 



328 



THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 



young Mirandula), to near thee unfold, in 
thy deep and sweet intonations, the mysteries 
of Jamblichus, or Plotinus (for even in those 
years thou waxedst not pale at such philo- 
sophic draughts), or reciting Homer in his 

Greek, or Pindar while the walls of the 

old Grey Friars re-echoed to the accents of 
the inspired charity-boy ! — Many were the 
"wit-combats," (to dally awhile with the 
words of old Fuller,) between him and 

C. V. Le G , "which two I behold like a 

Spanish great galleon, and an English man 
of war ; Master Coleridge, like the former, 
was built far higher in learning, solid, 
but slow in his performances. C. V. L., 
with the English man. of war, lesser in 
bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with 
all tides, tack about, and take advantage of 
all winds, by the quickness of his wit and 
invention." 

Nor shalt thou, their compeer, be quickly 
forgotten, Allen, with the cordial smile, and 
still more cordial laugh, with which thou 
wert wont to make the old Cloisters shake, 
in thy cognition of some poignant jest of 
theirs ; or the anticipation of some more 
material, and, .peradventure practical one, of 
thine own. Extinct are those smiles, with 



that beautiful countenance, with which (for 
thou wert the Nireus formosus of the school), 
in the days of thy maturer waggery, thou 
didst disarm the wrath of infuriated town- 
damsel, who, incensed by provoking pinch, 
turning tigress-like round, suddenly con- 
verted by thy angel-look, exchanged the 

half-formed terrible " hi ," for a gentler 

greeting — " bless thy handsome face ! " 

Next follow two, who ought to be now 
alive, and the friends of Elia — the junior 

Le G and F ; who impelled, the 

former by a roving temper, the latter by 
too quick a sense of neglect — ill capable of 
enduring the slights poor Sizars are some- 
times subject to in our seats of learning 
— exchanged their Alma Mater for the 
camp ; perishing, one by climate, and one 

on the piains of Salamanca : — Le G , 

sanguine, volatile, sweet-natured ; F , 

dogged, faithful, anticipative of insult, warm- 
hearted, with something of the old Eoman 
height about him. 

Fine, frank-hearted Fr , the present 

master of Hertford, with Marmaduke T , 

mildest of Missionaries — and both my good 
friends still — close the catalogue of Grecians 
in my time. 



THE TWO EACES OF MEN. 



The human species, according to the best 
theory I can form of it, is composed of two 
distinct races, the men who borrow, and the 
men who lend. To these two original diversities 
may be reduced all those impertinent classi- 
fications of Gothic and Celtic tribes, white 
men, black men, red men. All the dwellers 
upon earth, "Parthians, and Medes, and 
Elamites," flock hither, and do naturally fall 
in with one or other of these primary dis- 
tinctions. The infinite superiority of the 
former, which I choose to designate as the 
great race, is discernible in their figure, port, 
and a certain instinctive sovereignty. The 
latter are bom degraded. " He shall serve 
his brethren." There is something in the 
air of one of this cast, lean and suspicious ; 
contrasting with the open, trusting, generous 
manners of the other. 



Observe who have been the greatest 
borrowers of all ages — Alcibiades — Falstaff 
— Sir Eichard Steele — our late incomparable 
Brinsley — what a family likeness in all four ! 

What a careless, even deportment hath 
your borrower ! what rosy gills ! what a 
beautiful reliance on Providence doth he 
manifest, — taking no more thought than 
lilies ! What contempt for money, — account- 
ing it (yours and mine especially) no better 
than dross ! What a liberal confounding of 
those pedantic distinctions of meum and 
tuum ! or rather, what a noble simplification 
of language (beyond Tooke), resolving these 
supposed opposites into one clear, intelligible 
pronoun adjective ! — What near approaches 
doth he make to the primitive community, — 
to the extent of one half of the principle at 
least. 



THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 



329 



He is the true taxer who " calleth all the 
world up to be taxed ; " and the distance is 
as vast between him and one of us, as sub- 
sisted between the Augustan Majesty and 
the poorest obolary Jew that paid it tribute- 
pittance at Jerusalem ! — His exactions, too, 
have such a cheerful, voluntary air ! So far 
removed from your sour parochial or state- 
gatherers, — those ink-horn varlets, who carry 
their want of welcome in their faces ! He 
cometh to you with a smile, and troubleth 
you with no receipt ; confining himself to no 
set season. Every day is his Candlemas, or 
his Feast of Holy Michael. He applieth the 
lene tormentum of a pleasant look to your 
purse, — which to that gentle warmth expands 
her silken leaves, as naturally as the cloak 
of the traveller, for which sun and wind 
contended ! He is the true Propojatic which 
never ebbeth ! The sea which taketh hand- 
somely at each man's hand. In vain the 
victim, whom he delighteth to honour, 
struggles with destiny ; he is in the net. 
Lend therefore cheerfully, O man ordained 
to lend — that thou lose not in the end; 
with thy worldly penny, the reversion 
promised. Combine not preposterously in 
thine own person the penalties of Lazarus 
and of Dives! — but, when thou seest the 
proper authority coming, meet it smilingly, 
as it were half-way. Come, a handsome 
sacrifice ! See how light he makes of 
it ! Strain not courtesies with a noble 
enemy. 

Reflections like the foregoing were forced 
upon my mind by the death of my old 
friend, Ralph Bigod, Esq., who parted this 
life, on Wednesday evening ; dying, as 
he had lived, without much trouble. He 
boasted himself a descendant from mighty 
ancestors of that name, who heretofore 
held ducal dignities in this realm. In 
his actions and sentiments he belied not 
the stock to which he pretended. Early in 
life he found himself invested with ample 
revenues ; which, with that noble disinterest- 
edness which I have noticed as inherent 
in men of the great race, he took almost 
immediate measures entirely to dissipate 
and bring to nothing : for there is some- 
thing revolting in the idea of a king holding 
a private purse ; and the thoughts of Bigod 
were all regal. Thus furnished by the 
very act of disfurnishment ; getting rid of the 



cumbersome luggage of riches, more apt (as 
one sings) 

To slacken virtue, and abate hor edge, 

Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise, 

he set forth, like some Alexander, upon 
his great enterprise, "borrowing and to 
borrow ! " 

In his periegesis, or triumphant progress 
throughout this island, it has been calculated 
that he laid a tythe part of the inhabitants, 
under contribution. I reject this estimate 
as greatly exaggerated :— but having had the 
honour of accompanying my friend divers 
times, in his perambulations about this vast 
city, I own I was greatly struck at first with 
the prodigious number of faces we met, who 
claimed a sort of respectful acquaintance 
with us. He was one day so obliging as to 
explain the phenomenon. It seems, these 
were his tributaries ; feeders of his ex- 
chequer ; gentlemen, his good friends (as he 
was pleased to express himself), to whom he 
had occasionally been beholden for a loan. 
Their multitudes did no way disconcert him. 
He rather took a pride in numbering them ; 
and, with Comus, seemed pleased to be 
" stocked with so fair a herd." 

With such sources, it was a wonder how 
he contrived to keep his treasury always 
empty. He did it by force of an aphorism, 
which he had often in his mouth, that 
" money kept longer than three days stinks." 
So he made use of it while it was fresh. A 
good part he drank away (for he was an 
excellent toss-pot) ; some he gave away, the 
rest he threw away, literally tossing and 
hurling it violently from him — as boys do 
burrs, or as if it had been infectious, — into 
ponds, or ditches, or deep holes, inscrutable 
cavities of the earth ; — or he would bury it 
(where he would never seek it again) by a 
river's side under some bank, which (he 
would facetiously observe) paid no interest 
— but out away from him it must go 
peremptorily, as Hagar's offspring into the 
wilderness, while it was sweet. He never 
missed it. The streams were perennial 
which fed his fisc. When new supplies be- 
came necessary, the first person that had 
the felicity to fall in with him, friend or 
stranger, was sure to contribute to the 
deficiency. For Bigod had an undeniable 
way with him. He had a cheerful, open 



330 



THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 



exterior, a quick jovial eye, a bald forehead, 
just touched with grey (cana fides). He 
anticipated no excuse, and found none. 
And, waiving for a while my theory as to 
the great race, I would put it to the most 
untheorising reader, who may at times have 
disposable coin in his pocket, whether it is 
not more repugnant to the kindliness of his 
nature to refuse such a one as I am describing, 
than to say no to a poor petitionary rogue 
(your bastard borrower), who, by his mump- 
ing visnomy, tells you, that he expects 
nothing better ; and, therefore, whose pre- 
conceived notions and expectations you do in 
reality so much less shock in the refusal. 

When I think of this man ; his fiery 
glow of heart ; his swell of feeling ; how 
magnificent, how ideal he was ; how great 
at the midnight hour ; and when I com- 
pare with him the companions with whom 
I have associated since, I grudge the saving 
of a few idle ducats, and think that I am 
fallen into the society of lenders, and little 
men. 

To one like Elia, whose treasures are rather 
cased in leather covers than closed in iron 
coffers, there is a class of alienators more 
formidable than that which I have touched 
upon ; I mean your borrowers of books — 
those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the 
symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd 
volumes. There is Comberbatch, matchless 
in his depredations ! 

That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing 
you, like a great eye-tooth knocked out — 
(you are now with me in my little back study 

in Bloomsbury, reader !) with the huge 

Switzer-like tomes on each side (like the 
Guildhall giants, in their reformed posture, 
guardant of nothing) once held the tallest of 
my folios, Opera Bonaventura, choice and 
massy divinity, to which its two supporters 
(school divinity also, but of a lesser calibre, — 
Bellarmine, and Holy Thomas), showed but 
as dwarfs, — itself an Ascapart ! — that Com- 
berbatch abstracted upon the faith of a theory 
he holds, which is more easy, I confess, for 
me to suffer by than to refute, namely, that 
" the title to property in a book (my Bona- 
venture, for instance), is in exact ratio to the 
claimant's powers of understanding and ap- 
preciating the same." Should he go on acting 
upon this theory, which of our shelves is 
safe? 



The slight vacuum in the left-hand case- 
two shelves from the ceiling — scarcely dis- 
tinguishable but by the quick eye of a loser — 
was whilom the commodious resting-place of 
Brown on Urn Burial. C. will hardly allege 
that he knows more about that treatise than 
I do, who introduced it to him, and was in- 
deed the first (of the moderns) to discover its 
beauties — but so have I known a foolish 
lover to praise his mistress in the presence 
of a rival more qualified to carry her off 
than himself. Just below, Dodsley's dramas 
want their fourth volume, where Vittoria 
Corombona is ! The remainder nine are 
as distasteful as Priam's refuse sons 
when the Fates borrowed Hector. Here 
stood the Anatomy of Melancholy, in 
sober state. There loitered the Complete 
Angler ; quiet as in life, by some stream 
side. In yonder nook, John Buncle, a 
widower-volume, with " eyes closed," mourns 
his ravished mate. 

One justice I must do my friend, that if he 
sometimes, like the sea, sweeps away a 
treasure, at another time, sea-like, he throws 
up as rich an equivalent to match it. I have 
a small under-collection of this nature (my 
friend's gatherings in his various calls), 
picked up, he has forgotten at what odd 
places, and deposited with as little memory 
at mine. I take in these orphans, the twice- 
deserted. These proselytes of the gate are 
welcome as the true Hebrews. There they 
stand in conjunction ; natives, and natu- 
ralised. The latter seem as little disposed to 
inquire out their true lineage as I am. — I 
charge no warehouse-room for these deo- 
dands, nor shall ever put myself to the un- 
gentlemanly trouble of advertising a sale of 
them to pay expenses. 

To lose a volume to C. carries some sense 
and meaning in it. You are sure that he 
will make one hearty meal on your viands, 
if he can give no account of the platter after 
it. But what moved thee, wayward, spiteful 
K., to be so importunate to carry off with 
thee, in spite of tears and adjurations to thee 
to forbear, the Letters of that princely 
woman, the thrice noble Margaret Newcastle 1 
— knowing at the time, and knowing that I 
knew also, thou most assuredly wouldst 
never turn over one leaf of the illustrious 
folio : — what but the mere spirit of contra- 
diction, and childish love of getting the better 



NEW YEAR'S EVE. 



331 



of thy friend 1 — Then, worst cut of all ! 
to transport it with thee to the Gallican 
land — 

Unworthy land to harbour such a sweetness, 
A virtue in which all ennobling thoughts dwelt, 
Pure thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts, her 
sex's wonder I 

hadst thou not thy play-books, and books 

of jests and fancies, about thee, to keep thee 
merry, even as thou keepest all companies 
with thy quips and mirthful tales ? Child of 
the Green-room, it was unkindly done of 
thee. Thy wife, too, that part-French, better- 
part Englishwoman ! — that she could fix upon 
no other treatise to bear away, in kindly 
token of remembering us, than the works of 
Fulke Greville, Lord Brook — of which no 
Frenchman, nor woman of France, Italy, or 
England, was ever by nature constituted to 



comprehend a tittle ! — Was there not Zimmer- 
man on Solitude ? 

Reader, if haply thou art blest with a 
moderate collection, be shy of showing it ; or 
if thy heart overfloweth to lend them, lend 
thy books ; but let it be to such a one as 
S. T. C. — he will return them (generally anti- 
cipating the time appointed) with usury ; 
enriched with annotations tripling their 
value. I have had experience. Many are 
these precious MSS. of his — (in matter often- 
times, and almost in quantity not un fre- 
quently, vying with the originals) in no very 
clerkly hand — legible in my Daniel ; in old 
Burton ; in Sir Thomas Browne ; and those 
abstruser cogitations of the Greville, now, 
alas ! wandering in Pagan lands. I counsel 
thee, shut not thy heart, nor thy library, 
against S. T. C. 



NEW YEAR'S EVE. 



Every man hath two birth-days : two 
days, at least, in every year, which set him 
upon revolving the lapse of time, as it affects 
his mortal duration. The one is that which 
in an especial manner he termeth his. In 
the gradual desuetude of old observances, 
this custom of solemnising our proper birth- 
day hath nearly passed away, or is left to 
children, who reflect nothing at all about the 
matter, nor understand anything in it beyond 
cake and orange. But the birth of a New 
Year is of an interest too wide to be preter- 
mitted by king or cobbler. No one ever re- 
garded the first of January with indifference. 
It is that from which all date their time, and 
count upon what is left. It is the nativity of 
our common Adam. 

Of all sound of all bells — (bells, the music 
nighest bordering upon heaven) — most solemn 
and touching is the peal which rings out the 
Old Year. I never hear it without a gather- 
ing-up of my mind to a concentration of all 
the images that have been diffused over the 
past twelvemonth ; all I have done or suf- 
fered, performed or neglected — in that 
regretted time. I begin to know its worth, 
as when a person dies. It takes a personal 



colour ; nor was it a poetical flight in a con- 
temporary, when he exclaimed, 

I saw the skirts of the departing Year. 

It is no more than what in sober sadness 
every one of us seems to be conscious of, in 
that awful leave-taking. I am sure I felt it, 
and all felt it with me, last night ; though 
some of my companions affected rather to 
manifest an exhilaration at the birth of the 
coming year, than any very tender regrets 
for the decease of its predecessor. But I am 
none of those who — 

Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest. 

I am naturally, beforehand, shy of novel- 
ties ; new books, new faces, new years, — 
from some mental twist which makes it 
difficult in me to face the prospective. I 
have almost ceased to hope ; and am sanguine 
only in the prospects of other (former) years. 
I plunge into foregone visions and conclusions. 
I encounter pell-mell with past disappoint- 
ments. I am armour-proof against old dis- 
couragements. I forgive, or overcome in fancy, 
old adversaries. I play over again/or love, as 
the gamesters phrase it, games, for which I 



332 



NEW YEAR'S EVE. 



once paid so dear. I would scarce now have 
any of those untoward accidents and events 
of my life reversed. I would no more alter 
them than the incidents of some well-con- 
trived novel. Methinks it is better that I 
should have pined away seven of my goldenest 
years, when I was thrall to the fair hair, 
and fairer eyes of Alice W — n, than that so 
passionate a love-adventure should be lost. 
It was better that our family should have 
missed that legacy, which old Dorrell cheated 
us of, than that I should have at this moment 
two thousand pounds in banco, and be 
without the idea of that specious old 
rogue. 

In a degree beneath manhood, it is my in- 
firmity to look back upon those early days. 
Do I advance a paradox, when I say, that, 
skipping over the intervention of forty years, 
a man may have leave to love himself, with- 
out the imputation of self-love ? 

If I know aught of myself, no one whose 
mind is introspective — and mine is painfully 
so — can have a less respect for his present 
identity, than I have for the man Elia. I 
know him to be light, and vain, and humour- 
some ; a notorious * * * ; addicted to * * * * : 
averse from counsel, neither taking it nor 
offering it ; — * * * besides ; a stammering 
buffoon ; what you will ; lay it on, and spare 
not : I subscribe to it all, and much more 
than thou canst be willing to lay at his door 
— but for the child Elia, that "other me," 
there, in the back-ground — I must take 
leave to cherish the remembrance of that 
young master — with as little reference, I 
protest, to this stupid changeling of five-and- 
forty, as if it had been a child of some other 
house, and not of my parents. I can cry 
over its patient small-pox at five, and 
rougher medicaments. I can lay its poor 
fevered head upon the sick pillow at Christ's, 
and wake with it in surprise at the gentle 
posture of maternal tenderness hanging over 
it, that unknown had watched its sleep. I 
know how it shrank from any the least 
colour of falsehood. God help thee, Elia, 
how art thou changed! — Thou art sophis- 
ticated. — I know how honest, how courageous 
(for a weakling) it was — how religious, how 
imaginative, how hopeful ! From what have 
I not fallen, if the child I remember was 
indeed myself, — and not some dissembling 
guardian, presenting a false identity, to give 



the rule to my unpractised steps, and re- 
gulate the tone of my moral being ! 

That I am fond of indulging, beyond a hope 
of sympathy, in such retrospection, may be 
the symptom of some sickly idiosyncrasy. Or 
is it owing to another cause : simply, that 
being without wife or family, I have not 
learned to project myself enough out of 
myself ; and having no offspring of my own 
to dally with, I turn back upon memory, and 
adopt my own early idea, as my heir and 
favourite 1 If these speculations seem fan- 
tastical to thee, reader — (a busy man per- 
chance), if I tread out of the way of thy 
sympathy, and am singularly conceited only, 
I retire, impenetrable to ridicule, under the 
phantom cloud of Elia. 

The elders, with whom I was brought up, 
were of a character not likely to let slip the 
sacred observance of any old institution ; and 
the ringing out of the Old Year was kept by 
them with circumstances of peculiar ceremony. 
— In those days the sound of those midnight 
chimes, though it seemed to raise hilarity in 
all around me, never failed to bring a train 
of pensive imagery into my fancy. Yet I 
then scarce conceived what it meant, or 
thought of it as a reckoning that concerned 
me. Not childhood alone, but the young 
man till thirty, never feels practically that 
he is mortal. He knows it indeed, and, if 
need were, he could preach a homily on the 
fragility of life ; but he brings it not home to 
himself, any more than in a hot June we can 
appropriate to our imagination the freezing 
days of December. But now, shall I confess 
a truth 1 — I feel these audits but too power- 
fully. I begin to count the probabilities of 
my duration, and to grudge at the expendi- 
ture of moments and shortest periods, like 
misers' farthings. In proportion as the 
years both lessen and shorten, I set more 
count upon their periods, and would fain lay 
my ineffectual finger upon the spoke of the 
great wheel. I am not content to pass away 
" like a weaver's shuttle." Those metaphors 
solace me not, nor sweeten the unpalatable 
draught of mortality. I care not to be 
carried with the tide, that smoothly bears 
human life to eternity ; and reluct at the in- 
evitable course of destiny. I am in love with 
this green earth ; the face of town and 
country ; the unspeakable rural solitudes, 
and the swe£t security of streets. I would 



NEW YEAR'S EVE. 



333 



set up my tabernacle here. I am content to 
stand still at the age to which I am arrived ; 
I, and my friends : to be no younger, no 
richer, no handsomer. I do not want to be 
weaned by age ; or drop, like mellow fruit, 
as they say, into the grave. — Any alteration, 
on this earth of mine, in diet or in lodging, 
puzzles and discomposes me. My house- 
hold-gods plant a terrible fixed foot, and are 
not rooted up without blood. They do not 
willingly seek Lavinian shores. A new state 
of being staggers me. 

Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary 
walks, and summer holidays, and the green- 
ness of fields, and the delicious juices of 
meats and fishes, and society, and the cheer- 
ful glass, and candle-light, and fireside con- 
versations, and innocent vanities, and jests, 
and irony itself — do these things go out with 
life? 

Can a ghost laugh, or shake his gaunt 
sides, when you are pleasant with him ? 

And you, my midnight darlings, my Folios ! 
must I part with the intense delight of 
having you (huge armfuls) in my embraces ? 
Must knowledge come to me, if it come at 
all, by some awkward experiment of intuition, 
and no longer by this familiar process of 
reading 1 

Shall I enjoy friendships there, wanting the 
smiling indications which point me to them 
here, — the recognisable face — the "sweet 
assurance of a look 1 " — 

In winter this intolerable disinclination to 
dying — to give it its mildest name — does 
more especially haunt and beset me. In a 
genial August noon, beneath a sweltering 
sky, death is almost problematic. At those 
times do such poor snakes as myself enjoy 
an immortality. Then we expand and 
burgeon. Then we are as strong again, as 
valiant again, as wise again, and a great deal 
taller. The blast that nips and shrinks me, 
puts me in thoughts of death. All things 
allied to the insubstantial, wait upon that 
master feeling ; cold, numbness, dreams, per- 
plexity ; moonlight itself, with its shadowy 
and spectral appearances, — that cold ghost 
of the sun, or Phoebus' sickly sister, like that 
innutritious one denounced in the Canticles : 
— I am none of her minions — I hold with 
the Persian. 

Whatsoever thwarts, or puts me out of my 
way, brings death into my mind. All partial 



evils, like humours, run into that capital 
plague-sore. — I have heard some profess an 
indifference to life. Such hail the end of 
their existence as a port of refuge ; and speak 
of the grave as of some soft arms, in which 
they may slumber as on a pi 1 1 ow. Some have 

wooed death but out upon thee, I say, 

thou foul, ugly phantom ! I detest, abhor, 
execrate, and (with Friar John) give thee to 
six score thousand devils, as in no instance 
to be excused or tolerated, but shunned as 
an universal viper ; to be branded, proscribed, 
and spoken evil of! In no way can I be 
brought to digest thee, thou thin, melancholy 
Privation, or more frightful and confounding 
Positive ! 

Those antidotes, prescribed against the fear 
of thee, are altogether frigid and insulting, 
like thyself. For what satisfaction hath a 
man, that he shall " lie down with kings and 
emperors in death," who in his life-time 
never greatly coveted the society of such 
bed-fellows 1 — or, forsooth, that " so shall 
the fairest face appear % " — why, to comfort 
,me, must Alice W — n be a goblin ? More 
than all, I conceive disgust at those imperti- 
nent and misbecoming familiarities, inscribed 
upon your ordinary tombstones. Every dead 
man must take upon himself to be lecturing 
me with his odious truism, that " Such as 
he now is I must shortly be." Not so shortly, 
friend, perhaps as thou imaginest. In the 
mean time I am alive. I move about. I am 
worth twenty of thee. Know thy betters ! 
Thy New Years' days are past. I survive, 
a jolly candidate for 1821. Another cup of 
wine — and while that turncoat bell, that just 
now mournfully chanted the obsequies of 
1820 departed, with changed notes lustily 
rings in a successor, let us attune to its peal 
the song made on a like occasion, by hearty, 
cheerful Mr. Cotton. 

THE NEW YEAR. 

Hark, the cock crows, and yon bright star 
Tells us, the day himself s not far ; 
And see -where, breaking from the night, 
He gilds the western hills with light. 
W r ith him old Janus doth appear, 
Peeping into the future year, 
With such a look as seems to say, 
The prospect is not good that way. 
Thus do we rise ill sights to see, 
And 'gainst ourselves to prophesy ; 
When the prophetic fear of things 
A more tormenting mischief brings, 
More full of soul-tormenting gall 
Than direst mischiefs can befall. 



334 



MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 



But stay ! but stay ! methinks my sight, 

Better inform'd by clearer light, 

Discerns sereneness in that brow, 

That all contracted seem'd but now. 

His revers'd face may show distaste, 

And frown upon the ills are past ; 

But that which this way looks is clear, 

And smiles upon the New-born Year. 

He looks too from a place so high, 

The year lies open to his eye ; 

And all the moments open are 

To the exact discoverer. 

Yet more and more he smiles upon 

The happy revolution. 

Why should we then suspect or fear 

The influences of a year, 

So smiles upon us the first morn, 

And speaks us good so soon as born ? 

Plague on't ! the last was ill enough, 

This cannot but make better proof ; 

Or, at the worst, as we brush'd through 

The last, why so we may this too ; 

And then the next in reason shou'd 

Be superexcellently good : 

For the worst ills (we daily see) 

Have no more perpetuity 

Than the best fortunes that do fall ; 

"Which also bring us wherewithal 

Longer their being to support, 

Than those do of the other sort : 



And who has one good year in three, 
And yet repines at destiny, 
Appears ungrateful in the case, 
And merits not the good he has. 
Then let us welcome the New Guest 
"With lusty brimmers of the best : 
Mirth always should Good Fortune meet, 
And renders e'en Disaster sweet : 
And though the Princess turn her back, 
Let us but line ourselves with sack, 
We better shall by far hold out, 
Till the next Year she face about. 

How say you, reader — do not these verses 
smack of the rough magnanimity of the old 
English vein ? Do they not fortify like a 
cordial ; enlarging the heart, and productive 
of sweet blood, and generous spirits, in the 
concoction % Where be those puling fears 
of death, just now expressed or affected 1 — 
Passed like a cloud — absorbed in the purging 
sunlight of clear poetry — clean washed away 
by a wave of genuine Helicon, your only Spa 
for these hypochondries — And now another 
cup of the generous! and a merry New Year, 
and many of them to you all, my masters ! 



MES. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 



"A clear fire, a clean hearth, and the 
rigour of the game." This was the celebrated 
wish of old Sarah Battle (now with God), 
who, next to her devotions, loved a good 
game of whist. She was none of your luke- 
warm gamesters, your half-and-half players, 
who have no objection to take a hand, if you 
want one to make up a rubber ; who affirm 
that they have no pleasure in winning ; that 
they like to win one game and lose another ; 
that they can while away an hour very 
agreeably at a card-table, but are indifferent 
whether they play or no ; and will desire an 
adversary, who has slipped a wrong card, to 
take it up and play another. These insuffer- 
able triflers are the curse of a table. One of 
these flies will spoil a whole pot. Of such it 
may be said that they do not play at cards, 
but only play at playing at them. 

Sarah Battle was none of that breed. She 
detested them, as I do, from her heart and 
soul, and would not, save upon a striking 
emergency, willingly seat herself at the same 
table with them. She loved a thorough- 
paced partner, a determined enemy. She 



took, and gave, no concessions. She hated 
favours. She never made a revoke, nor ever 
passed it over in her adversary without 
exacting the utmost forfeiture. She fought 
a good fight : cut and thrust. She held not 
her good sword (her cards) " like a dancer." 
She sate bolt upright ; and neither showed 
you her cards, nor desired to see yours. All 
people have their blind side — their super- 
stitions ; and I have heard her declare, 
under the rose, that hearts was her favourite 
suit. 

I never in my life — and I knew Sarah 
Battle many of the best years of it — saw her 
take out her snuff-box when it was her turn 
to play ; or snuff a candle in the middle of a 
game ; or ring for a servant, till it was fairly 
over. She never introduced, or connived at, 
miscellaneous conversation during its process. 
As she emphatically observed, cards were 
cards ; and if I ever saw unmingled distaste 
in her fine last-century countenance, it was 
at the airs of a young gentleman of a literary 
turn, who had been with difficulty persuaded 
to take a hand ; and who, in his excess of 



MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST- 



335 



candour, declared, that he thought there was 
no harm in unbending the mind now and 
then, after serious studies, in recreations of 
that kind ! She could not bear to have her 
noble occupation, to which she wound up 
her faculties, considered in that light. It 
was her business, her duty, the thing she 
came into the world to do, — and she did it. 
She unbent her mind afterwards over a 
book. 

Pope was her favourite author : his Rape 
of the Lock her favourite work. She once 
did me the favour to play over with me (with 
the cards) his celebrated game of Ombre in 
that poem ; and to explain to me how far it 
agreed with, and in what points it would be 
found to differ from, tradrille. Her illustra- 
tions were apposite and poignant ; and I had 
the pleasure of sending the substance of them 
to Mr. Bowles ; but I suppose they came too 
late to be inserted among his ingenious notes 
upon that author. 

Quadrille, she has often told me, was her 
first love ; but whist had engaged her maturer 
esteem. The former, she said, was showy 
and specious, and likely to allure young 
persons. The uncertainty and quick shifting 
of partners — a thing which the constancy of 
whist abhors ; the dazzling supremacy and 
regal investiture of Spadille — absurd, as she 
justly observed, in the pure aristocracy of 
whist, where his crown and garter give him 
no proper power above his brother-nobility 
of the Aces ; — the giddy vanity, so taking to 
the inexperienced, of playing alone ; above 
all, the overpowering attractions of a Sans 
Prendre Vole, — to the triumph of which there 
is certainly nothing parallel or approaching, 
in the contingencies of whist ; — all these, she 
would say, make quadrille a game of captiva- 
tion to the young and enthusiastic. But 
whist was the solider game : that was her 
word. It was a long meal ; not, like qua- 
drille, a feast of snatches. One or two 
rubbers might co-extend in duration with an 
evening. They gave time to form rooted 
friendships, to cultivate steady enmities. 
She despised the chance-started, capricious, 
and ever fluctuating alliances of the other. 
The skirmishes of quadrille, she would say, 
reminded her of the petty ephemeral em- 
broilments of the little Italian states, depicted 
by Machiavel : perpetually changing postures 
and connexions ; bitter foes to-day, sugared 



darlings to-morrow ; kissing and scratching 
in a breath ; — but the wars of whist were 
comparable to the long, steady, deep-root' •<!, 
rational, antipathies of the great French and 
English nations. 

A grave simplicity was what she chiefly 
admired in her favourite game. There was 
nothing silly in it, like the nob in cribbage — 
nothing superfluous. No flushes — that most 
irrational of all pleas that a reasonable being 
can set up : — that any one should claim four 
by virtue of holding cards of the same mark 
and colour, without reference to the playing 
of the game, or the individual worth or 
pretensions of the cards themselves ! She 
held this to be a solecism ; as pitiful an 
ambition at cards as alliteration is in author- 
ship. She despised superficiality, and looked 
deeper than the colours of things. — Suits 
were soldiers, she would say, and must have 
an uniformity of array to distinguish them : 
but what should we say to a foolish squire, 
who should claim a merit from dressing up 
his tenantry in red jackets, that never were 
to be marshalled — never to take the field ? 
— She even wished that whist were more 
simple than it is ; and, in my mind, would 
have stripped it of some appendages, which, 
in the state of human frailty, may be venially, 
and even commendably, allowed of. She 
saw no reason for the deciding of the trump 
by the turn of the card. Why not one suit 
always trumps 1 — Why two colours, when 
the mark of the suits would have sufficiently 
distinguished them without it 1 — 

" But the eye, my dear Madam, is agreeably 
refreshed with the variety. Man is not a 
creature of pure reason — he must have his 
senses delightfully appealed to. We see it 
in Roman Catholic countries, where the 
music and the paintings draw in many to 
worship, whom your quaker spirit of unsen- 
sualising would have kept out. — You yourself 
have a pretty collection of paintings — but 
confess to me, whether, walking in your 
gallery at Sandham, among those clear 
Vandykes, or among the Paul Potters in the 
ante-room, you ever felt your bosom glow 
with an elegant delight, at all comparable 
to that you have it in your power to ex- 
perience most evenings over a well-arranged 
assortment of the court-cards 1 — the pretty 
antic habits, like heralds in a procession — the 
gay triumph-assuring scarlets — the contrast- 



336 



MKS. BATTLE'S OPINION'S ON" WHIST. 



ing deadly-killing sables — the ' hoary majesty 
of spades ' — Pam in all his glory ! — 

" All these might be dispensed with ; and 
■with their naked names upon the drab paste- 
board, the game might go on very well, 
pictureless. But the beauty of cards would 
be extinguished for ever. Stripped of all 
that is imaginative in them, they must 
degenerate into mere gambling. Imagine a 
dull deal board, or drum head, to spread 
them on, instead of that nice verdant carpet 
(next to nature's), fittest arena for those 
courtly combatants to play their gallant 
jousts and turneys in ! — Exchange those 
delicately-turned ivory markers — (work of 
Chinese artist, unconscious of their symbol, 
— or as profanely slighting their true appli- 
cation as the arrantest Ephesian journeyman 
that turned out those little shrines for the 
goddess) — exchange them for little bits of 
leather (our ancestors' money) or chalk and 
a slate ! " — 

The old lady, with a smile, confessed the 
soundness of my logic ; and to her appro- 
bation of my arguments on her favourite 
topic that evening, I have always fancied 
myself indebted for the legacy of a curious 
cribbage-board, made of the finest Sienna 
marble, which her maternal uncle (old 
Walter Plumer, whom I have elsewhere 
celebrated) brought with him from Florence : 
— this, and a trifle of five hundred pounds, 
came to me at her death. 

The former bequest (which I do not least 
value) I have kept with religious care ; 
though she herself, to confess a truth, was 
never greatly taken with cribbage. It was 
an essentially vulgar game, I have heard her 
say, — disputing with her uncle, who was very 
partial to it. She could never heartily bring 
her mouth to pronounce " Go " — or " That's 
a go" She called it an ungrammatical game. 
The pegging teased her. I once knew her to 
forfeit a rubber (a five-dollar stake) because 
she would not take advantage of the turn-up 
knave, which would have given it her, but 
which she must have claimed by the dis- 
graceful tenure of declaring " two for his 
keels" There is something extremely genteel 
in this sort of self-denial. Sarah Battle was 
a gentlewoman born. 

Piquet she held the best game at the cards 
for two persons, though she would ridicule 
the pedantry of the terms — such as pique — 



repique — the capot — they savoured (she 
thought) of affectation. But games for two, 
or even three, she never greatly cared for. 
She loved the quadrate, or square. She 
would argue thus : — Cards are warfare : the 
ends are gain, with glory. But cards are 
war, in disguise of a sport : when single 
adversaries encounter, the ends proposed are 
too palpable. By themselves, it is too close 
a fight ; with spectators, it is not much 
bettered. No looker-on can be interested, 
except for a bet, and then it is a mere affair 
of money ; he cares not for your luck sympa- 
thetically, or for your play. — Three are still 
worse ; a mere naked war of every man 
against every man, as in cribbage, without 
league or alliance ; or a rotation of petty and 
contradictory interests, a succession of heart- 
less leagues, and not much more hearty 
infractions of them, as in tradrille. — But in 
square games {she meant whist), all that is 
possible to be attained in card-playing is 
accomplished. There are the incentives of 
profit with honour, common to every species 
— though the latter can be but very imper- 
fectly enjoyed in those other games, where 
the spectator is only feebly a participator. 
But the parties in whist are spectators and 
principals too. They are a theatre to them- 
selves, and a looker-on is not wanted. He is 
rather worse than nothing, and an imperti- 
nence. Whist abhors neutrality, or interests 
beyond its sphere. You glory in some sur- 
prising stroke of skill or fortune, not because 
a cold — or even an interested — bystander 
witnesses it, but because your partner sym- 
pathises in the contingency. You win for 
two. You triumph for two. Two are 
exalted. Two again are mortified ; which 
divides their disgrace, as the conjunction 
doubles (by taking off" the invidiousness) 
your glories. Two losing to two are better 
reconciled, than one to one in that close 
butchery. The hostile feeling is weakened 
by multiplying the channels. War becomes 
a civil game. By such reasonings as these 
the old lady was accustomed to defend her 
favourite pastime. 

No inducement could ever prevail upon 
her to play at any game, where chance 
entered into the composition, for nothing. 
Chance, she would argue — and here again, 
admire the subtlety of her conclusion; — 
chance is nothing, but where something else 



MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 



337 



depends upon it. It is obvious that cannot 
be glory. What rational cause of exultation 
could it give to a man to turn up size ace a 
hundred times together by himself? or before 
spectators, where no .stake was depending 1 
— Make a lottery of a hundred thousand 
tickets with but one fortunate number — and 
what possible principle of our nature, except 
stupid wonderment, could it gratify to gain 
that number as many times successively, 
without a prize ? Therefore she disliked the 
mixture of chance in backgammon, where it 
was not played for money. She called it 
foolish, and those people idiots, who were 
taken with a lucky hit under such circum- 
stances. Games of pure skill were as little 
to her fancy. Played for a stake, they were 
a mere system of over-reaching. Played for 
glory, they were a mere setting of one man's 
wit, — his memory, or combination-faculty 
rather — against another's ; like a mock- 
engagement at a review, bloodless and profit- 
less. She could not conceive a game wanting 
the spritely infusion of chance, the handsome 
excuses of good fortune. Two people playing 
at chess in a corner of a room, whilst whist 
was stirring in the centre, would inspire 
her with insufferable horror and ennui. 
Those well-cut similitudes of Castles, and 
Knights, the imagery of the board, she 
would argue, (and I think in this case justly,) 
were entirely misplaced and senseless. Those 
hard head-contests can . in no instance 
ally with the fancy. They reject form 
and colour. A pencil and dry slate (she 
used to say) were the proper arena for 
such combatants. 

To those puny objectors against cards, as 
nurturing the bad passions, she would retort, 
that man is a gaming animal. He must be 
always trying to get the better in something 
or other : — that this passion can scarcely be 
more safely expended than upon a game at 
cards : that cards are a temporary illusion ; 
in truth, a mere drama ; for we do but play 
at being mightily concerned, where a few 
idle shillings are at stake, yet, during the 



illusion, we are as mightily concerned as 
those whose stake is crowns and kingdoms. 
They are a sort of dream-fighting; much 

ado ; great battling, and little bloodshed ; 
mighty means for disproportions! ends; 
quite as diverting, and a great deal more 
innoxious, than many of those more serious 
games of life, which men play, without 
esteeming them to be such. — 

With great deference to the old lady's 
judgment in these matters, I think I have 
experienced some moments in my life, when 
playing at cards for nothing has even been 
agreeable. When I am in sickness, or not 
in the best spirits, I sometimes call for the 
cards, and play a game at piquet for love 
with my cousin Bridget — Bridget Elia. 

I grant there is something sneaking in it ; 
but with a tooth-ache, or a sprained ankle, 
— when you are subdued and humble, — you 
are glad to put up with an inferior spring of 
action. 

There is such a thing in nature, I am con- 
vinced, as sick whist. 

, I grant it' is not the highest style of man 
— I deprecate the manes of Sarah Battle — 
she lives not, alas ! to whom I should 
apologise. 

At such times, those terms which my old 
friend objected to, come in as something 
admissible. — I love to get a tierce or a 
quatorze, though they mean nothing. I am 
subdued to an inferior interest. Those 
shadows of winning amuse me. 

That last game I had with my sweet 
cousin (I capotted her) — (dare I tell thee, 
how foolish I am 1) — I wished it might have 
lasted for ever, though we gained nothing, 
and lost nothing, though it was a mere shade 
of play : I would be content to go on in that 
idle folly for ever. The pipkin should be 
ever boiling, that was to prepare the gentle 
lenitive to my foot, which Bridget was 
doomed to apply after the game was over : 
and, as I do not much relish appliances, 
there it should ever bubble. Bridget and I 
should be ever playing. 



338 



A CHAPTER ON EARS. 



A CHAPTEE ON EARS. 

— ♦ — 



I have no ear. — 

Mistake me not, reader — nor imagine that 
I am by nature destitute of those exterior 
twin appendages, hanging ornaments, and 
(architecturally speaking) handsome volutes 
to the human capital. Better my mother 
had never borne me. — I am, I think, rather 
delicately than copiously provided with those 
conduits ; and I feel no disposition to envy 
the mule for his plenty, or the mole for 
her exactness, in those ingenious laby- 
rinthine inlets — those indispensable side- 
intelligencers. 

Neither have I incurred, or done anything 
to incur, with Defoe, that hideous disfigure- 
ment, which constrained him to draw upon 
assurance — to feel "quite unabashed," and 
at ease upon that article. I was never, I 
thank my stars, in the pillory ; nor, if I read 
them aright, is it within the compass of my 
destiny, that I ever should be. 

When therefore I say that I have no ear, 
you will understand me to mean— for music. 
To say that this heart never melted at the 
concord of sweet sounds, would be a foul 
self-libel. " Water parted from the sea " never 
fails to move it strangely. So does "In 
infancy." But they were used to be sung at 
her harpsichord (the old-fashioned instru- 
ment in vogue in those days) by a gentle- 
woman — the gentlest, sure, that ever merited 
the appellation — the sweetest — why should I 
hesitate to name Mrs. S , once the bloom- 
ing Fanny Weatheral of the Temple — who 
had power to thrill the soul of Elia, small 
imp as he was, even in his long coats ; and 
to make him glow, tremble, and blush with 
a passion, that not faintly indicated the day- 
spring of that absorbing sentiment which 
was afterwards destined to overwhelm and 

subdue his nature quite for Alice W n. 

I even think that sentimentally I am dis- 
posed to harmony. But organically I am 
incapable of a tune. I have been practising 
" God save the King " all my life ; whistling 
and humming of it over to myself in solitary 
corners ; and am not yet arrived, they tell 



me, within many quavers of it. Yet hath 
the loyalty of Elia never been impeached. 

I am not without suspicion, that I have an 
undeveloped faculty of music within me. 
For thrumming, in my wild way, on my 
friend A.'s piano, the other morning, while 
he was engaged in an adjoining parlour, — on 
his return he was pleased to say, " he thought 
it could not be the maid ! " On his first 
surprise at hearing the keys touched in some- 
what an airy and masterful way, not dream- 
ing of me, his suspicions had lighted on 
Jenny. But a grace, snatched from a superior 
refinement, soon convinced him that some 
being — technically perhaps deficient, but 
higher informed from a principle common to 
all the fine arts — had swayed the keys to a 
mood which Jenny, with all her (less culti- 
vated) enthusiasm, could never have elicited 
from them. I mention this as a proof of my 
friend's penetration, and not with any view 
of disparaging Jenny. 

Scientifically I could never be made to 
understand (yet have I taken some pains) 
what a note in music is ; or how one note 
should differ from another. Much less in 
voices can I distinguish a soprano from a 
tenor. Only sometimes the thorough-bass 
I contrive to guess at, from its being 
supereminently harsh and disagreeable. I 
tremble, however, for my misapplication of 
the simplest terms of that which I disclaim. 
While I profess my ignorance, I scarce know 
what to say I am ignorant of. I hate, 
perhaps, by misnomers. Sostenuto and adagio 
stand in the like relation of obscurity to 
me ; and Sol, Fa, Mi, Re, is as conjuring as 
Baralipton. 

It is hard to stand alone in "an age like 
this, — (constituted to the quick and critical 
perception of all harmonious combinations, I 
verily believe, beyond all preceding ages, 
since Jubal stumbled upon the gamut,) to 
remain, as it were, singly unimpressible to 
the magic influences of an art, which is said 
to have such an especial stroke at soothing, 
elevating, and refining the passions. — Yet, 



A CHAPTER ON EARS. 



889 



rather than break the candid current of my 
confessions, I must avow to you, that I have 
received a great deal more pain than pleasure 
from this so cried-up faculty. 

I am constitutionally susceptible of noises. 
A carpenter's hammer, in a warm summer 
noon, will fret me into more than midsummer 
madness. But those unconnected, unset 
sounds are nothing to the measured malice 
of music. The ear is passive to those single 
strokes ; willingly enduring stripes while it 
hath no task to con. To music it cannot be 
passive. It will strive — mine at least will — 
spite of its inaptitude, to thrid the maze ; 
like an unskilled eye painfully poring upon 
hieroglyphics. I have sat through an Italian 
Opera, till, for sheer pain, and inexplicable 
anguish, I have rushed out into the noisiest 
places of the crowded streets, to solace 
myself with sounds, which I was not obliged 
to follow, and get rid of the distracting 
torment of endless, fruitless, barren attention! 
I take refuge in the unpretending assemblage 
of honest common-life sounds ; — and the 
purgatory of the Enraged Musician becomes 
my paradise. 

I have sat at an Oratorio (that profana- 
tion of the purposes of the cheerful play- 
house) watching the faces of the auditory 
in the pit (what a contrast to Hogarth's 
Laughing Audience ! ) immoveable, or affect- 
ing some faint emotion — till (as some have 
said, that our occupations in the next world 
will be but a shadow of what delighted us 
in this) I have imagined myself in some cold 
Theatre in Hades, where some of the forms 
of the earthly one should be kept up, with 
none of the enjoyment ; or like that 

Party in a parlour 

All silent, and all damned. 

Above all, those insufferable concertos, and 
pieces of music, as they are called, do plague 
and embitter my apprehension. — Words are 
something ; but to be exposed to an endless 
battery of mere sounds ; to be long a dying ; 
to lie stretched "upon a rack of roses ; to 
keep up languor by unintermitted effort ; to 
pile honey upon sugar, and sugar upon 
honey, to an interminable tedious sweet- 
ness ; to fill up sound with feeling, and 
strain ideas to keep pace with it ; to gaze on 
empty frames, and be forced to make the 
pictures for yourself ; to read a book, all stops } 



and be obliged to supply the verbal matter; 
to invent extempore tragedies <<> answer to 
the vague gestures of an inexplicable ram- 
bling mime — these are feint shadows of 
what I hrive undergone from a series of the 
ablest-executed pieces of this empty instru- 
mental music. 

I deny not, that in the opening of a concert, 
I have experienced something vastly lulling 
and agreeable : — afterwards followeth the 
languor and the oppression. — Like that dis- 
appointing book in Patmos ; or, like the 
comings on of melancholy, described by 
Burton, doth music make her first insinua- 
ting approaches : — " Most pleasant it i3 to 
such as are melancholy given to walk alone 
in some solitary grove, betwixt wood and 
water, by some brook side, and to meditate 
upon some delightsome and pleasant subject, 
which shall affect him most, amabilis insania, 
and mentis gratissimus error. A most incom- 
parable delight to build castles in the air, to 
go smiling to themselves, acting an infinite 
variety of parts, which they suppose, and 
strongly imagine, they act, or that they see 
done. — So delightsome these toys at first, 
they could spend whole days and nights 
without sleep, even whole years in such con- 
templations, and fantastical meditations, 
which are like so many dreams, and will 
hardly be drawn from them — winding and 
unwinding themselves as so many clocks, 
and still pleasing their humours, until at the 
last the scene turns upon a sudden, and 
they being now habitated to such medita- 
tions and solitary places, can endure no 
company, can think of nothing but harsh 
and distasteful subjects. Fear, sorrow, sus- 
picion, subrusticus pudor, discontent, cares, 
and weariness of life, surprise them on a 
sudden and they can think of nothing else ; 
continually suspecting, no sooner are their 
eyes open, but this infernal plague of melan- 
choly seizeth on them, and terrifies their 
souls, representing some dismal object to 
their minds ; which now, by no means, no 
labour, no persuasions, they can avoid, they 
cannot be rid of, they cannot resist." 

Something like this "scene turning" 
I have experienced at the evening parties, 
at the house of my good Catholic friend 

Nov ; who, by the aid of a capital 

organ, himself the most finished of players, 
converts his drawing-room into a chapel, his 



z 2 



ft 



340 



ALL FOOLS' DAY. 



week days into Sundays, and these latter 
into minor heavens.* 

When my friend commences upon one of 
those solemn anthems, which peradventure 
struck upon my heedless ear, rambling in 
the side aisles of the dim Abbey, some five- 
and-thirty years since, waking a new sense, 
and putting a soul of old religion into my 
young apprehension — (whether it be that, in 
which the Psalmist, weary of the persecu- 
tions of bad men, wisheth to himself dove's 
wings — or that other, which, with a like 
measure of sobriety and pathos, inquireth 
by what means the young man shall best 
cleanse his mind) — a holy calm pervadeth 
me. — I am for the time 

— rapt above earth, 
And possess joys not promised at my birth. 

But when this master of the spell, not 
content to have laid a soul prostrate, goes 
on, in his power, to inflict more bliss than 
lies in her capacity to receive, — impatient to 
overcome her " earthly" with his " heavenly," 
— still pouring in, for protracted hours, fresh 
waves and fresh from the sea of sound, or 
from that inexhausted German ocean, above 



which, in triumphant progress, dolphin- 
seated, ride those Arions Haydn and Mozart, 
with their attendant Tritons, Bach, Beethoven, 
and a countless tribe, whom to attempt to 
reckon up would but plunge me again in 
the deeps, — I stagger under the weight of 
harmony, reeling to and fro at my wits' 
end; — clouds, as of frankincense, oppress 
me — priests, altars, censers, dazzle before 
me — the genius of his religion hath me in 
her toils — a shadowy triple tiara invests the 
brow of my friend, late so naked, so ingen- 
uous — he is Pope, — and by him sits, like as 
in the anomaly of dreams, a she-Pope too, — 
tri-coroneted like himself ! — I am converted, 
and yet a Protestant ; — at once malleus here- 
ticorum, and myself grand heresiarch : or 
three heresies centre in my person : — I am 
Marcion, Ebion, and Cerinthus — Gog and 
Magog — what not ? — till the coming in of 
the friendly supper-tray dissipates the fig- 
ment, and a draught of true Lutheran beer 
(in which chiefly my friend shows himself 
no bigot) at once reconciles me to the ration- 
alities of a purer faith ; and restores to me 
the genuine unterrifying aspects of my 
pleasant-countenanced host and hostess. 



ALL FOOLS' DAY. 



The compliments of the season to my 
worthy masters, and a merry first of April 
to us all ! 

Many happy returns of this day to you — 
and you — and you, Sir — nay, never frown, 
man, nor put a long face upon the matter. 
Do not we know one another ? what need of 
ceremony among friends 1 we have all a 
touch of that same — you understand me — 
a speck of the motley. Beshrew the man 
who on such a day as this, the general festival, 
should affect to stand aloof. I am none of 
those sneakers. I am free of the corpora- 
tion, and care not who knows it. He that 
meets me in the forest to-day, shall meet 
with no wise-acre, I can tell him. Stultus 
sum. Translate me that, and take the 



* I have been there, and still would go ; 
'Tis like a little heaven below. — Dr. Watts. 



meaning of it to yourself for your pains. 
What ! man, we have four quarters of the 
globe on our side, at the least computation. 

Fill us a cup of that sparkling gooseberry 
— we will drink no wise, melancholy, politic 
port on this day — and let us troll the catch 
of Amiens — due ad me — due ad me — how 
goes it ? 

Here^ shall he see 
Gross fools as he. 

Now would I give a trifle to know, his- 
torically and authentically, who was the 
greatest fool that ever lived. I would cer^ 
tainly give him in a bumper. Marry, of the 
present breed, I think I could without much 
difficulty name you the party. 

Eemove your cap a little further, if you 
please : it hides my bauble. And now each 
man bestride his hobby, and dust away his 



ALL FOOLS' DAY. 



341 



bells to what tune he pleases. I will give 
you, for my part, 



-The crazy old church clock, 



And the bewildered chimes. 

Good master Empedocles, you are wel- 
come. It is long since you went a salaman- 
der-gathering down iEtna. Worse than 
samphire-picking by some odds. Tis a 
mercy your worship did not singe your 
mustachios. 

Ha ! Cleombrotus ! and what salads in 
faith did you light upon at the bottom of 
the Mediterranean 1 You were founder, 
I take it, of the disinterested sect of the 
Calenturists. 

Gebir, my old free-mason, and prince of 
plasterers at Babel, bring in your trowel, 
most Ancient Grand ! You have claim to 
a seat here at my right hand, as patron of 
the stammerers, You left your work, if 
I remember Herodotus correctly, at eight 
hundred million toises, or thereabout, above 
the level of the sea. Bless us, what a long bell 
you must have pulled, to call your top work- 
men to their nuncheon on the low grounds 
of Shinar. Or did you send up your garlic 
and onions by a rocket ? I am a rogue if 
I am not ashamed to show you our Monu- 
ment on Fish-street Hill, after your altitudes. 
Yet we think it somewhat. 

What, the magnanimous Alexander in 
tears 1— cry, baby, put its finger in its eye, it 
shall have another globe, round as an orange, 
pretty moppet ! 

Mister Adams 'odso, I honour your 

coat — pray do us the favour to read to us 
that sermon, which you lent to Mistress 
Slipslop — the twenty and second in your 
portmanteau there — on Female Inconti- 
nence — the same — it will come in most 
irrelevantly and impertinently seasonable to 
the time of the day. 

Good Master Eaymund Lully, you look 
wise. Pray correct that error. 

Duns, spare your definitions. I must fine 
you a bumper, or a paradox. We will have 
nothing said or done syllogistically this day. 
Remove those logical forms, waiter, that no 
gentleman break the tender shins of his 
apprehension stumbling across them. 

Master Stephen, you are late. — Ha ! Cokes, 
is it you 1 — Aguecheek, my dear knight, let 
me pay my devoir to you. — Master Shallow, 



your worship's poor servant to command. 

— Master Silence, I will use few words with 
you. — Slender, it shall go hard if I edge not 
you in somewhere — You six will engross all 
the poor wit of the company to-day. — J know 
it, I know it. 

Ha ! honest R , my fine old Librarian 

of Ludgate, time out of mind, art thou here 
again ? Bless thy doublet, it is not over- 
new, threadbare as thy stories ! — what dost 
thou flitting about the world at this rate ? — 
Thy customers are extinct, defunct, bed-rid, 
have ceased to read long ago. — Thou goest 
still among them, seeing if, peradventure, 
thou canst hawk a volume or two. — Good 
Granville S , thy last patron, is flown. 

King Tandion, he is dead, 

All thy friends are lapt in lead. — 

Nevertheless, noble R , come in, and 

take your seat here, between Armado and 
Quisada ; for in true courtesy, in gravity, in 
fantastic smiling to thyself, in courteous 
smiling upon others, in the goodly ornature 
of well-apparelled speech, and the commend- 
ation of wise sentences, thou art nothing 
inferior to those accomplished Dons of Spain. 
The spirit of chivalry forsake me for ever, 
when I forget thy singing the song of 
Macheath, which declares that he might be 
happy with either, situated between those 
two ancient spinsters — when I forget the 
inimitable formal love which thou didst 
make, turning now to the one, and now to 
the other, with that Malvolian smile — as it 
Cervantes, not Gay, had written it for his 
hero ; and as if thousands of periods must 
revolve, before the mirror of courtesy could 
have given his invidious preference between 
a pair of so goodly-propertied and merit- 
orious-equal damsels. 

To descend from these altitudes, and not 
to protract our Fools' Banquet beyond its 
appropriate day, — for I fear the second of 
April is not many hours distant — in sober 
verity I will confess a truth to thee, reader. 
I love a Fool — as naturally, as if I were of 
kith and kin to him. When a child, with 
child-like apprehensions, that dived not 
below the surface of the matter, I read 
those Parables — not guessing at the involved 
wisdom — I had more yearnings towards 
that simple architect, that built his house 
upon the sand, than I entertained for his 



342 



A QUAKERS' MEETING. 



more cautions neighbour : I grudged at the 
hard censure pronounced upon the quiet 
soul that kept his talent ; and — prizing their 
simplicity beyond the more provident, and, 
to my apprehension, somewhat unfeminine 
wariness of their competitors — I felt a kind- 
liness, that almost amounted to a tendre, for 
those five thoughtless virgins. — I have never 
made an acquaintance since, that lasted : or 
a friendship, that answered ; with any that 
had not some tincture of the absurd in their 
characters. I venerate an honest obliquity 
of understanding. The more laughable 
blunders a man shall commit in your com- 
pany, the more tests he giveth you, that he 
will not betray or overreach you. I love 
the safety, which a palpable hallucination 



warrants ; the security, which a word out of 
season ratifies. And take my word for this, 
reader, and say a fool told it you, if you 
please, that he who hath not a dram of folly 
in his mixture, hath pounds of much worse 
matter in his composition. It is observed, 
that " the foolisher the fowl or fish, — wood- 
cocks, — dotterels — cods'-heads, &c, the finer 
the flesh thereof," and what are commonly 
the world's received fools, but such whereof 
the world is not worthy 1 and what have 
been some of the kindliest patterns of our 
species, but so many darlings of absurdity, 
minions of the goddess, and her white boys 1 
— Keader, if you wrest my words beyond 
their fair construction, it is you, and not I, 
that are the April Fool. 



A QUAKEES' MEETING. 



Still-born Silence ! thou that art 

Flood-gate of the deeper heart ! 

Offspring of a heavenly kind ! 

Frost o' the mouth, and thaw o' the mind ! 

Secrecy's confidant, and he 

Who makes religion mystery ! 

Admiration's speaking'st tongue ! 

Leave, thy desert shades among, 

Reverend hermits' hallow'd cells, 

Where retired devotion dwells ! 

With thy enthusiasms come, 

Seize our tongues, and strike us dumb ! * 

Reader, would'st thou know what true 
peace and quiet mean ; would'st thou find a 
refuge from the noises and clamours of the 
multitude ; would'st thou enjoy at once soli- 
tude and society ; would'st thou possess the 
depth of thine own spirit in stillness, without 
being shut out from the consolatory faces of 
thy species ; would'st thou be alone and yet 
accompanied ; solitary, yet not desolate ; 
singular, yet not without some to keep thee 
in countenance ; a unit in aggregate ; a 
simple in composite : — come with me into a 
Quakers' Meeting. 

Dost thou love silence deep as that " be- 
fore the winds were made ? " go not out 
into the wilderness, descend not into the pro- 
fundities of the earth ; shut not up thy case- 
ments ; nor pour wax into the little cells of 
thy ears, with little-faith'd self-mistrusting 

* From " Poems of all sorts," by Richard Fleckno, 
1653. 



Ulysses. — Eetire with me into a Quakers' 
Meeting. 

Eor a man to refrain even from good words, 
and to hold his peace, it is commendable ; 
but for a multitude it is great mastery. 

What is the stillness of the desert com- 
pared with this place 1 what the uncommuni- 
cating muteness of fishes 1 — here the goddess 
reigns and revels. — " Boreas, and Cesias, 
and Argestes loud," do not with their inter- 
confounding uproars more augment the 
brawl — nor the waves of the blown Baltic 
with their clubbed sounds — than their oppo- 
site (Silence her sacred self) is multiplied 
and rendered more intense by numbers, 
and by sympathy. She too hath her deeps, 
that call unto deeps. Negation itself hath 
a positive more and less; and closed eyes 
would seem to obscure the great obscurity 
of midnight. 

There are wounds which an imperfect 
solitude cannot heal. By imperfect I mean 
that which a man enjoy eth by himself. The 
perfect is that which he can sometimes attain 
in crowds, but nowhere so absolutely as in a 
Quakers' Meeting. — Those first hermits did 
certainly understand this principle, when 
they retired into Egyptian solitudes, not 
singly, but in shoals, to enjoy one another's 
want of conversation. The Carthusian is 



A QUAKERS' MEETING. 



343 



bound to his brethren by this agreeing spirit 
of incommunicativeness. In secular occa- 
sions, what so pleasant as to be reading a book 
through a long winter evening, with a friend 
sitting by — say, a wife — he, or she, too, (if 
that be probable,) reading another, without 
interruption, or oral communication 1 — can 
there be no sympathy without the gabble of 
words ?— away with this inhuman, shy, 
single, shade-and-cavern-haunting solitari- 
ness. Give me, Master Zimmermann, a sym- 
pathetic solitude. 

To pace alone in the cloisters or side aisles 
of some cathedral, time-stricken ; 

Or under hanging mountains, 
Or by the fall of fountains ; 

is but a vulgar luxury compared with that 
which those enjoy who come together for 
the purposes of more complete, abstracted 
solitude. This is the loneliness " to be felt." 
— The Abbey Church of Westminster hath 
nothing so solemn, so spirit-soothing, as the 
naked walls and benches of a Quakers' Meet- 
ing. Here are no tombs, no inscriptions. 

■ Sands, ignoble things, 



Dropt from the ruined sides of kings — 

but here is something which throws Anti- 
quity herself into the foreground — Silence — 
eldest of things — language of old Night — 
primitive discourser — to which the insolent 
decays of mouldering grandeur have bat 
arrived by a violent, and, as we may say, 
unnatural progression. 

How reverend is the view of these hushed heads, 
Looking tranquillity ! 

Nothing-plotting, nought-caballing, unmis- 
chievous synod ! convocation without in- 
trigue ! parliament without debate ! what 
a lesson dost thou read to council, and to 
consistory ! — if my pen treat of you lightly — 
, as haply it will wander — yet my spirit hath 
gravely felt the wisdom of your custom, 
when sitting among you in deepest peace, 
which some out-welling tears would rather 
confirm than disturb, I have reverted to the 
times of your beginnings, and the sowings of 
the seed by Fox and Dewesbury. — I have 
witnessed that which brought before my eyes 
your heroic tranquillity, inflexible to the 
rude jests and serious violences of the inso- 
lent soldiery, republican or royalist, sent to 



molest you — for ye sate betwixt the fires of 
two persecutions, the outcast and off-scouring 
of church and presbytery. — I have seen the 
reeling sea-ruffian, who had wandered into 
your receptacle with the avowed intention of 
disturbing your quiet, from the very spirit of 
the place receive in a moment a new heart, 
and presently sit among ye as a lamb amidst 
lambs. And I remember Penn before his 
accusers, and Fox in the bail dock, where he 
was lifted up in spirit, as he tells us, and 
"the Judge and the Jury became as dec I 
men under his feet." 

Eeader, if you are not acquainted with it, 
I would recommend to you, above all church- 
narratives, to read Sewel's History of the 
Quakers. It is in folio, and is the ab- 
stract of the journals of Fox and the primi- 
tive Friends. It i3 far more edifying and 
affecting than anything you will read of 
Wesley and his colleagues. Here is nothing 
to stagger you, nothing to make you mistrust, 
no suspicion of alloy, no drop or dreg of the 
worldly or ambitious spirit. You will here 
read the true story of that much-injured, 
ridiculed man (who perhaps hath been a by- 
word in your mouth) — James Naylor : what 
dreadful sufferings, with what patience, he 
endured, even to the boring through of his 
tongue with red-hot irons, without a mur- 
mur ; and with what strength of mind, when 
the delusion he had fallen into, which they 
stigmatised for blasphemy, had given way to 
clearer thoughts, he could renounce his error, 
in a strain of the beautifullest humility, yet 
keep his first grounds, and be a Quaker still ! 
— so different from the practice of your com- 
mon converts from enthusiasm, who, when 
they apostatize, apostatize all, and think they 
can never get far enough fr^m the society of 
their former errors, even to the renunciation 
of some saving truths, with which they had 
been mingled, not implicated. 

Get the writings of John Woolman by 
heart ; and love the early Quakers. 

How far the followers of these good men 
in our days have kept to the primitive spirit, 
or in what proportion they have substituted 
formality for it, the Judge of Spirits can 
alone determine. I have seen faces in their 
assemblies upon which the dove sate visibly 
brooding. Others, again, I have watched, 
when my thoughts should have been better 
engaged, in which I could possibly detect 



344 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 



nothing but a blank inanity. But quiet was 
in all, and the disposition to unanimity, and 
the absence of the fierce controversial work- 
ings. — If the spiritual pretensions of the 
Quakers have abated, at least they make few 
pretences. Hypocrites they certainly are 
not, in their preaching. It is seldom, indeed, 
that you shall see one get up amongst them 
to hold forth. Only now and then a trem- 
bling, female, generally ancient, voice is heard 
— you cannot guess from what part of the 
meeting it proceeds — with a low, buzzing, 
musical sound, laying out a few words which 
"she thought might suit the condition of 
some present," with a quaking diffidence, 
which leaves no possibility of supposing that 
anything of female vanity was mixed up, 
where the tones were so full of tenderness, 
and a restraining modesty. — The men, for 
what I have observed, speak seldomer. 

Once only, and it was some years ago, I 
witnessed a sample of the old Foxian orgasm. 
It was a man of giant stature, who, as 
Wordsworth phrases it, might have danced 
"from head to foot equipt in iron mail." 
His frame was of iron, too. But he was 
malleable. I saw him shake all over with 
the spirit — I dare not say of delusion. The 
strivings of the outer man were unutterable 
— he seemed not to speak, but to be spoken 
from. I saw the strong man bowed down, 
and his knees to fail — his joints all seemed 
loosening — it was a figure to set off against 
Paul preaching — the words he uttered were 
few, and sound — he was evidently resisting 
his will — keeping down his own word- wisdom 
with more mighty effort than the world's 
orators strain for theirs. " He had been a 
wit in his youth," he told us, with expres- 
sions of a sober remorse. And it was not 



till long after the impression had begun to 
wear away that I was enabled, with some- 
thing like a smile, to recal the striking in- 
congruity of the confession — understanding 
the term in its worldly acceptation — with 
the frame and physiognomy of the person 
before me. His brow would have scared 
away the Levities — the Jocos Bisus-que — 
faster than the Loves lied the face of Dis at 
Enna. — By wit, even in his youth, I will be 
sworn he understood something far within 
the limits of an allowable liberty. 

More frequently the Meeting is broken up 
without a word having been spoken. But 
the mind has been fed. You go away with 
a sermon not made with hands. You have 
been in the milder caverns of Trophonius ; 
or as in some den, where that fiercest and 
savagest of all wild creatures, the Tongue, 
that unruly member, has strangely lain tied 
up and captive. You have bathed with still- 
ness. — O, when the spirit is sore fretted, 
even tired to sickness of the j anglings and 
nonsense-noises of the world, what a balm 
and a solace it is to go and seat yourself for 
a quiet half hour upon some undisputed cor- 
ner of a bench, among the gentle Quakers ! 

Their garb and stillness conjoined, pre- 
sent a uniformity, tranquil and herd-like 
— as in the pasture — " forty feeding like 
one."— 

The very garments of a Quaker seem in- 
capable of receiving a soil; and cleanliness 
in them to be something more than the 
absence of its contrary. Every Quakeress is 
a lily ; and when they come up in bands to 
their Whitsun-conferences, whitening the 
easterly streets of the metropolis, from all 
parts of the United Kingdom, they show like 
troops of the Shining Ones. 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTEB. 



My reading has been lamentably desultory 
and immethodical. Odd, out of the way, old 
English plays, and treatises, have supplied 
me with most of my notions, and ways of 
feeling. In every thing that relates to 
science, I am a whole Encyclopaedia behind 
the rest of the world. I should have scarcely 



cut a figure among the franklins, or country 
gentlemen, in king John's days. I know less 
geography than a school-boy of six weeks' 
standing. To me a map of old Ortelius is as 
authentic as Arrowsmith. I do not know 
whereabout Africa merges into Asia ; whether 
Ethiopia lie in one or other of those great 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTKK. 



845 



divisions ; nor can form the remotest conjec- 
ture of the position of New South Wales, or 
Van Diemen's Land. Yet do I hold a corre- 
spondence with a very dear friend in the first- 
named of these two Terrse Incognitse. I have 
no astronomy. I do not know where to look for 
the Bear, or Charles's Wain ; the place of any 
star ; or the name of any of them at sight. I 
guess at Venus only by her brightness — and 
if the sun on some portentous morn were to 
make his first appearance in the West, I verily 
believe, that, while all the world were gasp- 
ing in apprehension about me, I alone should 
stand unterrified, from sheer incuriosity and 
want of observation. Of history and chrono- 
logy I possess some vague points, such as one 
cannot help picking up in the course of 
miscellaneous study ; but I never deliberately 
sat down to a chronicle, even of my own 
country. I have most dim apprehensions of 
the four great monarchies ; and sometimes 
the Assyrian, sometimes the Persian, floats 
as first, in my fancy. I make the widest 
conjectures concerning Egypt, and her shep- 
herd kings. My friend M., with great pains- 
taking, got me to think I understood the first 
proposition in Euclid, but gave me over in 
despair at the second. I am entirely un- 
acquainted with the modern languages ; and, 
like a better man than myself, have " small 
Latin and less Greek." I am a stranger to 
the shapes and texture of the commonest 
trees, herbs, flowers — not from the circum- 
stance of my being town-born — for I should 
have brought the same inobservant spirit 
into the world with me, had I first seen it 
" on Devon's leafy shores," — and am no less 
at a loss among purely town-objects, tools, 
engines, mechanic processes. — Not that I 
affect ignorance — but my head has not many 
mansions, nor spacious; and I have been 
obliged to fill it with such cabinet curiosities 
as it can hold without aching. I sometimes 
wonder, how I have passed my probation 
with so little discredit in the world, as I have 
done, upon so meagre a stock. But the fact 
is, a man may do very well with a very little 
knowledge, and scarce be found out, in mixed 
company ; everybody is so much more ready 
to produce his own, than to call for a display 
of your acquisitions. But in a tete-a-tete 
there is no shuffling. The truth will out. 
There is nothing which I dread so much, as 
the being left alone for a quarter of an hour 



with a sensible, well-informed man, that does 
not know me. I lately got into a dilemma 

of this sort. — 

In one of my daily jaunts between Bisliops- 
gate and Shacklewell, the coach stopped to 
take up a staid-looking gentleman, about the 
wrong side of thirty, who was giving his 
parting directions (while the steps were 
adjusting), in a tone of mild authority, to a 
tall youth, who seemed to be neither his clerk, 
his son, nor his servant, but something 
partaking of all three. The youth was dis- 
missed, and we drove on. As we were the 
sole passengers, he naturally enough addressed 
his conversation to me ; and we discussed 
the merits of the fare, the civility and 
punctuality of the driver ; the circumstance 
of an opposition coach having been lately set 
up, with the probabilities of its success — to 
all which I was enabled to return pretty 
satisfactory answers, having been drilled into 
this kind of etiquette by some years' daily 
practice of riding to and fro in the stage 
aforesaid — when he suddenly alarmed me 
by a startling question, whether I had seen 
the show of prize cattle that morning in 
Smithfield 1 Now, as I had not seen it, and 
do not greatly care for such sort of exhibitions, 
I was obliged to return a cold negative. He 
seemed a little mortified, as well as astonished, 
at my declaration, as (it appeared) he was 
just come fresh from the sight, and doubtless 
had hoped to compare notes on the subject. 
However, he assured me that I had lost a 
fine treat, as it far exceeded the show of last 
year. We were now approaching Norton 
Folgate, when the sight of some shop-goods 
ticketed freshened him up into a dissertation 
upon the cheapness of cottons this spring. I 
was now a little in heart, as the nature of 
my morning avocations had brought me into 
some sort of familiarity with the raw 
material ; and I was surprised to find how 
eloquent I was becoming on the state of the 
India market — when, presently, he dashed 
my incipient vanity to the earth at once, by 
inquiring whether I had ever made any 
calculation as to the value of the rental of all 
the retail shops in London. Had he asked 
of me, what song the Syrens sang, or what 
name Achilles assumed when he hid himself 
among women, I might, with Sir Thomas 
Browne, have hazarded a " wide solution." * 
* Urn Burial. 



346 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 



My companion saw my embarrassment, and, 
the almshouses beyond Shoreditch just 
coming in view, with great good-nature and 
dexterity shifted his conversation to the 
subject of public charities ; which led to the 
comparative merits of provision for the poor 
in past and present times, with observations 
on the old monastic institutions, and charita- 
ble orders ; but, finding me rather dimly 
impressed with some glimmering notions 
from old poetic associations, than strongly 
fortified with any speculations reducible to 
calculation on the subject, he gave the matter 
up ; and, the country beginning to open more 
and more upon us, as we approached the 
turnpike at Kingsland (the destined ter- 
mination of his journey), he put a home 
thrust upon me, in the most unfortunate 
position he could have chosen, by advancing 
some queries relative to the North Pole 
Expedition. "While I was muttering out 
something about the Panorama of those 
strange regions (which I had actually seen), 
by way of parrying the question, the coach 
stopping relieved me from any further appre- 
hensions. My companion getting out, left 
me in the comfortable possession of my igno- 
rance ; and I heard him, as he went off, 
putting questions to an outside passenger, 
who had alighted with him, regarding an 
epidemic disorder, that had been rife about 
Dalston, and which my friend assured him 
had gone through five or six schools in that 
neighbourhood. The truth now flashed upon 
me, that my companion was a schoolmaster ; 
and that the youth, whom he had parted 
from at our first acquaintance, must have 
been one of the bigger boys, or the usher. — 
He was evidently a kind-hearted man, who 
did not seem so much desirous of provoking 
discussion by the questions which he put, as 
of obtaining information at any rate. It did 
not appear that he took any interest, either, 
in such kind of inquiries, for their own sake ; 
but that he was in some way bound to seek 
for knowledge. A greenish-coloured coat, 
which he had on, forbade me to surmise that 
he was a clergyman. The adventure gave 
birth to some reflections on the difference 
between persons of his profession in past and 
present times. 

Rest to the souls of those fine old Peda- 
gogues ; the breed, long since extinct, of the 
Lilys, and the Linacres : who believing that 



all learning was contained in the languages 
which they taught, and despising every other 
acquirement as superficial and useless, came 
to their task as to a sport ! Passing from 
infancy to age, they dreamed away all their 
days as in a grammar-school. Revolving in 
a perpetual cycle of declensions, conjugations, 
syntaxes, and prosodies ; renewing constantly 
the occupations which had charmed their 
studious childhood ; rehearsing continually 
the part of the past ; life must have slipped 
from them at last like one day. They were 
always in their first garden, reaping harvests 
of their golden time, among their Flori and 
their Spici-legia ; in Arcadia still, but kings ; 
the ferule of their sway not much harsher, 
but of like dignity with that mild sceptre 
attributed to king Basileus ; the Greek and 
Latin, their stately Pamela and their 
Philoclea ; with the occasional duncery of 
some untoward tyro, serving for a refreshing 
interlude of a Mopsa, or a clown Damcetas ! 

With what a savour doth the Preface to 
Colet's, or (as it is sometimes called) Paul's 
Accidence, set forth ! " To exhort every 
man to the learning of grammar, that in- 
tendeth to attain the understanding of the 
tongues, wherein is contained a great trea- 
sury of wisdom and knowledge, it would 
seem but vain and lost labour ; for so much 
as it is known, that nothing can surely be 
ended, whose beginning is either feeble or 
faulty ; and no building be perfect whereas 
the foundation and groundwork is ready to 
fall, and unable to uphold the burden of the 
frame." How well doth this stately pream- 
ble (comparable to those which Milton com- 
mendeth as " having been the usage to prefix 
to some solemn law, then first promulgated 
by Solon or Lycurgus ") correspond with and 
illustrate that pious zeal for conformity, ex- 
pressed in a succeeding clause, which would 
fence about grammar-rules with the severity 
of faith-articles ! — " as for the diversity of 
grammars, it is well profitably taken away 
by the king majesties wisdom, who foresee- 
ing the inconvenience, and favourably pro- 
viding the remedie, caused one kind of 
grammar by sundry learned men to be dili- 
gently drawn, and so to be set out, only 
everywhere to be taught for the use of 
learners, and for the hurt in changing of 
schoolmaisters." What a gusto in that 
which follows : " wherein it is profitable that 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 



347 



he [the pupil] can orderly decline his noun 
and his verb." His noun ! 

The fine dream is fading away fast ; and 
the least concern of a teacher in the present 
day is to inculcate grammar-rules. 

The modern schoolmaster is expected to 
know a little of everything, because his pupil 
is required not to be entirely ignorant of 
anything. He must be superficially, if I 
may so say, omniscient. He is to know 
something of pneumatics ; of chemistry ; of 
whatever is curious or proper to excite the 
attention of the youthful mind ; an insight 
into mechanics is desirable, with a touch of 
statistics ; the quality of soils, &c, botany, 
the constitution of his country, cum multis 
aliis. You may get a notion of some part of 
his expected duties by consulting the famous 
Tractate on Education, addressed to Mr. 
Hartlib. 

All these things — these, or the desire of 
them — he is expected to instil, not by set 
lessons from professors, which he may charge 
in the bill, but at school intervals, as he 
walks the streets, or saunters through green 
fields (those natural instructors), with his 
pupils. The least part of what is expected 
from him is to be done in school-hours. He 
must insinuate knowledge at the mollia tem- 
pora fandi. He must seize every occasion — 
the season of the year — the time of the day 
— a passing cloud — a rainbow — a waggon of 
hay — a regiment of soldiers going by — to in- 
culcate something useful. He can receive 
no pleasure from a casual glimpse of Nature, 
but must catch at it as an object of instruc- 
tion. He must interpret beauty into the 
picturesque. He cannot relish a beggar- 
man, or a gipsy, for thinking of the suitable 
improvement. Nothing comes to him, not 
spoiled by the sophisticating medium of 
moral uses. The Universe — that Great Book, 
as it has been called — is to him, indeed, to 
all intents and purposes, a book out of which 
he is doomed to read tedious homilies to dis- 
tasting schoolboys. — Vacations themselves 
are none to him, he is only rather worse off 
than before ; for commonly he has some in- 
trusive upper-boy fastened upon him at such 
times ; some cadet of a great family ; some 
neglected lump of nobility, or gentry ; that 
he must drag after him to the play, to the 
Panorama, to Mr. Bartley's Orrery, to the 
Panopticon, or into the country, to a friend's 



house, or his favourite watering-place. 
Wherever he goes this uneasy shadow at- 
tends him. A boy is at his board, and in his 
path, and in all his movements. He is boy- 
rid, sick of perpetual boy. 

Boys are capital fellows in their own way, 
among their mates ; but they are unwhole- 
some companions for grown people. The 
restraint is felt no less on the one side than 
on the other.— Even a child, that " plaything 
for an hour," tires always. The noises of 
children, playing their own fancies — as I 
now hearken to them, by fits, sporting on 
the green before my window, while I am 
engaged in these grave speculations at my 
neat suburban retreat at Shacklewell — by 
distance made more sweet — inexpressibly 
take from the labour of my task. It is like 
writing to music. They seem to modulate 
my periods. They ought at least to do so 
— for in the voice of that tender age there is 
a kind of poetry, far unlike the harsh prose- 
accents of man's conversation. — I should but 
spoil their sport, and diminish my own 
sympathy for them, by mingling in their 
pastime. 

I would not be domesticated all my days 
with a person of very superior capacity to 
my own — not, if I know myself at all, from 
any considerations of jealousy or self-compa- 
rison, for the occasional communion with 
such minds has constituted the fortune and 
felicity of my life — but the habit of too con- 
stant intercourse with spirits above you, 
instead of raising you, keeps you down. 
Too frequent doses of original thinking from 
others, restrain what lesser portion of that 
faculty you may possess of your own. You 
get entangled in another man's mind, even 
as you lose yourself in another man's grounds. 
You are walking with a tall varlet, whose 
strides out-pace yours to lassitude. The 
constant operation of such potent agency 
would reduce me, I am convinced, to im- 
becility. You may derive thoughts from 
others ; your way of thinking, the mould in 
which your thoughts are cast, must be your 
own. Intellect may be imparted, but not 
each man's intellectual frame. — 

As little as I should wish to be always 
thus dragged upward, as little (or rather 
still less) is it desirable to be stunted down- 
wards by your associates. The trumpet does 
not more stun you by its loudness, than a 



348 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 



whisper teases you by its provoking inaudi- 
bility. 

Why are we never quite at our ease in the 
presence of a schoolmaster ? — because we are 
conscious that he is not quite at his ease in 
ours. He is awkward, and out of place, in 
the society of his equals. He comes like 
Gulliver from among his little people, and he 
cannot fit the stature of his understanding to 
yours. He cannot meet you on the square. 
He wants a point given him, like an in- 
different whist-player. He is so used to 
teaching, that he wants to be teaching you. 
One of these professors, upon my complain- 
ing that these little sketches of mine were 
anything but methodical, and that I was 
unable to make them otherwise, kindly 
offered to instruct me in the method by 
which young gentlemen in his seminary were 
taught to compose English themes. The 
jests of a schoolmaster are coarse, or thin. 
They do not tell out of school. He is under 
the restraint of a formal or didactive hypo- 
crisy in company, as a clergyman is under a 
moral one. He can no more let his intellect 
loose in society than the other can his incli- 
nations. — He is forlorn among his coevals ; 
his juniors cannot be his friends. 

" I take blame to myself," said a sensible 
man of this profession, writing to a friend 
respecting a youth who had quitted his 
school abruptly, " that your nephew was not 
more attached to me. But persons in my 
situation are more to be pitied than can 
well be imagined. We are surrounded by 
young, and, consequently, ardently affection- 
ate hearts, but we can never hope to share an 
atom of their affections. The relation of 
master and scholar forbids this. How pleasing 
this must be to you, how I envy your feelings ! 
my friends will sometimes say to me, when 
they see young men whom I have educated 
return after some years' absence from school, 
their eyes shining with pleasure, while they 
shake hands with their old master, bringing 
a present of game to me, or a toy to my wife, 
and thanking me in the warmest terms for 
my care of their education. A holiday is 
begged for the boys ; the house is a scene of 
happiness; I, only, am sad at heart. — This 
fine-spirited and warm-hearted youth, who 
fancies he repays his master with gratitude 
for the care of his boyish years — this young 
man — in the eight long years I watched over 



him with a parent's anxiety, never could 
repay me with one look of genuine feeling. 
He was proud, when I praised ; he was sub- 
missive, when I reproved him ; but he did 
never love me — and what he now mistakes for 
gratitude and kindness for me, is but the 
pleasant sensation which all persons feel at 
revisiting the scenes of their boyish hopes 
and fears ; and the seeing on equal terms the 
man they were accustomed to look up to with 
reverence. My wife, too," this interesting 
correspondent goes on to say, " my once dar- 
ling Anna, is the wife of a schoolmaster. — 
When I married her — knowing that the wife 
of a schoolmaster ought to be a busy notable 
creature, and fearing that my gentle Anna 
would ill supply the loss of my dear bustling 
mother, just then dead, who never sat still, 
was in every part of the house in a moment, 
and whom I was obliged sometimes to 
threaten to fasten down in a chair, to save 
her from fatiguing herself to death — I ex- 
pressed my fears that I was bringing her 
into a way of life unsuitable to her ; and 
she, who loved me tenderly, promised for 
my sake to exert herself to perform the 
duties of her new situation. She promised, 
and she has kept her word. What wonders 
will not woman's love perform ? — My house 
is managed with a propriety and decorum 
unknown in other schools ; my boys are well 
fed, look healthy, and have every proper ac- 
commodation ; and ail this performed with 
a careful economy, that never descends to 
meanness. But I have lost my gentle help- 
less Anna ! When we sit down to enjoy an 
hour of repose after the fatigue of the day, I 
am compelled to listen to what have been 
her useful (and they are really useful) em- 
ployments through the day, and what she 
proposes for her to-morrow's task. Her 
heart and her features are changed by the 
duties of her situation. To the boys, she 
never appears other than the master's wife, 
and she looks up to me as the boys' master ; 
to whom all show of love and affection would 
be highly improper, and unbecoming the 
dignity of her situation and mine. Yet this 
my gratitude forbids me to hint to her. For 
my sake she submitted to be this altered 
creature, and can I reproach her for it 1 " — 
For the communication of this letter I am 
indebted to my cousin Bridget. 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 



349 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 



I am of a constitution so general, that it consorts and sympathized with all things ; I have no antipathy, or 
rather idiosyncrasy in anything. Those natural repngnancies do not touch me, nor do I hchold with prejudice 
the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch. — Religio Medici. 



That the author of the Religio Medici, 
mounted upon the airy stilts of abstraction, 
conversant about notional and conjectural 
essences ; in whose categories of Being the 
possible took the upper hand of the actual ; 
should have overlooked the impertinent indi- 
vidualities of such poor concretions as man- 
kind, is not much to be admired. . It is 
rather to be wondered at, that in the genus 
of animals he should have condescended to 
distinguish that species at all. For myself 
— earth-bound and fettered to the scene of 
my activities, — 

Standing on earth, not rapt ahove the sky, 

I confess that I do feel the differences of 
mankind, national or individual, to an un- 
healthy excess. I can look with no indiffer- 
ent eye upon things or persons. Whatever 
is, is to me a matter of taste or distaste ; or 
when once it becomes indifferent, it begins to 
be disrelishing. I am, in plainer words, a 
bundle of prejudices — made up of likings 
and dislikings — the veriest thrall to sympa- 
thies, apathies, antipathies. In a certain 
sense, I hope it may be said of me that I am 
a lover of my species. I can feel for all 
indifferently, but I cannot feel towards all 
equally. The more purely-English word that 
expresses sympathy, will better explain my 
meaning. I can be a friend to a worthy man, 
who upon another account cannot be my 
mate or fellow. I cannot like all people 
alike.* 

I have been trying all my life to like 
Scotchmen, and am obliged to desist from 
the experiment in despair. They cannot 
like me — and in truth, I never knew one of 
that nation who attempted to do it. There 
is something more plain and ingenuous in 

* I would he understood as confining myself to the 
subject of imperfect sympathies. To nations or classes 
of men there can he no direct antipathy. There may he 
individuals horn and constellated so opposite to another 
individual nature, that the same sphere cannot hold 



their mode of proceeding. We know one 
another at first sight. There is an order of 
imperfect intellects (under which mine must 
be content to rank) which in its constitution 
is essentially anti-Caledonian. The owners 
of the sort of faculties I allude to, have 
minds rather suggestive than comprehensive. 
They have no pretences to. much clearness 
or precision in their ideas, or in their manner 
of expressing them. Their intellectual ward- 
robe (to confess fairly) has few whole pieces 
in it. They are content with fragments and 
scattered pieces of Truth. She presents no 
full front to them — a feature or side-face at 
the most. Hints and glimpses, germs and 
crude essays at a system, is the utmost they 
pretend to. They beat up a little game per- 
adventure — and leave it to knottier heads, 
more robust constitutions, to run it down. 
The light that lights them is not steady and 
polar, but mutable and shifting : waxing, 
and again waning. Their conversation is 
accordingly. They will throw out a random 
word in or out of season, and be content to 
let it pass for what it is worth. They cannot 
speak always as if they were upon their oath 
— but must be understood, speaking or 
writing, with some abatement. They seldom 
wait to mature a proposition, but e'en bring 

them. I have met with my moral antipodes, and can 
helieve the story of two persons meeting (who never saw 
one another hefore in their lives) and instantly fighting. 

We hy proof find there should he 



'Twixt man and man such an antipathy, 
That though he can show no just reason why 
For any former wrong or injury, 
Can neither find a blemish in his fame, 
Nor aught in face or feature justly blame, 
Can challenge or accuse him of no evil, 
Yet notwithstanding hates him as a devil. 

The lines are from old Heywood's "Hierarchie of Angels," 
and he subjoins a curious story in confirmation, of a 
Spaniard who attempted to assassinate a King Ferdinand 
of Spain, and being put to the rack could give no other 
reason for the deed but an inveterate antipathy which he 
had taken to the first sight of the King. 



The cause which to that act compell'd him 

Was, he ne'er loved him since he first beheld him. 



350 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 



it to market in the green ear. They delight 
to impart their defective discoveries as they 
arise, without waiting for their full develop- 
ment. They are no systematizers, and would 
but err more by attempting it. Their minds, 
as I said before, are suggestive merely. The 
brain of a true Caledonian (if I am not mis- 
taken) is constituted upon quite a different 
plan. His Minerva is bom in panoply. You 
are never admitted to see his ideas in their 
growth — if, indeed, they do grow, and are 
not rather put together upon principles of 
clock-work. You never catch his mind in an 
undress. He never hints or suggests any- 
thing, but unlades his stock of ideas in 
perfect order and completeness. He brings 
his total wealth into company, and gravely 
unpacks it. His riches are always about 
him. He never stoops to catch a glittering 
something in your presence to share it with 
you, before he quite knows whether it be 
true touch or not. You cannot cry halves to 
anything that he finds. He does not find, 
but bring. You never witness his first 
apprehension of a thing. His understanding 
is always at its meridian — you never see the 
first dawn, the early streaks. — He has no 
falterings of self-suspicion. Surmises, guesses, 
misgivings, half-intuitions, semi-conscious- 
nesses, partial illuminations, dim instincts, 
embryo conceptions, have no place in his 
brain, or vocabulary. The twilight of dubiety 
never falls upon him. Is he orthodox — he 
has no doubts. Is he an infidel — he has 
none either. Between the affirmative and 
the negative there is no border-land with 
him. You cannot hover with him upon the 
confines of truth, or wander in the maze of 
a probable argument. He always keejDS the 
path. You cannot make excursions with 
him — for he sets you right. His taste never 
fluctuates. His morality never abates. He 
cannot compromise, or understand middle 
actions. There can be but a right and a 
wrong. His conversation is as a book. His 
affirmations have the sanctity of an oath. 
You must speak upon the square with him. 
He stops a metaphor like a suspected person 
in an enemy's country. " A healthy book ! " 
— said one of his countrymen to me, who 
had ventured to give that appellation to 
John Buncle, — "Did I catch rightly what 
you said ? I have heard of a man in health, 
and of a healthy state of body, but I do not 



see how that epithet can be properly applied 
to a book." Above all, you must beware of 
indirect expressions before a Caledonian. 
Clap an extinguisher upon your irony, if you 
are unhappily blest with a vein of it. Ke- 
member you are upon your oath. I have 
a print of a graceful female after Leonardo 
da Yinci, which I was showing off to 
Mr. * * * * After he had examined it mi- 
nutely, I ventured to ask him how he liked 
my beauty (a foolish name it goes by among 
my friends) — when he very gravely assured 
me, that "he had considerable respect for 
my character and talents " (so he was pleased 
to say), " but had not given himself much 
thought about the degree of my personal 
pretensions." The misconception staggered 
me, but did not seem much to disconcert 
him. — Persons of this nation are particularly 
fond of affirming a truth — which nobody 
doubts. They do not so properly affirm, as 
annunciate it. They do indeed appear to 
have such a love of truth (as if, like virtue, 
it were valuable for itself) that all truth 
becomes equally valuable, whether the pro- 
position that contains it be new or old, dis- 
puted, or such as is impossible to become a 
subject of disputation. I was present not 
long since at a party of North Britons, 
where a son of Burns was expected ; and 
happened to drop a silly expression (in my 
South British way), that I wished it were 
the father instead of the son — when four of 
them started up at once to inform me, that 
" that was impossible, because he was dead." 
An impracticable wish, it seems, was more 
than they could conceive. Swift has hit off 
this part of their character, namely their 
love of truth, in his biting way, but with an 
illiberality that necessarily confines the 
passage to the margin.* The tediousness of 
these people is certainly provoking. I wonder 
if they ever tire one another ! — In my early 
life I had a passionate fondness for the 
poetry of Burns. I have sometimes foolishly 

* There are some people who think they sufficiently 
acquit themselves, and entertain their company, with 
relating facts of no consequence, not at all out of the 
road of such common incidents as happen every day ; 
and this I have observed more frequently among the 
Scots than any other nation, who are very careful not to 
omit the minutest circumstances of time or place ; which 
kind of discourse, if it were not a little relieved by the 
uncouth terms and phrases, as well as accent and gesture, 
peculiar to that country, would be hardly tolerable. — 
Hints towards an Essay on Conversation. 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 



351 



hoped to ingratiate myself with his country- 
men by expressing it. But I have always 
found that a true Scot resents your admira- 
tion of his compatriot, even more than he 
would your contempt of him. The latter he 
imputes to your " imperfect acquaintance 
with many of the words which he uses ; " 
and the same objection makes it a presump- 
tion in you to suppose that you can admire 
him. — Thomson they seem to have forgotten. 
Smollett they have neither forgotten nor 
forgiven, for his delineation of Rory and his 
companion, upon their first introduction to 
our metropolis. — Speak of Smollett as a 
great genius, and they will retort upon you 
Hume's History compared with his Continu- 
ation of it. What if the historian had con- 
tinued Humphrey Clinker 1 

I have, in the abstract, no disrespect for 
Jews. They are a piece of stubborn anti- 
quity, compared with which Stonehenge is 
in its nonage. They date beyond the pyra- 
mids. But I should not care to be in habits 
of familiar intercourse with any of that 
nation. I confess that I have not the nerves 
to enter their synagogues. Old prejudices 
cling about me. I cannot shake off the story 
of Hugh of Lincoln. Centuries of injury, 
contempt, and hate, on the one side, — of 
cloaked revenge, dissimulation, and hate, on 
the other, between our and their fathers, 
must and ought to affect the blood of the 
children. I cannot believe it can run clear 
and kindly yet ; or that a few fine words, 
such as candour, liberality, the light of a 
nineteenth century, can close up the breaches 
of so deadly a disunion. A Hebrew is no- 
where congenial to me. He is least dis- 
tasteful on 'Change — for the mercantile spirit 
levels all distinctions, as all are beauties in 
the dark. I boldly confess that I do not 
relish the approximation of Jew and Chris- 
tian, which has become so fashionable. The 
reciprocal endearments have, to me, some- 
thing hypocritical and unnatural in them. 
I do not like to see the Church and Syna- 
gogue kissing and congeeing in awkward 
postures of an affected civility. If they are 
converted, why do they not come over to us 
altogether ? Why keep up a form of sepa- 
ration, when the life of it is fled ? If they 
can sit with us at table, why do they keck 
at our cookery? I do not understand 
these half convertites. Jews christianizing 



— Christians judai/.ing — puzzle me. I like 
fish or flesh. A moderate Jew is ,-i more 
confounding piece of anomaly than a wet 
Quaker. The spirit of the synagogue is 

essentially separative. B would have 

been more in keeping if he had ;il»i<l((l by 
the faith of his forefathers. There is a line 
scom in his face, which nature meant to be 

of Christians. The Hebrew spirit is 

strong in him, in spite of his proselyti.-m. 
He cannot conquer the Shibboleth. How it 
breaks out, when he sings, " The Children 
of Israel passed through the Red Sea ! " 
The auditors, for the moment, are as Egyp- 
tians to him, and he rides over our necks 
in triumph. There is no mistaking him. 

B has a strong expression of sense in his 

countenance, and it is confirmed by his sing- 
ing. The foundation of his vocal excellence 
is sense. He sings with understanding, as 
Kemble delivered dialogue. He would sing 
the Commandments, and give an appropriate 
character to each prohibition. His nation, 
in general, have not over-sensible counte- 
nances. How should they 1 — but you seldom 
see a silly expression among them. — Gain, 
and the pursuit of gain, sharpen a man's 
visage. I never heard of an idiot being born 
among them. — Some admire the Jewish 
female-physiognomy. I admire it — but with 
trembling. Jael had those full dark inscru- 
table eyes. 

In the Negro countenance you will often 
meet with strong traits of benignity. I have 
felt yearnings of tenderness towards some of 
these faces — or rather masks — that have 
looked out kindly upon one in casual encoun- 
ters in the streets and highways. I love 
what Fuller beautifully calls — these " images 
of God cut in ebony." But I should not like 
to associate with them, to share my meals 
and my good-nights with them — because 
they are black. 

I love Quaker ways, and Quaker worship. 
I venerate the Quaker principles. It does 
me good for the rest of the day when I meet 
any of their people in my path. When I am 
ruffled or disturbed by any occurrence, the 
sight, or quiet voice of a Quaker, acts upon 
me as a ventilator, lightening the air, and 
taking off a load from the bosom. But 
I cannot like the Quakers (as Desdemona 
would say) " to live with them." I am all 
over sophisticated— with humours, fancies, 



352 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 



craving hourly sympathy. I must have 
books, pictures, theatres, chit-chat, scandal, 
jokes, ambiguities, and a thousand whim- 
whams, which their simpler taste can do 
without. I should starve at their primitive 
banquet. My appetites are too high for 
the salads which (according to Evelyn) 
Eve dressed for the angel, my gusto too 
excited 

To sit a guest with Daniel at his pulse. 

The indirect answers which Quakers are 
often found to return to a question put to 
them may be explained, I think, without the 
vulgar assumption, that they are more given 
to evasion and equivocating than other 
people. They naturally look to their words 
more carefully, and are more cautious of 
committing themselves. They have a pecu- 
liar character to keep up on this head. They 
stand in a manner upon their veracity. 
A Quaker is by law exempted from taking 
an oath. The custom of resorting to an 
oath in extreme cases, sanctified as it is by 
all religious antiquity, is apt (it must be 
confessed) to introduce into the laxer sort of 
minds the notion of two kinds of truth — the 
one applicable to the solemn affairs of justice, 
and the other to the common proceedings of 
daily intercourse. As truth bound upon the 
conscience by an oath can be but truth, so 
in the common affirmations of the shop and 
the market-place a latitude is expected, and 
conceded upon questions wanting this solemn 
covenant. Something less than truth satis- 
fies. It is common to hear a person say, 
"You do not expect me to speak as if I 
were upon my oath." Hence a great deal 
of incorrectness and inadvertency, short of 
falsehood, creeps into ordinary conversation ; 
and a kind of secondary or laic-truth is 
tolerated, where clergy-truth — oath-truth, 
by the nature of the circumstances, is not 
required. A Quaker knows none of this 
distinction. His simple affirmation being 
received, upon the most sacred occasions, 
without any further test, stamps a value 
upon the words which he is to use upon the 
most indifferent topics of life. He looks to 
them, naturally, with more severity. You 
can have of him no more than his word. 
He knows, if he is caught tripping in a 
casual expression, he forfeits, for himself at 
least, his claim to the invidious exemption. 



He knows that his syllables are weighed — 
and how far a consciousness of this particular 
watchfulness, exerted against a person, has a 
tendency to produce indirect answers, and a 
diverting of the question by honest means, 
might be illustrated, and the practice justi- 
fied, by a more sacred example than is proper 
to be adduced upon this occasion. The 
admirable presence of mind, which is noto- 
rious in Quakers upon all contingencies, 
might be traced to this imposed self-watch- 
fulness — if it did not seem rather an humble 
and secular scion of that old stock of reli- 
gious constancy, which never bent or fal- 
tered, in the Primitive Friends, or gave way 
to the winds of persecution, to the violence 
of judge or accuser, under trials and racking 
examinations. " You will never be the 
wiser, if I sit here answering your questions 
till midnight," said one of those upright 
Justicers to Penn, who had been putting 
law-cases with a puzzling subtlety. " There- 
after as the answers may be," retorted the 
Quaker. The astonishing composure of this 
people is sometimes ludicrously displayed in 
lighter instances. ■ — I was travelling in a 
stage-coach with three male Quakers, but- 
toned up in the straitest non-conformity of 
their sect. We stopped to bait at Andover, 
where a meal, partly tea apparatus, partly 
supper, was set before us. My friends con- 
fined themselves to the tea-table. I in my 
way took supper. When the landlady 
brought in the bill, the eldest of my com- 
panions discovered that she had charged 
for both meals. This was resisted. Mine 
hostess was very clamorous and positive. 
Some mild arguments were used on the part 
of the Quakers, for which the heated mind 
of the good lady seemed by no means a fit 
recipient. The guard came in with his usual 
peremptory notice. The Quakers pulled out 
their money and formally tendered it — so 
much for tea — I, in humble imitation, tender- 
ing mine — for the supper which I had taken. 
She would not relax in her demand. So they 
all three quietly put up their silver, as did 
myself, and marched out of the room, the 
eldest and gravest going first, with myself 
closing up the rear, who thought I could 
not do better than follow the example of 
such grave and warrantable personages. 
We got in. The steps went up. The coach 
drove off. The murmurs of mine hostess, 



WITCHES, AND OTHER NTCJIIT FEARS. 



353 



not very indistinctly or ambiguously pro- 
nounced, became after a time inaudible — and 
now my conscience, which the whimsical 
scene had for a while suspended, beginning 
to give some twitches, I waited, in the hope 
that some justification would be offered by 
these serious persons for the seeming injus- 
tice of their conduct. To my great surprise 



not a syllable was dropped on the subject. 
They sat as mute asat ;i meeting. At length 
the eldest of them broke silence, by inquiring 
of his next neighbour, " Easi thee heard h<»w 
indigos go at the [ndia Souse?" and the 
question operated as a soporific ou my moral 
feeling as far .as Exeter. 



WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS. 



We are too hasty when we set down our 
ancestors in the gross for fools, for the mon- 
strous inconsistencies (as they seem to us) 
involved in their creed of witchcraft. In the 
relations of this visible world we find them 
to have been as rational, and shrewd to 
detect an historic anomaly, as ourselves. 
But when once the invisible world was sup- 
posed to be opened, and the lawless agency 
of bad spirits assumed, what measures of 
probability, of decency, of fitness, or propor- 
tion — of that which distinguishes the likely 
from the palpable absurd — could they have 
to guide them in the rejection or admission 
of any particular testimony ? — That maidens 
pined away, wasting inwardly as their waxen 
images consumed before a fire — that corn 
was lodged, and cattle lamed — that whirl- 
winds uptore in diabolic revelry the oaks of 
the forest — or that spits and kettles only 
danced a fearful innocent vagary about some 
rustic's kitchen when no wind was stirring 
— were all equally probable where no law of 
agency was understood. That the prince of 
the powers of darkness, passing by the flower 
and pomp of the earth, should lay prepos- 
terous siege to the weak fantasy of indigent 
eld — has neither likelihood nor unlikelihood 
a priori to us, who have no measure to guess 
at his policy, or standard to estimate what 
rate those anile souls may fetch in the devil's 
market. Nor, when the wicked are ex- 
pressly symbolised by a goat, was it to be 
wondered at so much, that he should come 
sometimes in that body, and assert his meta- 
phor. — That the intercourse was opened at 
all between both worlds was perhaps the 
mistake — but that once assumed, I see no 
reason for disbelieving one attested story of 



this nature more than another on the score 
of absurdity. There is no law to judge <>f 
the lawless, or canon by which a dream may 
be criticised. 

I have sometimes thought that I could not 
have existed in the days of received witch- 
craft ; that I could not have slept in a village 
where one of those reputed hags dwelt. 
Our ancestors were bolder, or more obtuse* 
Amidst the universal belief that these 
wretches were in league with the author of 
all evil, holding hell tributary to their mut- 
tering, no simple Justice of the Peace seems 
to have scrupled issuing, or silly Headborough 
serving, a warrant upon them — as if they 
should subj:>oena Satan ! — Prospero in his 
boat, with his books and wand about him, 
suffers himself to be conveyed away at the 
mercy of his enemies to an unknown island. 
He might have raised a storm or two, we 
think, on the passage. His acquiescence is 
in exact analogy to the non-resistance of 
witches to the constituted powers. — What 
stops the Fiend in Spenser from tearing 
Guyon to pieces — or who had made it a con- 
dition of his prey that Guyon must take 
assay of the glorious bait — we have no guess. 
We do not know the laws of that country. 

From my childhood I was extremely in- 
quisitive about witches and witch-stories. 
My maid, and more legendary aunt, supplied 
me with good store. But I shall mention 
the accident which directed my curiosity 
originally into this channel. In my father's 
book-closet, the History of the Bible by 
Stackhouse occupied a distinguished station. 
The pictures with which it abounds — one of 
the ark, in particular, and another of Solo- 
mon's temple, delineated with all the fidelity 



354 



WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS. 



of ocular admeasurement, as if the artist had 
been upon the spot — attracted my childish 
attention. There was a picture, too, of the 
"Witch raising up Samuel, which I wish that 
I had never seen. We shall come to that 
hereafter. Stackhouse is in two huge tomes 
— and there was a pleasure in removing 
folios of that magnitude, which, with infinite 
straining, was as much as I could manage, 
from the situation which they occupied upon 
an upper shelf. I have not met with the 
work from that time to this, but I remember 
it consisted of Old Testament stories, orderly 
set down, with the objection appended to each 
story, and the solution of the objection regu- 
larly tacked to that. The objection was a 
summary of whatever difficulties had been 
opposed to the credibility of the history, by 
the shrewdness of ancient or modern in- 
fidelity, drawn up with an almost compli- 
mentary excess of candour. The solution 
was brief, modest, and satisfactory. The 
bane and antidote were both before you. To 
doubts so put, and so quashed, there seemed 
to be an end for ever. The dragon lay dead, 
for the foot of the veriest babe to trample on. 
But — like as was rather feared than realised 
from that slain monster in Spenser — from 
the womb of those crushed errors young 
dragonets would creep, exceeding the prowess 
of so tender a Saint George as myself to van- 
quish. The habit of expecting objections to 
every passage set me upon starting more ob- 
jections, for the glory of finding a solution of 
my own for them. I became staggered and 
perplexed, a sceptic in long-coats. The pretty 
Bible stories which I had read, or heard read 
in church, lost their purity and sincerity of 
impression, and were turned into so many 
historic or chronologic theses to be defended 
against whatever impugners. I was not to 
disbelieve them, but — the next thing to that 
— I was to be quite sure that some one or 
other would or had disbelieved them. Next 
to making a child an infidel is the letting 
him know that there are infidels at all. 
Credulity is the man's weakness, but the 
child's strength. O, how ugly sound scrip- 
tural doubts from the mouth of a babe and a 
suckling ! — I should have lost myself in 
these mazes, and have pined away, I think, 
with such unfit sustenance as these husks 
afforded, but for a fortunate piece of ill- 
fortune which about this time befel me. 



Turning over the picture of the ark with 
too much haste, I unhappily made a breach 
in its ingenious fabric — driving my incon- 
siderate fingers right through the two larger 
quadrupeds — the elephant and the camel — 
that stare (as well they might) out of the 
two last windows next the steerage in that 
unique piece of naval architecture. Stack- 
house was henceforth locked up, and became 
an interdicted treasure. With the book, the 
objections and solutions gradually cleared out 
of my head, and have seldom returned since 
in any force to trouble me. — But there was 
one impression which I had imbibed from 
Stackhouse which no lock or bar could shut 
out, and which was destined to try my 
childish nerves rather more seriously. — That 
detestable picture ! 

I was dreadfully alive to nervous terrors. 
The night-time, solitude, and the dark, were 
my hell. The sufferings I endured in this 
nature would justify the expression. I never 
laid my head on my pillow, I suppose, from 
the fourth to the seventh or eighth year of 
my life — so far as memory serves in things 
so long ago — without an assurance, which 
realised its own prophecy, of seeing some 
frightful spectre. Be old Stackhouse then 
acquitted in part, if I say, that to his picture 
of the Witch raising up Samuel — (O that 
old man covered with a mantle !) — I owe — 
not my midnight terrors, the hell of my in- 
fancy — but the shape and manner of their 
visitation. It was he who dressed up for me 
a hag that nightly sate upon my pillow — a 
sure bedfellow, when my aunt or my maid 
was far from me. All day long, while the 
book was permitted me, I dreamed wakiEg 
over his delineation, and at night (if I may 
use so bold an expression) awoke into sleep, 
and found the vision true. I durst not, 
even in the day-light, once enter the chamber 
where I slept, without my face turned to the 
window, aversely from the bed where my 
witch-ridden pillow was. Parents do not 
know what they do when they leave tender 
babes alone to go to sleep in the dark. The 
feeling about for a friendly arm — the hoping 
for a familiar voice — when they wake scream- 
ing — and find none to soothe them — what a 
terrible shaking it is to their poor nerves ! 
The keeping them up till midnight, through 
candle-light and the unwholesome hours, as 
they are called, — would, I am satisfied, in a 



WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS. 



355 



medical point of view, prove the better cau- 
tion. — That detestable picture, as I have said, 
gave the fashion to my dreams — if dreams 
they were — for the scene of them was inva- 
riably the room in which I lay. ' Had I 
never met with the picture, the fears would 
have come self-pictured in some shape or 
other — 

Headless bear, black man, or ape — 

but, as it was, my imaginations took that 
form. — It is not book, or picture, or the 
stories of foolish servants, which create these 
terrors in children. They can at most but 
give them a direction. Dear little T. H., 
who of all children has been brought up with 
the most scrupulous exclusion of every taint 
of superstition — who was never allowed to 
hear of goblin or apparition, or scarcely to be 
told of bad men, or to read or hear of any 
distressing story — finds all this world of fear, 
from which he has been so rigidly excluded 
ab extra, in his own " thick-coming fancies ; " 
and from his little midnight pillow, this 
nurse-child of optimism will start at shapes, 
unborrowed of tradition, in sweats to which 
the reveries of the cell-damned murderer are 
tranquillity. 

Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimseras dire 
— stories of Celseno and the Harpies — may 
reproduce themselves in the brain of super- 
stition — but they were there before. They 
are transcripts, types — the archetypes are in 
us, and eternal. How else should the recital 
of that, which we know in a waking sense to 
be false, come to affect us at all ? — or 

Names, whose sense we see not, 

Fray us with things that be not 1 

Is it that we naturally conceive terror from 
such objects, considered in their capacity of 
being able to inflict upon us bodily injury ? 
— O, least of all ! These terrors are of older 
standing. They date beyond body — or, with- 
out the body, they would have been the same. 
All the cruel, tormenting, defined devils in 
Dante — tearing, mangling, choking, stifling, 
scorching demons— are they one half so 
fearful to the spirit of a man, as the simple 
idea of a spirit unembodied following him— 

Like one that on a lonesome road 
Doth walk in fear and dread, 
And having once turn'd round, walks on 
And turns no more his head : 



Because he knows a frightful fiend 
Doth close behind him bread.* 

That the kind of fear here treated of is 
purely spiritual — that it is strong in propor- 
tion as it is objectless upon earth— that it 

predominates in the period of sinless infancy 
— are difficulties, the solution of which might 
afford some probable insight into our ante- 

mundane condition, and a peep at Least into 
the shadowland of pre-existence. 

My night-fancies have long ceased to be 
afflictive. I confess an occasional night- 
mare ; but I do not, as in early youth, keep 
a stud of them. Fiendish faces, with the 
extinguished taper, will come and look at me ; 
but I know them for mockeries, even while 
I cannot elude their presence, and I fight and 
grapple with them. For the credit of my 
imagination, I am almost ashamed to say how 
tame and prosaic my dreams are grown. 
They are never romantic, seldom even rural. 
They are of architecture and of buildings — 
cities abroad, which I have never seen and 
hardly have hoped to see. I have traversed, 
for the seeming length of a natural day, 
Kome, Amsterdam, Paris, Lisbon — their 
churches, palaces, squares, market-places, 
shops, suburbs, ruins, with an inexpressible 
sense of delight — a map-like distinctness of 
trace — and a day-light vividness of vision, 
that was all but being awake. — I have 
formerly travelled among the "Westmoreland 
fells — my highest Alps, — but they are objects 
too mighty for the grasp of my dreaming 
recognition ; and I have again and again 
awoke with ineffectual struggles of the inner 
eye, to make out a shape in any way what- 
ever, of Helvellyn. Methought I was in that 
country, but the mountains were gone. The 
poverty of my dreams mortifies me. There 
is Coleridge, at his will can conjure up icy 
domes, and pleasure-houses for Kubla Khan, 
and Abyssinian maids, and songs of Abara, 
and caverns, 

Where Alph, the sacred river, runs, 

to solace his night solitudes — when I cannot 
muster a fiddle. Barry Cornwall has his 
tritons and his nereids gamboling before him 
in nocturnal visions, and proclaiming sons 
born to Neptune — when my stretch of imagi- 
native activity can hardly, in the night 

* Mr. Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. 



356 



VALENTINE'S DAY. 



season, raise up the ghost of a fish-wife. To 
set my failures in somewhat a mortifying 
light— it was after reading the noble Dream 
of this poet, that my fancy ran strong upon 
these marine spectra ; and the poor plastic 
power, such as it is, within me set to work, 
to humour my folly in a sort of dream that 
very night. Methought I was upon the ocean 
billows at some sea nuptials, riding and 
mounted high, with the customary train 
sounding their conchs before me, (I myself, 
you may be sure, the leading god,) and jollily 
we went careering over the main, till just 
where Ino Leucothea should have greeted 
me (I think it was Ino) with a white embrace, 
the billows gradually subsiding, fell from a 
sea-roughness to a sea calm, and thence to a 
river motion, and that river (as happens in 
the familiarisation of dreams) was no other 



than the gentle Thames, which landed me in 
the wafture of a placid wave or two, alone, 
safe and inglorious, somewhere at the foot of 
Lambeth palace. 

The degree of the soul's creativeness in 
sleep might furnish no whimsical criterion of 
the quantum of poetical faculty resident in 
the same soul waking. An old gentleman, 
a friend of mine, and a humourist, used to 
carry this notion so far, that when he saw 
any stripling of his acquaintance ambitious 
of becoming a poet, his first question would 
be, — " Young man, what sort of dreams have 
you?" I have so much faith in my old 
friend's theory, that when I feel that idle 
vein returning upon me, I presently subside 
into my proper element of prose, remem- 
bering those eluding nereids, and that 
inauspicious inland landing. 



VALENTINE'S DAY. 



Hail to thy returning festival, old Bishop 
Valentine ! Great is thy name in the rubric, 
thou venerable Arch-flamen of Hymen ! 
Immortal Go-between ; who and what 
manner of person art thou? Art thou but 
a name, typifying the restless principle which 
impels poor humans to seek perfection in 
union ? or wert thou indeed a mortal prelate, 
with thy tippet and thy rochet, thy apron on, 
and decent lawn sleeves ? Mysterious per- 
sonage ! like unto thee, assuredly, there is 
no other mitred father in the calendar ; not 
Jerome, nor Ambrose, nor Cyril ; nor the 
consigner of undipt infants to eternal tor- 
ments, Austin, whom all mothers hate ; nor 
he who hated all mothers, Origen ; nor 
Bishop Bull, nor Archbishop Parker, nor 
Whitgift. Thou comest attended with 
thousands and ten thousands of little Loves, 
and the air is 

Brush'd with the hiss of rustling wings. 

Singing Cupids are thy choristers and thy 
precentors ; and instead of the crosier, the 
mystical arrow is borne before thee. , 

In other words, this is the day on which 
those charming little missives, ycleped Va- 
lentines, cross and intercross each other at 



every street and turning. The weary and 
all forspent twopenny postman sinks be- 
neath a load of delicate embarrassments, not 
his own. It is scarcely credible to what an 
extent this ephemeral courtship is carried on 
in this loving town, to the great enrichment 
of porters, and detriment of knockers and 
bell-wires. In these little visual interpreta- 
tions, no emblem is so common as the heart, 
— that little three-cornered exponent of all 
our hopes and fears, — the bestuck and 
bleeding heart ; it is twisted and tortured 
into more allegories and affectations than an 
opera-hat. What authority we have in his- 
tory or mythology for placing the head- 
quarters and metropolis of God Cupid in this 
anatomical seat rather than in any other, is 
not very clear ; but we have got it, and it 
will serve as well as any other. Else we 
might easily imagine, upon some other system 
which might have prevailed for anything 
which our pathology knows to the contrary, 
a lover addressing his mistress, in perfect 
simplicity of feeling, " Madam, my liver and 
fortune are entirely at your disposal;" or 
putting a delicate question, " Amanda, have 
you a midriff to bestow ?" But custom has 
settled these things, and awarded the seat of 



VALENTINE'S DAY. 



857 



sentiment to the aforesaid triangle, while its 
less fortunate neighbours wait at animal and 
anatomical distance. 

Not many sounds in life, and I include all 
urban and all rural sounds, exceed in in- 
terest a knock at the door. It " gives a very 
echo to the throne where hope is seated." 
But its issues seldom answer to this oracle 
within. It is so seldom that just the person 
we want to see comes. But of all the cla- 
morous visitations the welcomest in expecta- 
tion is the sound that ushers in, or seems to 
usher in, a Valentine. As the raven himself 
was hoarse that announced the fatal entrance 
of Duncan, so the knock of the postman on 
this day is light, airy, confident, and befitting 
one that bringeth good tidings. It is less 
mechanical than on other days ; you will 
say, " That is not the post I am sure." 
Visions of Love, of Cupids, of Hymens ! — 
delightful eternal common-places, which 
" having been will always be ;" which no 
school-boy nor school-man can write away ; 
having your irreversible throne in the fancy 
and affections — what are your transports, 
when the happy maiden, opening with care- 
ful finger, careful not to break the emble- 
matic seal, bursts upon the sight of some 
well-designed allegory, some type, some 
youthful fancy, not without verses — 

Lovers all, 
A madrigal, 

or some such device, not over abundant in 
sense — young Love disclaims it, — and not 
quite silly — something between wind and 
water, a chorus where the sheep might 
almost join the shepherd, as they did, or as I 
apprehend they did, in Arcadia. 

All Valentines are not foolish ; and I 
shall not easily forget thine, my kind friend 
(if I may have leave to call you so) E. B. — 
E. B. lived opposite a young maiden whom 
he had often seen, unseen, from his parlour 
window in C — e-street. She was all joyous- 
ness and innocence, and just of an age to 
enjoy receiving a Valentine, and just of a 
temper to bear the disappointment of missing 
one with good-humour. E. B. is an artist of 
no common powers ; in the fancy parts of 
designing, perhaps inferior to none ; his 
name is known at the bottom of many a 
well-executed vignette in the way of his 



profession, but no further ; for K. B. is 
modest, and the world meets nobody half- 
way. E. B. meditated how lie could repay 
this young maiden for many a favour which 
she had done him unknown ; for when a 
kindly face greets us, though but passing by, 
and never knows us again, nor we it, We 
should feel it as an obligation : and E. B. 
did. This good artist set himself at work to 
please the damsel. It was just before Va- 
lentine's day three years since. He wrought, 
unseen and unsuspected, a wondrous work. 
We need not say it was on the finest gilt 
paper with borders — full, not of common 
hearts and heartless allegory, but all the 
prettiest stories of love from Ovid, and older 
poets than Ovid (for E. B. is a scholar). 
There was Pyramus and Thisbe, and be sure 
Dido was not forgot, nor Hero and Leander, 
and swans more than sang in Cayster, with 
mottos and fanciful devices, such as beseemed, 
— a work in short of magic. Iris dipt the 
woof. This on Valentine's eve he com- 
mended to the all-swallowing indiscriminate 
orifice — (O ignoble trust !) — of the common 
post ; but the humble medium did its duty, 
and from his watchful stand, the next morn- 
ing he saw the cheerful messenger knock, 
and by and by the precious charge deli- 
vered. He saw, unseen, the happy girl un- 
fold the Valentine, dance about, clap her 
hands, as one after one the pretty emblems 
unfolded themselves. She danced about, not 
with light love, or foolish expectations, for 
she had no lover ; or, if she had, none she 
knew that could have created those bright 
images which delighted her. It was more 
like some fairy present ; a God-send, as our 
familiarly pious ancestors termed a benefit 
received where the benefactor was unknown. 
It would do her no harm. It would do her 
good for ever after. It is good to love the 
unknown. I only give this as a specimen of 
E. B. and his modest way of doing a concealed 
kindness. 

Good morrow to my Valentine, sings poor 
Ophelia ; and no better wish, but with better 
auspices, we wish to all faithful lovers, who 
are not too wise to despise old legends, but 
are content to rank themselves humble dio- 
cesans of old Bishop Valentine and his true 
church. 



358 



MY EELATIONS. 



MY EELATIONS. 



I am arrived at that point of life at which 
a man may account it a blessing, as it is a 
: singularity, if he have either of his parents 
surviving. I have not that felicity — and 
sometimes think feelingly of a passage in 
Browne's Christian Morals, where he speaks 
of a man that hath lived sixty or seventy 
years in the world. " In such a compass of 
time," he says, "a man may have a close 
apprehension what it is to be forgotten, 
when he hath lived to find none who could 
remember his father, or scarcely the friends 
of his youth, and may sensibly see with what 
a face in no long time Oblivion - will look 
upon himself." 

I had an aunt, a dear and good one. She 
was one whom single blessedness had soured 
to the world. She often used to say, that I 
was the only thing in it which she loved ; 
and, when she thought I was quitting it, she 
grieved over me with mother's tears. A 
partiality quite so exclusive my reason can- 
not altogether approve. She was from morn- 
ing till night poring over good books, and 
devotional exercises. Her favourite volumes 
were, Thomas a Kempis, in Stanhope's trans- 
lation ; and a Koman Catholic Prayer Book, 
with the matins and complines regularly set 
down, — terms which I was at that time too 
young to understand. She persisted in 
reading them, although admonished daily 
concerning their Papistical tendency ; and 
went to church every Sabbath as a good 
Protestant should do. These were the only 
books she studied ; though, I think at one 
period of her life, she told me, she had read 
with great satisfaction the Adventures of an 
Unfortunate Young Nobleman. Finding the 
door of the chapel in Essex-street open one 
day — it was in the infancy of that heresy — 
she went in, liked the sermon, and the 
manner of worship, and frequented it at in- 
tervals for some time after. She came not 
for doctrinal points, and never missed them. 
With some little asperities in her consti- 
tution, which I have above hinted at, she 
was a steadfast, friendly being, and a fine 



old Christian. She was a woman of strong 
sense, and a shrewd mind — extraordinary at 
a repartee ; one of the few occasions of her 
breaking silence — else she did not much 
value wit. The only secular employment I 
remember to have seen her engaged in, was, 
the splitting of French beans, and dropping 
them into a china basin of fair water. The 
odour of those tender vegetables to this day 
comes back upon my sense, redolent of 
soothing recollections. Certainly it is the 
most delicate of culinary operations. 

Male aunts, as somebody calls them, I had 
none — to remember. By the uncle's side I 
may be said to have been born an orphan. 
Brother, or sister, I never had any — to know 
them. A sister, I think, that should have 
been Elizabeth, died in both our infancies. 
What a comfort, or what a care, may I not 
have missed in her ! — But I have cousins 
sprinkled about in Hertfordshire — besides 
two, with whom 1 have been all my life in 
habits of the closest intimacy, and whom I 
may term cousins par excellence. These are 
James and Bridget Elia. They are older 
than myself by twelve, and ten, years ; and 
neither of them seems disposed, in matters 
of advice and guidance, to waive any of the 
prerogatives which primogeniture confers. 
May they continue still in the same mind ; 
and when they shall be seventy-five, and 
seventy-three, years old (I cannot spare them 
sooner), persist in treating me in my grand 
climacteric precisely as a stripling, or 
younger brother ! 

James is an inexplicable cousin. Nature 
hath her unities, which not every critic can 
penetrate : or, if we feel, we cannot 
explain them. The pen of Yorick, and of 
none since his, could have drawn J. E. entire 
— those fine Shandean lights and shades, 
which make up his story. I must limp after 
in my poor antithetical manner, as the fates 
have given me grace and talent. J. E. then 
— to the eye of a common observer at least — 
seemeth made up of contradictory principles. 
The genuine child of impulse, the frigid 



MY RELATIONS. 






philosopher of prudence — the phlegm of my 
cousin's doctrine is in variably at war with 
his temperament, which is high sanguine. 
With always some fire-new project in his 
brain, J. E. is the systematic opponent of 
innovation, and crier down of everything 
that has not stood the test of age and experi- 
ment. With a hundred fine notions chasing 
one another hourly in his fancy, he is startled 
at the least approach to the romantic in 
others : and, determined by his own sense in 
everything, commends you to the guidance 
of common sense on all occasions. — With a 
touch of the eccentric in all which he does, 
or says, he is only anxious that you should 
not commit yourself by doing anything ab- 
surd or singular. On my once letting slip at 
table, that I was not fond of a certain 
popular dish, he begged me at any rate not 
to say so — for the world would think me 
mad. He disguises a passionate fondness 
for works of high art (whereof he hath 
amassed a choice collection), under the pre- 
text of buying only to sell again — that his 
enthusiasm may give no encouragement to 
yours. Yet, if it were so, why does that 
piece of tender, pastoral Domenichino hang 
still by his wall ? — is the ball of his sight 
much, more dear to him % — or what picture- 
dealer can talk like him ? 

Whereas mankind in general are observed 
to warp their speculative conclusions to the 
bent of their individual humours, his theories 
are sure to be in diametrical opposition to 
his constitution. He is courageous as Charles 
of Sweden, upon instinct ; chary of his per- 
son upon principle, as a travelling Quaker. 
He has been preaching up to me, all my life, 
the doctrine of bowing to the great — the 
necessity of forms, and manner, to a man's 
getting on in the world. He himself never 
aims at either, that I can discover, — and has 
a spirit, that would stand upright in the 
presence of the Cham of Tartary. It is 
pleasant to hear him discourse of patience — 
extolling it as the truest wisdom — and to 
see him during the last seven minutes that 
his dinner is getting ready. Nature never 
ran up in her haste a more restless piece of 
workmanship than when she moulded this 
impetuous cousin — and Art never turned out 
a more elaborate orator than he can display 
himself to be, upon this favourite topic of 
the advantages of quiet and contentedness 



in the slate, whatever it be, that we are 
placed in. He is triumphant on this theme, 

when he lias you safe in one of those short 
stages that ply for the western road, in a 
very obstructing manner, at the foot of John 
Murray's street — where you get in when it 
is empty, and are expected to wait till (lie 
vehicle hath completed her just freight — a 
trying three quarters of an hour to Bome 
people. He wonders at your fidgetiness. — 
"where could we be better than we art;, thus 
sitting, thus consulting?" — "prefers, for his 
part, a state of rest to locomotion," — with an 
eye all the while upon the coachman, — 
till at length, waxing out of all patience, 
at your want of it, he breaks out into 
a pathetic remonstrance at the fellow for 
detaining us so long over the time which 
he had professed, and declares peremptorily, 
that " the gentleman in the coach is deter- 
mined to get out, if he does not drive on that 
instant." 

Very quick at inventing an argument, or 
detecting a sophistry, he is incapable of at- 
tending you in any chain of arguing. Indeed 
he makes wild work with logic ; and seems 
to jump at most admirable conclusions by 
some process, not at all akin to it. Conso- 
nantly enough to this, he hath been heard to 
deny, upon certain occasions, that there 
exists such a faculty at all in man as reason; 
and wondereth how man came first to have 
a conceit of it — enforcing his negation with 
all the might of reasoning he is master of. He 
has some speculative notions against laughter, 
and will maintain that laughing is not natural 
to him — when peradventure the next moment 
his lungs shall crow like Chanticleer. He 
says some of the best things in the world — 
and declareth that wit is his aversion. It 
was he who said, upon seeing the Eton boys 
at play in their grounds — What a pity to 
think, that these fine ingenuous lads in a few 
years loill all be changed into frivolous Members 
of Parliament ! 

His youth was fiery, glowing, tempestuous 
— and in age he discovereth no symptom of 
cooling. This is that which I admire in him. 
I hate people who meet Time half-way. I 
am for no compromise with that inevitable 
spoiler. While he lives, J. E. will take his 
swing. — It does me good, as I walk towards 
the street of my daily avocation, on some 
fine May morning, to meet him marching in a 



360 



MY RELATIONS. 



quite opposite direction, with a jolly handsome 
presence, and shining sanguine face, that 
indicates some purchase in his eye — a Claude 
— or a Hobbima — for much of his enviable 
leisure is consumed at Christie's and Phillips's 
— or where not, to pick up pictures, and such 
gauds. On these occasions he mostly stop- 
peth me, to read a short lecture on the ad- 
vantage a person like me possesses above 
himself, in having his time occupied with 
business which he must do — assureth me that 
he often feels it hang heavy on his hands — 
wishes he had fewer holidays — and goes off — 
Westward Ho ! — chanting a tune, to Pall 
Mall — perfectly convinced that he has con- 
vinced me — while I proceed in my opposite 
direction tuneless. 

It is pleasant, again, to see this Professor 
of Indifference doing the honours of his new 
purchase, when he has fairly housed it. You 
must view it in every light, till he has found 
the best — placing it at this distance, and at 
that, but always suiting the focus of your 
sight to his own. You must spy at it 
through your fingers, to catch the aerial 
perspective — though you assure him that to 
you the landscape shows much more agree- 
able without that artifice. Woe be to the 
luckless wight who does not only not respond 
to his rapture, but who should drop an un- 
seasonable intimation of preferring one of 
his anterior bargains to the present ! — The 
last is always his best hit — his " Cynthia of 
the minute." — Alas ! how many a mild Ma- 
donna have I known to come in — a Raphael ! 
— keep its ascendancy for a few brief moons 
— then, after certain intermedial degrada- 
tions, from the front drawing-room to the 
back gallery, thence to the dark parlour, — 
adopted in turn by each of the Carracci, 
under successive lowering ascriptions of 
filiation, mildly breaking its fall — consigned 
to the oblivious lumber-room, go out at last a 
Lucca Giordano, or plain Carlo Maratti ! — 
which things when I beheld — musing upon 
the chances and mutabilities of fate below, 
hath made me to reflect upon the altered 
condition of great personages, or that woeful 
Queen of Richard the Second — 

set forth in pomp, 



She came adorned hither like sweet May. 
Sent back like Hallowmass or shortest day. 

With great love for you, J. E. hath but a 



limited sympathy with what you feel or do. 
He lives in a world of his own, and makes 
slender guesses at what passes in your mind. 
He never pierces the marrow of your habits. 
He will tell an old-established play-goer, that 
Mr. Such-a-one, of So-and-so (naming one of 
the theatres), is a very lively comedian — as 
a piece of news ! He advertised me but the 
other day of some pleasant green lanes which 
he had found out for me, knowing me to be a 
great walker, in my own immediate vicinity 
— who have haunted the identical spot any 
time these twenty years ! — He has not much 
respect for that class of feelings which goes 
by the name of sentimental. He applies the 
definition of real evil to bodily sufferings 
exclusively — and rejecteth all others as 
imaginary. He is affected by the sight, or 
the bare supposition, of a creature in pain, 
to a degree which I have never witnessed 
out of womankind. A constitutional acute- 
ness to this class of sufferings may in part 
account for this. The animal tribe in par- 
ticular he taketh under his especial protec- 
tion. A broken-winded or spur-galled horse 
is sure to find an advocate in him. An over- 
loaded ass is his client for ever. He is the 
apostle to the brute kind — the never-failing 
friend of those who have none to care for 
them. The contemplation of a lobster boiled, 
or eels skinned alive, will wring him so, that 
" all for pity he could die." It will take the 
savour from his palate, and the rest from his 
pillow, for days and nights. With the in- 
tense feeling of Thomas Clarkson, he wanted 
only the steadiness of pursuit, and unity of 
purpose, of that "true yoke-fellow with 
Time," to have effected as much for the 
Animal as he hath done for the Negro Crea- 
tion. But my uncontrollable cousin is but 
imperfectly formed for purposes which de- 
mand co-operation. He cannot wait. His 
amelioration plans must be ripened in a day. 
For this reason he has cut but an equivocal 
figure in benevolent societies, and combina- 
tions for the alleviation of human sufferings. 
His zeal constantly makes him to outrun, 
and put out, his coadjutors. He thinks of 
relieving,— while they think of debating. 
He was black-balled out of a society for the 
Relief of* ••».,**■**♦*.* 
because the fervour of his humanity toiled 
beyond the formal apprehension, and creep- 
ing processes, of his associates. I shall always 



MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE 



861 



consider this distinction as a patent of nobi- 
lity in the Elia family ! 

Do I mention these seeming inconsisten- 
cies to smile at, or upbraid, my unique cousin 1 
Marry, heaven, and all good maimers, and 
the understanding that should be between 
kinsfolk, forbid ! — With all the strange- 
nesses of this strangest of the Elias — I would 
not have him in one jot or tittle other than 
he is ; neither would I barter or exchange 



my wild kinsman for the most exact, regular, 

and every way consistent kinsman breathing. 

In my next, reader, I may perhaps give 

you some account of my cousin Bridget — if 

you are not already surfeited wit.li cousins — 
and take you by the hand, if you arc willing 
to go with as, on an excursion which we 
made a summer or two since, in search of 
more cousins — 
Through the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire. 



MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 



Bridget Elia has been my housekeeper 
for many a long year. I have obligations to 
Bridget, extending beyond the period of 
memory. We house together, old bachelor 
and maid, in a sort of double singleness ; 
with such tolerable comfort, upon the whole, 
that I, for one, find in myself no sort of dis- 
position to go out upon the mountains, with- 
the rash king's offspring, to bewail my celi- 
bacy. We agree pretty well in our tastes 
and habits — yet so, as " with a difference." 
We are generally in harmony, with occasional 
bickerings — as it should be among near re- 
lations. Our sympathies are rather under- 
stood, than expressed ; and once, upon my 
dissembling a tone in my voice more kind 
than ordinary, my cousin burst into tears, 
and complained that I was altered. We are 
both great readers in different directions. 
While I am hanging over (for the thousandth 
time) some passage in old Burton, or one of 
his strange contemporaries, she is abstracted 
in some modern tale, or adventure, whereof 
our common reading-table is daily fed with 
assiduously fresh supplies. Narrative teases 
me. I have little concern in the progress of 
events. She must have a story — well, ill, or 
indifferently told — so there be life stirring in 
it, and plenty of good or evil accidents. The 
fluctuations of fortune in fiction — and almost 
in real life — have ceased to interest, or 
operate but dully upon me. Out-of-the-way 
humours and opinions — heads with some 
diverting twist in them — the oddities of 
authorship please me most. My cousin has 
a native disrelish of anything that sounds 
odd or bizarre. Nothing goes down with 



her, that is quaint, irregular, or out of the 
road of common sympathy. She " holds 
Nature more clever." I can pardon her 
blindness to the beautiful obliquities of the 
Religio Medici ; but she must apologise to 
me for certain disrespectful insinuations, 
which she has been pleased to throw out 
latterly, touching the intellectuals of a dear 
favourite of mine, of the last century but 
one — the thrice noble, chaste, and virtuous, 
— but again somewhat fantastical, and ori- 
ginal brained, generous Margaret Newcastle. 

It has been the lot of my cousin, oftener 
perhaps than I could have wished, to have 
had for her associates and mine, free-thinkers 
— leaders, and disciples, of novel philosophies 
and systems ; but she neither wrangles with, 
nor accepts, their opinions. That which was 
good and venerable to her, when a child, re- 
tains its authority over her mind still. She 
never juggles or plays tricks with her under- 
standing. 

We are both of us inclined to be a little 
too positive ; and I have observed the result 
of our disputes to be almost uniformly this 
— that in matters of fact, dates, and circum- 
stances, it turns out, that I was in the right, 
and my cousin in the wrong. But where we 
have differed upon moral points ; upon some- 
thing proper to be done, or let alone ; what- 
ever heat of opposition, or steadiness of con- 
viction, I set out with, I am sure always, in 
the long-run, to be brought over to her way 
of thinking. 

I must touch upon the foibles of my kins- 
woman with a gentle hand, for Bridget does 
not like to be told of her faults. She hath 



3C2 



MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 



an awkward trick (to say no worse of it) of 
reading in company : at which times she will 
answer yes or no to a question, without fully 
understanding its purport — which is pro- 
voking, and derogatory in the highest degree 
to the dignity of the putter of the said ques- 
tion. Her presence of mind is equal to the 
most pressing trials of life, but will some- 
times desert her upon trifling occasions. 
When the purpose requires it, and is a thing 
of moment, she can speak to it greatly ; but 
in matters which are not stuff of the con- 
science, she hath been known sometimes to 
let slip a word less seasonably. 

Her education in youth was not much at- 
tended to ; and she happiiy missed all that 
train of female garniture, which passeth by 
the name of accomplishments. She was 
tumbled early, by accident or design, into a 
spacious closet of good old English reading, 
without much selection or prohibition, and 
browsed at will upon that fair and whole- 
some pasturage. Had I twenty girls, they 
should be brought up exactly in this fashion. 
I know not whether their chance in wedlock 
might not be diminished by it ; but I can 
answer for it, that it makes (if the worst 
come to the worst) most incomparable old 
maids. 

In a season of distress, she is the truest 
comforter ; but in the teasing accidents, and 
minor perplexities, which do not call out the 
will to meet them, she sometimes maketh 
matters worse by an excess of participation. 
If she does not always divide your trouble, 
upon the pleasanter occasions of life she is 
sure always to treble your satisfaction. She 
is excellent to be at a play with, or upon a 
visit ; but best, when she goes a journey with 
you. 

We made an excursion together a few 
summers since, into Hertfordshire, to beat 
up the quarters of some of our less-known 
relations in that fine corn country. 

The oldest thing I remember is Mackery 
End ; or Mackarel End, as it is spelt, perhaps 
more properly, in some old maps of Hertford- 
shire ; a farm-house,— delightfully situated 
within a gentle walk from Wheathampstead. 
I can just remember having been there, on a 
visit to a great-aunt, when I was a child, 
under the care of Bridget ; who, as I have 
said, is older than myself by some ten years. 
I wish that I could throw into a heap the 



remainder of our joint existences ; that we 
might share them in equal division. But 
that is impossible. The house was at that 
time in the occupation of a substantial 
yeoman, who had married my grandmother's 
sister. His name was Gladman. My grand- 
mother was a Bruton, married to a Field. 
The Gladmans and the Brutons are still 
flourishing in that part of the county, but 
the Fields are almost extinct. More than 
forty years had elapsed since the visit I 
speak of ; and, for the greater portion of that 
period, we had lost sight of the other two 
branches also. Who or what sort of persons 
inherited Mackery End — kindred or strange 
folk — we were afraid almost to conjecture, 
but determined some day to explore. 

By somewhat a circuitous route, taking 
the noble park at Luton in our way from 
St. Albans, we arrived at the spot of our 
anxious curiosity about noon. The sight of 
the old farm-house, though every trace of it 
was effaced from my recollection, affected me 
with a pleasure which I had not experienced 
for many a year. For though /had forgotten 
it, we had never forgotten being there together, 
and we had been talking about Mackery End 
all our lives, till memory on my part became 
mocked with a phantom of itself, and I 
thought I knew the aspect of a place, which, 
when present, O how unlike it was to that, 
which I had conjured up so many times 
instead of it ! 

Still the air breathed balmily about it; 
the season was in the " heart of June," and 
I could say with the poet, 

But thou, that didst appear so fair 

To fond imagination, 
Dost rival in the light of day 

Her delicate creation ! 

Bridget's was more a waking bliss than 
mine, for she easily remembered her old 
acquaintance again — some altered features, 
of course, a little grudged at. At first, 
indeed, she was ready to disbelieve for joy; 
but the scene soon re-confirmed itself in her 
affections — and she traversed every out-post 
of the old mansion, to the wood-house, the 
orchard, the place where the pigeon-house 
had stood (house and birds were alike flown) 
— with a breathless impatience of recognition, 
which was more pardonable perhaps than 
decorous at the age of fifty odd. But Bridget 
in some things is behind her years. 



MY FIRST PLAY. 



3C3 



The only thing left was to get into the 
house— and that was a difficulty which to 
me singly would have been insurmountable ; 
for I am terribly shy in making myself 
known to strangers and out-of-date kinsfolk. 
Love, stronger than scruple, winged my 
cousin in without me ; but she soon returned 
with a . creature that might have sat to a 
sculptor for the image of Welcome. It was 
the youngest of the Gladmans ; who, by 
marriage with a Bruton, had become mistress 
of the old mansion. A comely brood are 
the Brutons. Six of them, females, were 
noted as the handsomest young women in 
the county. But this adopted Bruton, in 
my mind, was better than they all — more 
comely. She was born too late to have 
remembered me. She just recollected in 
early life to have had her cousin Bridget 
once pointed out to her, climbing a stile. 
But the name of kindred, and of cousinship, 
was enough. Those slender ties, that prove 
slight as gossamer in the rending atmosphere 
of a metropolis, bind faster, as we found it, in 
hearty, homely, loving Hertfordshire. In 
five minutes we were as thoroughly acquainted 
as if we had been born and bred up together ; 
were familiar, even to the calling each other 
by our Christian names. So Christians 
should call one another. To have seen 
Bridget, and her — it was like the meeting of 
the two scriptural cousins ! There was a 
grace and dignity, an amplitude of form and 
stature, answering to her mind, in this 
farmer's wife, which would have shined in a 



palace — or so we thought it. We were made 
welcome by husband and wife equally — we, 
and our friend that was with us. — I had 
almost forgotten him — but B. F. will not so 
soon forget that meeting, if peradventure he 
shall read this on the far distant shores where 
the kangaroo haunts. The fatted calf was 
made ready, or rather was already so, as if 
in anticipation of our coming ; and, after an 
appropriate glass of native wine, never let 
me forget with what honest pride this hospi- 
table cousin made us proceed to Wheatlmmp- 
stead, to introduce us (as some new-found 
rarity) to her mother and sister Gladmans, 
who did indeed know something more of us, 
at a time when she almost knew nothing. — 
With what corresponding 'kindness we were 
received by them also — how Bridget's 
memory, exalted by the occasion, warmed 
into a thousand half-obliterated recollections 
of things and persons, to my utter astonish- 
ment, and her own — and to the astoundment 
of B. F. who sat by, almost the only thing 
that was not a cousin there, — old effaced 
images of more than half-forgotten names 
and circumstances still crowding back upon 
her, as words written in lemon come out 
upon exposure to a friendly warmth, — when 
I forget all this, then may my country cousins 
forget me ; and Bridget no more remember, 
that in the days of weakling infancy I was 
her tender charge — as I have been her care 
in foolish manhood since — in those pretty 
pastoral walks, long ago, about Mackery 
End, in Hertfordshire. 



MY FIRST PLAY. 



At the north end of Cross-court there yet 
stands a portal, of some architectural preten- 
sions, though reduced to humble use, serving 
at present for an entrance to a printing-office. 
This old door-way, if you are young, reader, 
you may not know was the identical pit 
entrance to old Drury — Garrick's Drury — all 
of it that is left. I never pass it without 
shaking some forty years from off my 
shoulders, recurring to the evening when I 
passed through it to see my first play. The 
afternoon had been wet, and the condition of 



our going (the elder folks and myself) was, 
that the rain should cease. With what a 
beating heart did I watch from the window 
the puddles, from the stillness of which I was 
taught to prognosticate the desired cessation ! 
I seem to remember the last spurt, and the 
glee with which I ran to announce it. 

We went with orders, which my godfather 
F. had sent us. He kept the oil shop (now 
Davies's) at the corner of Featherstone- 
buildings, in Holborn. F. was a tall grave 
person, lofty in speech and had pretensions 



364 



MY FIRST PLAY. 



above his rank. He associated in those days 
with John Palmer, the comedian, whose gait 
aud bearing he seemed to copy ; if John 
(which is quite as likely) did not rather 
borrow somewhat of his manner from my 
godfather. He was also known to, and 
visited by, Sheridan. It was to his house in 
Holborn that young Brinsley brought his 
first wife on her elopement with him from 
a boarding-school at Bath — the beautiful 
Maria Linley. My parents were present 
(over a quadrille table) when he arrived in 
the evening with his harmonious charge. 
From either of these connexions it may be 
inferred that my godfather could command 
an order for the then Drury-lane theatre at 
pleasure — and, indeed, a pretty liberal issue 
of those cheap billets, in Brinsley's easy 
autograph, I have heard him say was the 
sole remuneration which he had received for 
many years' nightly illumination of the 
orchestra and various avenues of that theatre 
— and he was content it should be so. The 
honour of Sheridan's familiarity — or sup- 
posed familiarity — was better to my godfather 
than money. 

F. was the most gentlemanly of oilmen ; 
grandiloquent, yet courteous. His delivery 
of the commonest matters of fact was 
Ciceronian. He had two Latin words almost 
constantly in his mouth (how odd sounds 
Latin from an oilman's lips !), which my 
better knowledge since has enabled me to 
correct. In strict pronunciation they should 
have been sounded vice versa — but in those 
young years they impressed me with more 
awe than they would now do, read aright 
from Seneca or Varro — in his own peculiar 
pronunciation, monosyllabically elaborated, 
or Anglicised, into something like verse verse. 
By an imposing manner, and the help of 
these distorted syllables, he climbed (but 
that was little) to the highest parochial 
honours which St. Andrew's has to bestow. 

He is dead— and thus much I thought due 
to his memory, both for my first orders 
(little wondrous talismans ! — slight keys, and 
insignificant to outward sight, but opening 
to me more than Arabian paradises !) and 
moreover that by his testamentary benefi- 
cence I came into possession of the only 
landed property which I could ever call my 
own — situate near the road-way village of 
pleasant Puckeridge, in Hertfordshire. When 



I journeyed down to take possession, and 
planted foot on my own ground, the stately 
habits of the donor descended upon me, and 
I strode (shall I confess the vanity ?) with 
larger paces over my allotment of three 
quarters of an acre, with its commodious 
mansion in the midst, with the feeling of an 
English freeholder that all betwixt sky and 
centre was my own. The estate has passed 
into more prudent hands, and nothing but 
an agrarian can restore it. 

In those days were pit orders. Beshrew 
the uncomfortable manager who abolished 
them ! — with one of these we went. I 
remember the waiting at the door — not that 
which is left — but between that and an 
inner door in shelter — O when shall I be 
such an expectant again ! — with the cry of 
nonpareils, an indispensable play-house ac- 
companiment in those days. As near as I 
can recollect, the fashionable pronunciation 
of the theatrical fruiteresses then was, 
" Chase some oranges, chase some numparels, 
chase a bill of the play ; " — chase pro chuse. 
But when we got in, and I beheld the green 
curtain that veiled a heaven to my imagina- 
tion, which was soon to be disclosed — the 
breathless anticipations I endured ! I had 
seen something like it in the plate prefixed 
to Troilus and Cressida, in Bowe's Shak- 
speare — the tent scene with Diomede — and 
a sight of that plate can always bring back 
in a measure the feeling of that evening. — 
The boxes at that time, full of well-dressed 
women of quality, projected over the pit : 
and the pilasters reaching down were adorned 
with a glistering substance (I know not what) 
under glass (as it seemed), resembling — a 
homely fancy — but I judged it to be sugar- 
candy — yet, to my raised imagination, divested 
of its homelier qualities, it appeared a glorified 
candy ! — The orchestra lights at length arose, 
those " fair Auroras ! " Once the bell 
sounded. It was to ring out yet once again 
— and, incapable of the anticipation, I 
reposed my shut eyes in a sort of resignation 
upon the maternal lap. It rang the second 
time. The curtain drew up — I was not past 
six years old and the play was Artaxerxes ! 

I had dabbled a little in the Universal 
History — the ancient part of it — and here 
was the court of Persia. — It was being 
admitted to a sight of the past. I took no 
proper interest in the action going on, for I 



MY FIRST PLAY. 



365 



understood not its import — but I heard the 
word Darius, and I was in the midst of 
Daniel. All feeling was absorbed in vision. 
Gorgeous vests, gardens, palaces, princesses, 
passed before me. I knew not players. I 
was in Persepolis for the time, and the 
burning idol of their devotion almost con- 
verted me into a worshipper. I was awe- 
struck, and believed those significations to be 
something more than elemental fires. It 
was all enchantment and a dream. No such 
pleasure has since visited me but in dreams. 
— Harlequin's invasion followed ; where, I 
remember, the transformation of the magis- 
trates into reverend beldams seemed to me 
a piece of grave historic justice, .and the 
tailor carrying his own head to be as sober 
a verity as the legend of St. Denys. 

The next play to which I was taken was 
the Lady of the Manor, of which, with the 
exception of some scenery, very faint traces 
are left in my memory. It was followed by 
a pantomime, called Lun's Ghost — a satiric 
touch, I apprehend, upon Rich, not long since 
dead — but to my apprehension (too sincere 
for satire), Lun was as remote a piece of 
antiquity as Lud — the father of a line of 
Harlequins — transmitting his dagger of lath 
(the wooden sceptre) through countless ages. 
I saw the primeval Motley come from his 
silent tomb in a ghastly vest of white patch- 
work, like the apparition of a dead rainbow. 
So Harlequins (thought I) look when they 
are dead. 

My third play followed in quick succession. 
It was the Way of the World. I think 
I must have sat at it as grave as a judge ; 
for, I remember, the hysteric affectations of 
good Lady Wishfort affected me like some 
solemn tragic passion. Eobinson Crusoe 
followed ; in which Crusoe, man Friday, and 
the parrot, were as good and authentic as 
in the story. — The clownery and pantaloonery 
of these pantomimes have clean passed out of 
my head. I believe, I no more laughed at 
them, than at the same age I should have 
been disposed to laugh at the grotesque 
Gothic heads (seeming to me then replete 
with devout meaning) that gape, and grin, in 
stone around the inside of the old Round 
Church (my church) of the Templars. 



I saw these plays in the season 1781-2, 
when I was from six to seven years old. 
After the intervention of six or seven other 
years (for at school all play-going was in- 
hibited) I again entered the doors of a 
theatre. That old Artaxerxes evening had 
never done ringing in my fancy. I expected 
the same feelings to come again with the 
same occasion. But we differ from ourselves 
less at sixty and sixteen, than the latter does 
from six. In that interval what had I not 
lost ! At the first period I knew nothing, 
understood nothing, discriminated nothing. 
I felt all, loved all, wondered all — 

Was nourished, I could not tell how — 

I had left the temple a devotee, and was 
returned a rationalist. The same things 
were there materially ; but the emblem, the 
reference, was gone ! — The green curtain was 
no longer a veil, drawn between two worlds, 
the unfolding of which was to bring back 
past ages to present a " royal ghost," — but a 
certain quantity of green baize, which was 
to separate the audience for a given time 
from certain of their fellow-men who were 
to come forward and pretend those parts. 
The lights — the orchestra lights — came up a 
clumsy machinery. The first ring, and the 
second ring, was now but a trick of the 
prompter's bell — which had been, like the 
note of the cuckoo, a phantom of a voice, 
no hand seen or guessed at which ministered 
to its warning. The actors were men and 
women painted. I thought the fault was in 
them ; but it was in myself, and the altera- 
tion which those many centuries, — of six 
short twelvemonths — had wrought in me. 
— Perhaps it was fortunate for me that the 
play of the evening was but an indifferent 
comedy, as it gave me time to crop some 
unreasonable expectations, which might have 
interfered with the genuine emotions with 
which I was soon after enabled to enter upon 
the first appearance to me of Mrs. Siddons 
in Isabella. Comparison and retrospection 
soon yielded to the present attraction of 
the scene ; and the theatre became to me, 
upon a new stock, the most delightful of 
recreations. 



366 



MODERN GALLANTRY. 



MODEEN GALLANTEY. 



In comparing modern with ancient man- 
ners, we are pleased to compliment ourselves 
upon the point of gallantry ; a certain obse- 
quiousness, or deferential respect, which 
we are supposed to pay to females, as 
females. 

I shall believe that this principle actuates 
our conduct, when I can forget, that in the 
nineteenth century of the era from which 
we date our civility, we are but just begin- 
ning to leave off the very frequent practice 
of whipping females in public, in common 
with the coarsest male offenders. 

I shall believe it to be influential, when 
I can shut my eyes to the fact, that in 
England women are still occasionally — 
hanged. 

I shall believe in it, when actresses are no 
longer subject to be hissed off a stage by 
gentlemen. 

I shall believe in it, when Dorimant hands 
a fish-wife across the kennel ; or assists the 
apple-woman to pick up her wandering 
fruit, which some unlucky dray has just 
dissipated. 

I shall believe in it, when the Dorimants 
in humbler life, who would be thought in 
their way notable adepts in this refinement, 
shall act upon it in places where they are not 
known, or think themselves not observed — 
when I shall see the traveller for some rich 
tradesman part with his admired box-coat, 
to spread it over the defenceless shoulders of 
the poor woman, who is passing to her parish 
on the roof of the same stage-coach with 
him, drenched in the rain — when I shall no 
longer see a woman standing up in the pit of 
a London theatre, till she is sick and faint 
with the exertion, with men about her, 
seated at their ease, and jeering at her dis- 
tress ; till one, that seems to have more 
manners or conscience than the rest, signi- 
ficantly declares " she should be welcome to 
his seat, if she were a little younger and 
handsomer." Place this dapper warehouse- 
man, or that rider, in a circle of their own 
female acquaintance, and you shall confess 



you have not seen a politer-bred man in 
Lothbury. 

Lastly, I shall begin to believe that there is 
some such principle influencing our conduct, 
when more than one-half of the drudgery 
and coarse servitude of the world shall cease 
to be performed by women. 

Until that day comes, I shall never believe 
this boasted point to be anything more than 
a conventional fiction ; a pageant got up 
between the sexes, in a certain rank, and at 
a certain time of life, in which both find 
their account equally. 

I shall be even disposed to rank it among 
the salutary fictions of life, when in polite 
circles I shall see the same attentions paid 
to age as to youth, to homely features as to 
handsome, to coarse complexions as to clear 
— to the woman, as she is a woman, not as 
she is a beauty, a fortune, or a title. 

I shall believe it to be something more 
than a name, when a well-dressed gentleman 
in a well-dressed company can advert to the 
topic of female old age without exciting, and 
intending to excite, a sneer : — when the 
phrases " antiquated virginity," and such a 
one has " overstood her market," pronounced 
in good company, shall raise immediate 
offence in man, or woman, that shall hear 
them spoken. 

Joseph Paice, of Bread-street-hill, mer- 
chant, and one of the Directors of the South- 
Sea company — the same to whom Edwards, 
the Shakspeare commentator, has addressed 
a fine sonnet — was the only pattern of con- 
sistent gallantry I have met with. He took 
me under his shelter at an early age, and 
bestowed some pains upon me. I owe to his 
precepts and example whatever there is of 
the man of business (and that is not much) 
in my composition. It was not his fault 
that I did not profit more. Though bred a 
Presbyterian, and brought up a merchant, 
he was the finest gentleman of his time. 
He had not one system of attention to 
females in the arawing-room, and another in 
the shop, or at the stall. I do not mean that 



MODERN GALLANTRY. 



367 



he made no distinction. But he never lost 
sight of sex, or overlooked it in the casual- 
ties of a disadvantageous situation. I have 
seen him stand bareheaded — smile if you 
please — to a poor servant girl, while she has 
been inquiring of him the way to some 
street — in such a posture of unforced civility, 
as neither to embarrass her in the accept- 
ance, nor himself in the offer, of it. He was 
no dangler, in the common acceptation of 
the word, after women : but he reverenced 
and upheld, in every form in which it came 
before him, womanhood. I have seen him — 
nay, smile not— tenderly escorting a market- 
woman, whom he had encountered in a 
shower, exalting his umbrella over her poor 
basket of fruit, that it might receive no 
damage, with as much carefulness as if she 
had been a Countess. To the reverend form 
of Female Eld he would yield the wall 
(though it were to an ancient beggar-woman) 
with more ceremony than we can afford to 
show our graudams. He was the Preux 
Chevalier of Age ; the Sir Calidore, or- 
Sir Tristan, to those who have no Calidores 
or Tristans to defend them. The roses, that 
had long faded thence, still bloomed for him 
in those withered and yellow cheeks. 

He was never married, but in his youth 
he paid his addresses to the beautiful Susan 
Winstanley — old Winstanley's daughter of 
Clapton — who dying in the early days of 
their courtship, confirmed in him the reso- 
lution of perpetual bachelorship. It was 
during their short courtship, he told me, 
that he had been one day treating his mis- 
tress with a profusion of civil speeches — the 
common gallantries — to which kind of thing 
she had hitherto manifested no repugnance 
— but in this instance with no effect. He 
could not obtain from her a decent acknow- 
ledgment in return. She rather seemed to 
resent his compliments. He could not set it 
down to caprice, for the lady had always 
shown herself above that littleness. When 
he ventured on the following day, finding 
her a little better humoured, to expostulate 
with her on her coldness of yesterday, she 
confessed, with her usual frankness, that she 
had no sort of dislike to his attentions ; 
that she could even endure some high-flown 
compliments ; that a young woman placed 
in her situation had a right to expect all sort 
of civil things said to her ; that she hoped 



she could digest a dose of adulation, short 
of insincerity, with as little injury to her 
humility as most young women : but that — 
a little before he had commenced his compli- 
ments — she had overheard him by accident, 
in rather rough language, rating a young 
woman, who had not brought home his 
cravats quite to the appointed time, and she 
thought to herself, "As I am Miss Susan 
Winstanley, and a young lady — a reputed 
beauty, and known to be a fortune, — I can 
have my choice of the finest speeches from 
the mouth of this very fine gentleman who 
is courting me — but if I had been poor 
Mary Such-a-one {naming the milliner), — 
and had failed of bringing home the cravats 
to the appointed hour — though perhaps I had 
sat up half the night to forward them — what 
sort of compliments should I have received 
then 1 — And my woman's pride came to my 
assistance ; and I thought, that if it were 
only to do me honour, a female, like myself, 
might have received handsomer usage : and 
I was determined not to accept any. fine 
speeches, to the compromise of that sex, the 
belonging to which was after all my strongest 
claim and title to them." 

I think the lady discovered both gene- 
rosity, and a just way of thinking, in this 
rebuke which she gave her lover ; and I have 
sometimes imagined, that the uncommon 
strain of courtesy, which through life regu- 
lated the actions and behaviour of my friend 
towards all of womankind indiscriminately, 
owed its happy origin to this seasonable 
lesson from the lips of his lamented mistress. 

I wish the whole female world would en- 
tertain the same notion of these things that 
Miss Winstanley showed. Then we should 
see something of the spirit of consistent 
gallantry ; and no longer witness the anomaly 
of the same man — a pattern of true polite- 
ness to a wife — of cold contempt, or rudeness, 
to a sister — the idolator of his female mis- 
tress — the disparager and despiser of his 
no less female aunt, or unfortunate — still 
female — niaiden cousin. Just so much re- 
spect as a woman derogates from her own 
sex, in whatever condition placed — her hand- 
maid, or dependant — she deserves to have 
diminished from herself on that score ; and 
probably will feel the diminution, when youth, 
and beauty, and advantages, not inseparable 
from sex, shall lose of their attraction. 



368 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 



What a woman should demand of a man 
in courtship, or after it, is first — respect 
for her as she is a woman ; — and next to 
that — to be respected by him above all other 
women. But let her stand upon her female 
character as upon a foundation ; and let the 



attentions, incident to individual preference, 
be so many pretty additaments and orna- 
ments — as many, and as fanciful, as you 
please — to that main structure. Let her 
first lesson be with sweet Susan Winstanley 
— to reverence her sex. 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNEK TEMPLE. 



I was born, and passed the first seven 
years of my life, in the Temple. Its church, 
its halls, its gardens, its fountain, its river, I 
had almost said — for in those young years, 
what was this king of rivers to me but a 
stream that watered our pleasant places ? 
— these are of my oldest recollections. I 
repeat, to this day, no verses to myself more 
frequently, or with kindlier emotion, than 
those of Spenser, where he speaks of this 
spot. 

There when they came, whereas those brieky towers, 
The which on Themmes brode aged back doth ride, 
Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers, 
There whylome wont the Ternpler knights to bide, 
Till they decayed through pride. 

Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the 
metropolis. What a transition for a country- 
man visiting London for the first time — the 
passing from the crowded Strand or Fleet- 
street, by unexpected avenues, into its mag- 
nificent ample squares, its classic green re- 
cesses ! What a cheerful, liberal look hath 
that portion of it, which, from three sides, 
overlooks the greater garden ; that goodly 
pile 

Of building strong, albeit of Paper hight, 

confronting with massy contrast, the lighter, 
older, more fantastically shrouded one, 
named of Harcourt, with the cheerful Crown 
Office-row (place of my kindly engendure), 
right opposite the stately stream, which 
washes the garden-foot with her yet scarcely 
trade-polluted waters, and seems but just 
weaned from her Twickenham Naiades ! a 
man would give something to have been 
born in such places. What a collegiate 
aspect has that fine Elizabethan hall, where 
the fountain plays, which I have made to 
rise and fall, how many times ! to the 



astoundment of the young urchins, my con- 
temporaries, who, not being able to guess at 
its recondite machinery, were almost tempted 
to hail the wondrous work as magic ! What 
an antique air had the now almost effaced 
sun-dials, with their moral inscriptions, 
seeming coevals with that Time which they 
measured, and to take their revelations of its 
flight immediately from heaven, holding cor- 
respondence with the fountain of light ! 
How would the dark line steal imperceptibly 
on, watched by the eye of childhood, eager 
to detect its movement, never catched, nice 
as an evanescent cloud, or the first arrests of 
f 



Ah ! yet doth beauty like a dial hand 

Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived ! 

What a dead thing is a clock, with its 
ponderous embowelments of lead and brass, 
its pert or solemn dulness of communication, 
compared with the simple altar-like struc- 
ture, and silent heart-language of the old 
dial ! It stood as the garden god of Chris- 
tian gardens. Why is it almost everywhere 
vanished ? If its business-use be superseded 
by more elaborate inventions, its moral uses, 
its beauty, might have pleaded for its con- 
tinuance. It spoke of moderate labours, of 
pleasures not protracted after sun-set, of 
temperance, and good hours. It was the 
primitive clock, the horologe of the first 
world. Adam could scarce have missed it 
in Paradise. It was the measure appropriate 
for sweet plants and flowers to spring by, 
for the birds to apportion their silver warb- 
lings by, for flocks to pasture and be led to 
fold by. The shepherd "carved it out 
quaintly in the sun ;" and, turning philo- 
sopher by the very occupation, provided it 
with mottoes more touching than tomb- 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 



3f>9 



stones. It was a pretty device of the gar- 
dener, recorded by Marvell, who, in the days 
of artificial gardening, made a dial out of 
herbs and flowers. I must quote his verses 
a little higher up, for they are full, as all his 
serious poetry was, of a witty delicacy. They 
will not come in awkwardly, I hope, in a talk 
of fountains and sun-dials. He is speaking 
of sweet garden scenes : — 

What wondrous life is this I lead ! 

Ripe apples drop about my head. 

The luscious clusters of the vine 

Upon my mouth do crush their wine. 

The nectarine, and curious peach, 

Into my hands themselves do reach. 

Stumbling on melons, as I pass, 

Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass. 

Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less - 

Withdraws into its happiness. 

The mind, that ocean, where each kind 

Does straight its own resemblance find ; 

Yet it creates, transcending these, 

Far other worlds and other seas ; 

Annihilating all that's made 

To a green thought in a green shade. 

Here at the fountain's sliding foot, 

Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root, 

Casting the body's vest aside, 

My soul into the boughs does glide ; 

There, like a bird, it sits and sings, 

Then wets and claps its silver wings, 

And, till prepared for longer flight, 

Waves in its plumes the various light. 

How well the skilful gardener drew, 

Of flowers and herbs, this dial new ! 

Where, from above, the milder sun 

Does through a fragrant zodiac run : 

And, as it works, the indixstrious bee 

Computes its time as well as we. 

How could such sweet and wholesome hours 

Be reckon'd, but with herbs and flowers ? * 

The artificial fountains of the metropolis 
are, in like manner, fast vanishing. Most of 
them are dried up or bricked over. Yet, 
where one is left, as in that little green nook 
behind the South-Sea House, what a fresh- 
ness it gives to the dreary pile ! Four little 
winged marble boys used to play their virgin 
fancies, spouting out ever fresh streams from 
their innocent- wanton lips in the square of 
Lincoln's Inn, when I was no bigger than 
they were figured. They are gone, and the 
spring choked up. The fashion, they tell 
me, is gone by, and these things are esteemed 
childish. Why not, then, gratify children, 
by letting them stand ? Lawyers, I suppose, 
were children once. They are awakening 
images to them at least. Why must every- 
thing smack of man and mannish ? Is the 
world all grown up 1 Is childhood dead ? 

* From a copy of verses entitled The Garden. 



Or is there not in the bosoms of the wisest 
and the best some of the child's heart left, to 
respond to its earliest enchantments ? The 
figures were grotesque. Are the stiff-wigged 
living figures, that still flitter and chatter 
about that area, less Gothic in appearance ? 
or is the splutter of their hot rhetoric one- 
half so refreshing and innocent as the little 
cool playful streams those exploded cherubs 
uttered 1 

They have lately gothicised the entrance 
to the Inner Temple-hall, and the library 
front ; to assimilate them, I suppose, to the 
body of the hall, which they do not at all 
resemble. What is become of the winged 
horse that stood over the former ? a stately 
arms ! and who has removed those frescoes 
of the Virtues, which Italianised the end of 
the Paper-buildings 1 — my first hint of alle- 
gory ! They must account to me for these 
things, which I miss so greatly. 

The terrace is, indeed, left, which we used 
to call the parade ; but the traces are passed 
away of the footsteps which made its pave- 
ment awful ! It is become common and 
profane. The old benchers had it almost 
sacred to themselves, in the forepart of the 
day at least. They might not be sided or 
jostled. Their air and dress asserted the 
parade. You left wide spaces betwixt you 
when you passed them. We walk On even 
terms with their successors. The roguish 

eye of J 11, ever ready to be delivered of 

a jest, almost invites a stranger to vie a 
repartee with it. But what insolent familiar 
durst have mated Thomas Coventry ? — 
whose person was a quadrate, his step massy 
and elephantine, his face square as the lion's, 
his gait peremptory and path-keeping, indi- 
vertible from his way as a moving column, 
the scarecrow of his inferiors, the brow- 
beater of equals and superiors, who made a 
solitude of children wherever he came, for 
they fled his insufferable presence, as they 
would have shunned an Elisha bear. His 
growl was as thunder in their ears, whether 
he spake to them in mirth or in rebuke ; his 
invitatory notes being, indeed, of all, the 
most repulsive and horrid. Clouds of snuff, 
aggravating the natural terrors of his speech, 
broke from each majestic nostril, darkening 
the air. He took it, not by pinches, but a 
palmful at once, — diving for it under the 
mighty flaps of his old-fashioned waistcoat 



£ B 



370 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 



pocket ; his waistcoat red and angry, his 
coat dark rappee, tinctured by dye original, 
and by adjuncts, with buttons of obsolete 
gold. And so he paced the terrace. 

By his side a milder form was sometimes 
to be seen ; the pensive gentility of Samuel 
Salt. They were coevals, and had nothing 
but that and their benchership in common. 
In politics Salt was a whig, and Coventry a 
staunch tory. Many a sarcastic growl did 
the latter cast out — for Coventry had a 
rough spinous humour — at the political con- 
federates of his associate, which rebounded 
from the gentle bosom of the latter like 
cannon-balls from wool. You could not ruffle 
Samuel Salt. 

S. had the reputation of being a very 
clever man, and of excellent discernment in 
the chamber practice of the law. I suspect 
his knowledge did not amount to much. 
When a case of difficult disposition of money, 
testamentary or otherwise, came before him, 
he ordinarily handed it over, with a few in- 
structions, to his man Lovel, who was a 
quick little fellow, and would despatch it 
out of hand by the light of natural under- 
standing, of which he had an uncommon 
share. It was incredible what repute for 
talents S. enjoyed by the mere trick of 
gravity. He was a shy man ; a child might 
pose him in a minute — indolent and procras- 
tinating to the last degree. Yet men would 
give him credit for vast application, in spite 
of himself. He was not to be trusted with 
himself with impunity. He never dressed 
for a dinner party but he forgot his sword — 
they wore swords then — or some other neces- 
sary part of his equipage. Lovel had his eye 
upon him on all these occasions, and ordinarily 
gave him his cue. If there was anything 
which he could speak unseasonably, he was 
sure to do it. — He was to dine at a relative's 
of the unfortunate Miss Blandy on the day 
of her execution ; — and L., who had a wary 
foresight of his probable hallucinations, be- 
fore he set out schooled him, with great 
anxiety, not in any possible manner to allude 
to her story that day. S. promised faithfully 
to observe the injunction. He had not been 
seated in the parlour, where the company 
was expecting the dinner summons, four 
minutes, when, a pause in the conversation 
ensuing, he got up, looked out of window, 
and pulling down his ruffles — an ordinary 



motion with him — observed, " it was a 
gloomy day," and added, " Miss Blandy must 
be hanged by this time, I suppose." Instances 
of this sort were perpetual. Yet S. was 
thought by some of the greatest men of his 
time a fit person to be consulted, not alone 
in matters pertaining to the law, but in the 
ordinary niceties and embarrassments of 
conduct — from force of manner entirely. 
He never laughed. He had the same good 
fortune among the female world, — was a 
known toast with the ladies, and one or two 
are said to have died for love of him — I sup- 
pose, because he never trifled or talked gal- 
lantry with them, or paid them, indeed, 
hardly common attentions. He had a fine 
face and person, but wanted, methought, the 
spirit that should have shown them off" with 
advantage to the women. His eye lacked 

lustre. — Not so, thought Susan P ; who, 

at the advanced age of sixty, was seen, in 
the cold evening time, unaccompanied, wet- 

ing the pavement of B d Eow, with tears 

that fell in drops which might be heard, be- 
cause her friend had died that day — he, 
whom she had pursued with a hopeless pas- 
sion for the last forty years — a passion, 
which years could not extinguish or abate ; 
nor the long-resolved, yet gently-enforced, 
puttings-off of unrelenting bachelorhood dis- 
suade from its cherished purpose. Mild 

Susan P , thou hast now thy friend in 

heaven ! 

Thomas Coventry was a cadet of the noble 
family of that name. He passed his youth 
in contracted circumstances, which gave him 
early those parsimonious habits which in 
after life never forsook him ; so that with 
one windfall or another, about the time I 
knew him he was master of four or five 
hundred thousand pounds ; nor did he look 
or walk worth a moidore less. He lived in 
a gloomy house opposite the pump in Ser- 
jeant's-inn, Fleet-street. J., the counsel, is 
doing self-imposed penance in it, for what 
reason I divine not, at this day. C. had an 
agreeable seat at North Cray, where he 
seldom spent above a day or two at a time 
in the summer ; but preferred, during the 
hot months, standing at his window in this 
damp, close, well-like mansion, to watch, as 
he said, "the maids drawing water all day 
long." I suspect he had his within-door 
reasons for the preference. Hie currus et 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 



371 



arma fuere. He might think his treasures 
more safe. His house had the aspect of a 
strong-box. C. was a close hunks — a hoarder 
rather than a miser — or, if a miser, none of 
the mad Elwes breed, who have brought dis- 
credit upon a character which cannot exist 
without certain admirable points of steadi- 
ness and unity of purpose. One may hate a 
true miser, but cannot, I suspect, so easily 
despise him. By taking care of the pence he 
is often enabled to part with the pounds, 
upon a scale that leaves us careless generous 
fellows halting at an immeasurable distance 
behind. C. gave away 30,000?. at once in 
his life-time to a blind charity. His house- 
keeping was severely looked after,- but he 
kept the table of a gentleman. He would 
know who came in and who went out of his 
house, but his kitchen chimney was never 
suffered to freeze. 

Salt was his opposite in this, as in all — 
never knew what he was worth in the world ; 
and having but a competency for his rank, 
which his indolent habits were little calcu- 
lated to improve, might have suffered severely 
if he had not had honest people about him. 
Lovel took care of everything. He was at 
once his clerk, his good servant, his dresser, 
his friend, his "flapper," his guide, stop- 
watch, auditor, treasurer. He did nothing 
without consulting Lovel, or failed in any- 
thing without expecting and fearing his ad- 
monishing. He put himself almost too much 
in his hands, had they not been the purest 
in the world. He resigned his title almost 
to respect as a master, if L. could ever have 
forgotten for a moment that he was a ser- 
vant. 

I knew this Lovel. He was a man of an 
incorrigible and losing honesty. A good 
fellow withal, and " would strike." In the 
cause of the oppressed he never considered 
inequalities, or calculated the number of his 
opponents. He once wrested a sword out of 
the hand of a man of quality that had drawn 
upon him, and pommelled him severely with 
the hilt of it. The swordsman had offered 
insult to a female — an occasion upon which 
no odds against him could have prevented 
the interference of Lovel. He would stand 
next day bareheaded to the same person 
modestly to excuse his interference — for L. 
never forgot rank where something better 
was not concerned. L. was the liveliest 



little fellow breathing, had a face as gay as 
Garrick's, whom he was said greatly to re- 
semble (I have a portrait of him which con- 
firms it), possessed a fine turn for humorous 
poetry — next to Swift and Prior — moulded 
heads in clay or plaster of Paris to admira- 
tion, by the dint of natural genius merely ; 
turned cribbage boards, and such small 
cabinet toys, to perfection ; took a hand at 
quadrille or bowls with equal facility ; made 
punch better than any man of his degree in 
England ; had the merriest quips and con- 
ceits ; and was altogether as brimful of 
rogueries and inventions as you could desire. 
He was a brother of the angle, moreover, 
and just such a free, hearty, honest com- 
panion as Mr. Tzaak Walton would have 
chosen to go a-fishing with. I saw him in 
his old age and the decay of his faculties, 
palsy-smitten, in the last sad stage of human 
weakness — " a remnant most forlorn of what 
he was," — yet even then his eye would light 
up upon the mention of his favourite Garrick. 
He was greatest, he would say, in Bayes — 
" was upon the stage nearly throughout the 
whole performance, and as busy as a bee." 
At intervals, too, he would speak of his for- 
mer life, and how he came up a little boy 
from Lincoln, to go to service, and how his 
mother cried at parting with him, and how 
he returned, after some few years' absence, 
in his smart new livery, to see her, and she 
blessed herself at the change, and could 
hardly be brought to believe that it was 
"her own bairn." And then, the excitement 
subsiding, he would weep, till I have wished 
that sad second-childhood might have a 
mother still to lay its head upon her lap. 
But the common mother of us all in no long 
time after received him gently into hers. 

With Coventry, and with Salt, in their 
walks upon the terrace, most commonly 
Peter Pierson would join to make up a 
third. They did not walk linked arm-in- 
arm in those days — "as now our stout 
triumvirs sweep the streets," — but generally 
with both hands folded behind them for 
state, or with one at least behind, the other 
carrying a cane. P. was a benevolent, but 
not a prepossessing man. He had that in 
his face which you could not term unhappi- 
ness ; it rather implied an incapacity of 
being happy. His cheeks were colourless, 



even to whiteness. 



His look was uninviting, 



b b 2 



372 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 



resembling (but without his sourness) that 
of our great philanthropist. I know that he 
did good acts, but I could never make out 
what he was. Contemporary with these, 
but subordinate, was Dames Barrington — 
another oddity — he walked burly and square 
— in imitation, I think, of Coventry — how- 
beit he attained not to the dignity of his 
prototype. Nevertheless, he did pretty well, 
upon the strength of being a tolerable anti- 
quarian, and having a brother a bishop. 
When the account of his year's treasurership 
came to be audited the following singular 
charge was unanimously disallowed by the 
bench : "Item, disbursed Mr. Allen, the gar- 
dener, twenty shillings for stuff to poison the 
sparrows, by my orders." Next to him was 
old Barton — a jolly negation, who took upon 
him the ordering of the bills of fare for the 
parliament chamber, where the benchers 
dine — answering to the combination rooms 
at College — much to the easement of his less 
epicurean brethren. I know nothing more 
of him. — Then Bead, and Twopeny — Bead, 
good-humoured and personable — Twopeny, 
good-humoured, but thin, and felicitous in 
jests upon his own figure. If T. was thin, 
Wharry was attenuated and fleeting. Many 
must remember him (for he was rather of 
later date) and his singular gait, which was 
performed by three steps and a jump regu- 
larly succeeding. The steps were little 
efforts, like that of a child beginning to walk ; 
the jump comparatively vigorous, as a foot 
to an inch. Where he learned this figure, 
or what occasioned it, I could never discover. 
It was neither graceful in itself, nor seemed 
to answer the purpose any better than com- 
mon walking. The extreme tenuity of his 
frame, I suspect, set him upon it. It was a 
trial of poising. Twopeny would often rally 
him upon his leanness, and hail him as Bro- 
ther Lusty ; but W. had no relish of a j oke . His 
features were spiteful. I have heard that he 
would pinch his cat's ears extremely when 
anything had offended him. Jackson — the 
omniscient Jackson he was called — was of 
this period. He had the reputation of pos- 
sessing more multifarious knowledge than 
any man of his time. He was the Friar 
Bacon of the less literate portion of the 
Temple, I remember a pleasant passage of 
the cook applying to him, with much for- 
mality of apology, for instructions how to 



write down edge bone of beef in his bill of 
commons. He was supposed to know, if any 
man in the world did. He decided the ortho- 
graphy to be — as I have given it — forti- 
fying his authority with such anatomical 
reasons as dismissed the manciple (for the 
time) learned and happy. Some do spell it 
yet, perversely, aitcli bone, from a fanciful 
resemblance between its shape and that of 
the aspirate so denominated. I had almost 
forgotten Mingay with the iron, hand — but 
he was somewhat later. He had lost his 
right hand by some accident, and supplied it 
with a grappling-hook, which he wielded 
with a tolerable adroitness. I detected the 
substitute before I was old enough to reason 
whether it were artificial or not. I remem- 
ber the astonishment it raised in me. He 
was a blustering, loud-talking person ; and I 
reconciled the phenomenon to my ideas as 
an emblem of power — somewhat like the 
horns in the forehead of Michael Angelo's 
Moses. Baron Maseres, who walks (or did 
till very lately) in the costume of the reign 
of George the Second, closes my imperfect 
recollections of the old benchers of the Inner 
Temple. 

Fantastic forms, whither are ye fled ? Or, 
if the like of you exist, why exist they no 
more for me % Ye inexplicable, half-under- 
stood appearances, why comes in reason to 
tear away the preternatural mist, bright or 
gloomy, that enshrouded you ? Why make 
ye so sorry a figure in my relation, who 
made up to me — to my childish eyes — the 
mythology of the Temple 1 In those days I 
saw Gods, as "old men covered with a 
mantle," walking upon the earth. Let the 
dreams of classic idolatry perish, — extinct be 
the fairies and fairy trumpery of legendary 
fabling, in the heart of childhood there will, 
for ever, spring up a well of innocent or 
wholesome superstition — the seeds of exag- 
geration will be busy there, and vital — from 
every-day forms educing the unknown and 
the uncommon. In that little Goshen there 
will be light when the grown world flounders 
about in the darkness of sense and mate- 
riality. While childhood, and while dreams, 
reducing childhood, shall be left, imagination 
shall not have spread her holy wings totally 
to fly the earth. 

P.S. — I have done injustice to the soft 



GEACE BEFORE MEAT. 



373 



shade of Samuel Salt. See what it is to 
trust to imperfect memory, and the erring 
notices of childhood ! Yet T protest 1" always 
thought that he had been a bachelor ! This 
gentleman, E. N. informs me, married young, 
and losing his lady in childbed, within the 
first year of their union, fell into a deep 
melancholy, from the effects of which, pro- 
bably, he never thoroughly recovered. In 
what a new light does this place his rejection 
(O call it by a gentler name !) of mild Susan 
P , unravelling into beauty certain pecu- 
liarities of this very shy and retiring cha- 
racter ! Henceforth let no one receive the 
narratives of Elia for true records ! They 
are, in truth, but shadows of fact — verisimi- 
litudes, not verities — or sitting but upon the 
remote edges and outskirts of history. He 
is no such honest chronicler as B. N., and 
would have done better perhaps to have con- 
sulted that gentleman before he sent these 
incondite reminiscences to press. But the 
worthy sub-treasurer — who respects his old 
and his new masters — would but have been 
puzzled at the indecorous liberties of Elia. 
The good man wots not, peradventure, of the 
licence which Magazines have arrived at in 
this plain-speaking age, or hardly dreams of 



their existence beyond the Gentleman? s — his 
furthest monthly excursions in this nature 
having been long confined to the holy ground 
of honest Urban'' s obituary. May it be long 
before his own name shall help to swell those 
columns of unenvied flattery! — Meantime, 
O ye New Benchers of the Inner Temple, 
cherish him kindly, for he is himself the 
kindliest of human creatures. Should infir- 
mities overtake him — he is yet in green and 
vigorous senility — make allowances for them, 
remembering that " ye yourselves are old." 
So may the Winged Horse, your ancient 
badge and cognisance, still flourish ! so may 
future Hookers and Seldens illustrate your 
church and chambers ! so may the sparrows, 
in default of more melodious quiristers, un- 
poisoned hop about your walks ; so may the 
fresh-coloured and cleanly nursery-maid, 
who, by leave, airs her playful charge in 
your stately gardens, drop her prettiest blush- 
ing curtsy as ye pass, reductive of juvenes- 
cent emotion ! so may the younkers of this 
generation eye you, pacing your stately ter- 
race, with the same superstitious veneration 
with which the child Elia gazed on the 
Old Worthies that solemnised the parade 
before ye ! 



GEACE BEFOEE MEAT. 



The custom of saying grace at meals had, 
probably, its origin in the early times of the 
world, and the hunter-state of man, when 
dinners were precarious things, and a full 
meal was something more than a common 
blessing ! when a belly-full was a wind-fall, 
and looked like a special providence. In the 
shouts and triumphal songs with which, after 
a season of sharp abstinence, a lucky booty 
of deer's or goat's flesh would naturally be 
ushered home, existed, perhaps, the germ of 
the modern grace. It is not otherwise easy 
to be understood, why the blessing of food — 
the act of eating — should have had a parti- 
cular expression of thanksgiving annexed to 
it, distinct from that implied and silent grati- 
tude with which we are expected to enter 
upon the enjoyment of the many other various 
gifts and good things of existence. 



I own that I am disposed to say grace 
upon twenty other occasions in the course of 
the day besides my dinner. I want a form 
for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a 
moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or 
a solved problem. Why have we none for 
books, those spiritual repasts — a grace before 
Milton — a grace before Shakspeare — a devo- 
tional exercise proper to be said before 
reading the Fairy Queen ? — but the received 
ritual having prescribed these forms to the 
solitary ceremony of manducation, I shall 
confine my observations to the experience 
which I have had of the grace, properly so 
called ; commending my new scheme for 
extension to a niche in the grand philosophi- 
cal, poetical, and perchance in part heretical, 
liturgy, now compiling by my friend Homo 
Humanus, for the use of a certain snug con- 



374 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 



gregation of Utopian Kabelsesian Christians, 
no matter where assembled. 

The form, then, of the benediction before 
eating has its beauty at a poor man's table, 
or at the simple and unprovocative repast of 
children. It is here that the grace becomes 
exceedingly graceful. The indigent man, 
who hardly knows whether he shall have a 
meal the next day or not, sits down to his 
fare with a present sense of the blessing, 
which can be but feebly acted by the rich, 
into whose minds the conception of wanting 
a dinner could never, but by some extreme 
theory, have entered. The proper end of 
food — the animal sustenance — is barely con- 
templated by them. The poor man's bread 
is his daily bread, literally his bread for the 
day. Their courses are perennial. 

Again the plainest diet seems the fittest to 
be preceded by the grace. That which is 
least stimulative to appetite, leaves the mind 
most free for foreign considerations. A man 
may feel thankful, heartily thankful, over a 
dish of plain mutton with turnips, and have 
leisure to reflect upon the ordinance and 
institution of eating ; when he shall confess 
a perturbation of mind, inconsistent with the 
purposes of the grace, at the presence of 
venison or turtle. When I have sate (a 
varus hosjoes) at rich men's tables, with the 
savoury soup and messes steaming up the 
nostrils, and moistening the lips of the guests 
with desire and a distracted choice, I have 
felt the introduction of that ceremony to be 
unseasonable. With the ravenous orgasm 
upon you, it seems impertinent to interpose 
a religious sentiment. It is a confusion of 
purpose to mutter out praises from a mouth 
that waters. The heats of epicurism put out 
the gentle flame of devotion. The incense 
which rises round is pagan, and the belly- 
god intercepts it for his own. The very 
excess of the provision beyond the needs, 
takes away all sense of proportion between 
the end and means. The giver is veiled by 
his gifts. You are startled at the injustice of 
returning thanks— for what ?— for having too 
much, while so many starve. It is to praise 
the Gods amiss. 

I have observed this awkwardness felt, 
scarce consciously perhaps, by the good man 
who says the grace. I have seen it. in clergy- 
men and others — a sort of shame — a sense of 
the co-presence of circumstances which un- 



hallow the blessing. After a devotional tone 
put on for a few seconds, how rapidly the 
speaker will fall into his common voice ! 
helping himself or his neighbour, as if to get 
rid of some uneasy sensation of hypocrisy. 
Not that the good man was a hypocrite, or 
was not most conscientious in the discharge 
of the duty ; but he felt in his inmost mind 
the incompatibility of the scene and the 
viands before him with the exercise of a 
calm and rational gratitude. 

I hear somebody exclaim, — Would you 
have Christians sit down at table, like hogs 
to their troughs, without remembering the 
Giver 1 — no — I would have them sit down as 
Christians, remembering the Giver, and less 
like hogs. Or if their appetites must run 
riot, and they must pamper themselves with 
delicacies for which east and west are ran- 
sacked, I would have them postpone their 
benediction to a fitter season, when appetite 
is laid ; when the still small voice can be 
heard, and the reason of the grace returns — 
with temperate diet and restricted dishes. 
Gluttony and surfeiting are no proper occa- 
sions for thanksgiving. When Jeshurun 
waxed fat, we read that he kicked. Virgil 
knew the harpy-nature better, when he put 
into the mouth of Celseno anything but a 
blessing. We may be gratefully sensible of 
the deliciousness of some kinds of food beyond 
others, though that is a meaner and inferior 
gratitude : but the proper object of the grace 
is sustenance, not relishes ; daily bread, not 
delicacies ; the means of life, and not the 
means of pampering the carcass. With what 
frame or composure, I wonder, can a city 
chaplain pronounce his benediction at some 
great Hall-feast, when he knows that his 
last concluding pious word — and that in all 
probability, the sacred name which he 
preaches — is but the signal for so many 
impatient harpies to commence their foul 
orgies, with as little sense of true thank- 
fulness (which is temperance) as those 
Virgilian fowl ! It is well if the good 
man himself does not feel his devotions a 
little clouded, those foggy sensuous steams 
mingling with and polluting the pure altar 
sacrifice. 

The severest satire upon full tables and 
surfeits is the banquet which Satan, in the 
" Paradise Eegained," provides for a tempta 
tion in the wilderness : 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 



375 



A table richly spread in regal mode 
With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort 
And savour ; beasts of chase, or fowl of game, 
In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled, 
Gris-amber-steamed ; all fish from sea or shore, 
Freshet or purling brook, for which was drained 
Pontus, and Lucrine bay, and Afric coast. 

The Tempter, I warrant you, thought these 
cates would go down without the recom- 
mendatory preface of a benediction. They 
are like to be short graces where the devil 
plays the host. — I am afraid the poet wants 
his usual decorum in this place. Was he 
thinking of the old Roman luxury, or of a 
gaudy day at Cambridge? This was a tempta- 
tion fitter for a Heliogabalus. The whole 
banquet is too civic and culinary, and the 
accompaniments altogether a profanation of 
that deep, abstracted holy scene. The mighty 
artillery of sauces, which the cook-fiend 
conjures up, is out of proportion to the 
simple wants and plain hunger of the guest. 
He that disturbed him in his dreams, from j 
his dreams might have been taught better. 
To the temperate fantasies of the famisned , 
Son of God, what sort of feasts presented 
themselves '? — He dreamed indeed, 

As appetite is wont to dream, 

Of meats and drinks, nature's refreshment sweet. 

But what meats 1 — 

Him thought, he by the brook of Cherith stood, 
And saw the ravens with their horny beaks 
Food to Elijah bringing even and morn ; 
Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they 

brought ; 
He saw the prophet also how he fled 
Into the desert and how there he slept 
Under a juniper ; then how awaked 
He found his supper on the coals prepared, 
And by the angel was bid rise and eat, 
And ate the second time after repose, 
The strength whereof sufficed him forty days : 
Sometimes, that with Elijah he partook, 
Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse. 

Nothing in Milton is finelier fancied than 
these temperate dreams of the divine 
Hungerer. To which of these two visionary 
banquets, think you, would the introduction 
of what is called the grace have been the 
most fitting and pertinent 1 

Theoretically I am no enemy to graces ; 
but practically I own that (before meat 
especially) they seem to involve something 
awkward and unseasonable. Our appetites, 
of one or another kind, are excellent spurs 
to our reason, which might otherwise but 
feebly set about the great ends of preserving 



and continuing the species. They are fit 
blessings to be contemplated at a distance 
with a becoming gratitude ; but the moment 
of appetite (the judicious reader will appre- 
hend me) is, perhaps, the least fit season for 
that exercise. The Quakers, who go about 
their business of every description with more 
calmness than we, have more title to the use 
of these benedictory prefaces. I have always 
admired their silent grace, and the more 
because I have observed their applications 
to the meat and drink following to be less 
passionate and sensual than ours. They are 
neither gluttons nor wine-bibbers as a people. 
They eat, as a horse bolts his chopped hay, 
with indifference, calmness, and cleanly cir- 
cumstances. They neither grease nor slop 
themselves. When I see a citizen in his bib 
and tucker, I cannot imagine it a surplice. 

I am no Quaker at my food. I confess I 
am not indifferent to the kinds of it. Those 
unctuous morsels of deer's flesh were not 
made to be received with dispassionate 
services. I hate a man who swallows it, 
affecting not to know what he is eating. I 
suspect his taste in higher matters. I shrink 
instinctively from one who professes to like 
minced veal. There is a physiognomical 

character in the tastes for food. C holds 

that a man cannot have a pure mind who 
refuses apple-dumplings. I am not certain 
but he is right. With the decay of my first 
innocence, I confess a less and less relish 
daily for those innocuous cates. The whole 
vegetable tribe have lost their gust with me. 
Only I stick to asparagus, which still seems 
to inspire gentle thoughts. I am impatient 
and querulous under culinary disappoint- 
ments, as to come home at the dinner hour, 
for instance, expecting some savoury mess, 
and to find one quite tasteless and sapidless. 
Butter ill melted — that commonest of kitchen 
failures — puts me beside my tenor. — The 
author of the Rambler used to make inarticu- 
late animal noises over a favourite food. Was 
this the music quite proper to be preceded 
by the grace ? or would the pious man have 
done better to postpone his devotions to a 
season when the blessing might be contem- 
plated with less perturbation ? I quarrel 
with no man's tastes, nor would set my thin 
face against those excellent things, in their 
way, jollity and feasting. But as these 
exercises, however laudable, have little in 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 



tliem of grace or gracefulness, a man should 
be sure, before he ventures so to grace them, 
that while he is pretending his devotions 
otherwhere, he is not secretly kissing his 
hand to some great fish — his Dagon — with a 
special consecration of no ark but the fat 
tureen before him. Graces are the sweet 
preluding strains to the banquets of angels 
and children ; to the roots and severer repasts 
of the Chartreuse ; to the slender, but not 
slenderly acknowledged, refection of the poor 
and humble man : but at the heaped-up 
boards of the pampered and the luxurious 
they become of dissonant mood, less timed 
and tuned to the occasion, methinks, than 
the noise of those better befitting organs 
would be which children hear tales of, at 
Hog's Norton. We sit too long at our meals, 
or are too curious in the study of them, or 
too disordered in our application to them, or 
engross too great a portion of those good 
things (which should be common) to our 
share, to be able with any grace to say grace. 
To be thankful for what we grasp exceeding 
our proportion, is to add hypocrisy to injustice. 
A lurking sense of this truth is what makes 
the performance of this duty so cold and 
spiritless a service at most tables. In houses 
where the grace is as indispensable as the 
napkin, who has not seen that never-settled 
question arise, as to who shall say it ? while 
the good man of the house and the visitor 
clergyman, or some other guest belike of 
next authority, from years or gravity, shall 
be bandying about the ofiice between them 
as a matter of compliment, each of them not 
unwilling to shift the awkward burthen of 
an equivocal duty from his own shoulders 1 

I once drank tea in company with two 
Methodist divines of different persuasions, 
whom it was my fortune to introduce to each 
other for the first time that evening. Before 
the first cup was handed round, one of these 
reverend gentlemen put it to the other, with 
all due solemnity, whether he chose to say 
anything. It seems it is the custom with 
some sectaries to put up a short prayer before 



this meal also. His reverend brother did 
not at first quite apprehend him, but upon 
an explanation, with little less importance 
he made answer that it was not a custom 
known in his church : in which courteous 
evasion the other acquiescing for good man- 
ners' sake, or in compliance with a weak 
brother, the supplementary or tea-grace was 
waived altogether. With what spirit might 
not Lucian have painted two priests, of his 
religion, playing into each other's hands the 
compliment of performing or omitting a 
sacrifice, — the hungry God meantime, doubt- 
ful of his incense, with expectant nostrils 
hovering over the two flamens, and (as be- 
tween two stools) going away in the end 
without his supper. 

A short form upon these occasions is felt 
to want reverence ; a long one, I am afraid, 
cannot escape the charge of impertinence. 
I do not quite approve of the epigrammatic 
conciseness with which that equivocal wag 
(but my pleasant school-fellow) C. V. L., 
when importuned for a grace, used to inquire, 
first slyly leering down the table, " Is there 
no clergyman here," — significantly adding, 
" Thank G— ." Nor do I think our old form 
at school quite pertinent, where we were 
used to preface our bald bread-and-cheese- 
suppers with a preamble, connecting with 
that humble blessing a recognition of bene- 
fits the most awful and overwhelming to the 
imagination which religion has to offer. Non 
tunc illis erat locus. I remember. we were 
put to it to reconcile the phrase " good crea- 
tures," upon which the blessing rested, with 
the fare set before us, wilfully understanding 
that expression in a low and animal sense, — 
till some one recalled a legend, which told 
how, in the golden days of Christ's, the 
young Hospitallers were wont to have smok- 
ing joints of roast meat upon their nightly 
boards, till some pious benefactor, commiser- 
ating the decencies, rather than the palates, 
of the children, commuted our flesh for gar- 
ments, and gave us — horresco referens — trou- 
sers instead of mutton. 



DEEAM CHILDREN : A REVERIE. 



377 



DEEAM CHILDKEN ; A EEVEEIE. 



Children love to listen to stories about 
their elders, when they were children ; to 
stretch their imagination to the conception 
of a traditionary great-uncle, or grandame, 
whom they never saw. It was in this spirit 
that my little ones crept about me the other 
evening to hear about their great-grand- 
mother Field, who lived in a great house in 
Norfolk (a hundred times bigger than that 
in which they and papa lived) which had 
been the scene — so at least it was generally 
believed in that part of the country — of the 
tragic incidents which they had lately become 
familiar with from the ballad of the Children 
in the Wood. Certain it is that the whole 
story of the children and their cruel uncle 
was to be seen fairly carved out in wood 
upon the chimney-piece of the great hall, the 
whole story down to the Eobin Eedbreasts ; 
till a foolish rich person pulled it down to 
set up a marble one of modern invention in 
its stead, with no story upon it. Here Alice 
put out one of her dear mother's looks, too 
tender to be called upbraiding. Then I went 
on to say, how religious and how good their 
great-grandmother Field was, how beloved 
and respected by everybody, though she was 
not indeed the mistress of this great house, 
but had only the charge of it (and yet in 
some respects she might be said to be the 
mistress of it too) committed to her by the 
owner, who preferred living in a newer and 
more fashionable mansion which he had pur- 
chased somewhere in the adjoining county ; 
but still she lived in it in a manner as if it 
had been her own, and kept up the dignity 
of the great house in a sort while she lived, 
which afterwards came to decay, and was 
nearly pulled down, and all its old orna- 
ments stripped and carried away to the 
owner's other house, where they were set up, 
and looked as awkward as if some one were 
to carry away the old tombs they had seen 
lately at the Abbey, and stick them up in 
Lady C.'s tawdry gilt drawing-room. Here 
John smiled, as much as to say, " that would 
be foolish indeed." And then I told how, 



when she came to die, her funeral was 
attended by a concourse of all the poor, and 
some of the gentry too, of the neighbourhood 
for many miles round, to show their respect 
for her memory, because she had been such 
a good and religious woman ; so good indeed 
that she knew all the Psaltery by heart, ay, 
and a great part of the Testament besides. 
Here little Alice spread .her hands. Then 
I told what a tall, upright, graceful person 
their great-grandmother Field once was ; and 
how in her youth she was esteemed the best 
dancer — here Alice's little right foot played 
an invohintary movement, till, upon my look- 
ing grave, it desisted — the best dancer, I was 
saying, in the county, till a cruel disease, 
called a cancer, came, and bowed her down 
with pain ; but it could never bend her good 
spirits, or make them stoop, but they were 
still upright, because she was so good and 
religious. Then I told how she was used to 
sleep by herself in a lone chamber of the 
great lone house ; and how she believed that 
an apparition of two infants was to be seen 
at midnight gliding up and down the great 
staircase near where she slept, but she said 
" those innocents would do her no harm ; " 
and how frightened I used to be, though in 
those days I had my maid to sleep with me, 
because I was never half so good or reli- 
gious as she — and yet I never saw the infants. 
Here John expanded all his eyebrows and 
tried to look courageous. Then I told how 
good she was to all her grandchildren, having 
us to the great house in the holydays, where 
I in particular used to spend many hours by 
myself, in gazing upon the old busts of the 
twelve Csesars, that had been Emperors of 
Eome, till the old marble heads would seem 
to live again, or I to be turned into marble 
with them ; how I never could be tired with 
roaming about that huge mansion, with its 
vast empty rooms, with their worn-out hang- 
ings, fluttering tapestry, and carved oaken 
pannels, with the gilding almost rubbed out 
— sometimes in the spacious old-fashioned 
gardens, which I had almost to myself, unless 



DREAM CHILDREN ; A REVERIE. 



when now and then a solitary gardening man 
would cross me — and how the nectarines and 
peaches hung upon the walls, without my 
ever offering to pluck them, because they 
were forbidden fruit, unless now and then, — 
and because I had more pleasure in strolling 
about among the old melancholy-looking yew- 
trees, or the firs, and picking up the red 
berries, and the fir-apples, which were good 
for nothing but to look at — or in lying about 
upon the fresh grass with all the fine 
garden smells around me — or basking in the 
orangery, till I could almost fancy myself 
ripening too along with the oranges and the 
limes in that grateful warmth — or in watch- 
ing the dace that darted to and fro in the 
fish-pond, at the bottom of the garden, with 
here and there a great sulky pike hanging 
midway down the water in silent state, as if 
it mocked at their impertinent friskings, — 
I had more pleasure in these busy-idle diver- 
sions than in all the sweet flavours of peaches, 
nectarines, oranges, and such-like common 
baits of children. Here John slyly deposited 
back upon the plate a bunch of grapes, which, 
not unobserved by Alice, he had meditated 
dividing with her, and both seemed willing 
to relinquish them for the present as irrele- 
vant. Then, in somewhat a more heightened 
tone, I told how, though their great-grand- 
mother Field loved all her grandchildren, 
yet in an especial manner she might be said 

to love their uncle, John L , because he 

was so handsome and spirited a youth, and 
a king to the rest of us ; and, instead of 
moping about in solitary corners, like some 
of us, he would mount the most mettlesome 
horse he could get, when but an imp no 
bigger than themselves, and make it carry 
him half over the county in a morning, and 
join the hunters when there were any out — 
and yet he loved the old great house and 
gardens too, but had too much spirit to be 
always pent up within their boundaries — 
and how their uncle grew up to man's estate 
as brave as he was handsome, to the admira- 
tion of everybody, but of their great-grand- 
mother Field most especially ; and how he 
used to carry me upon his back when I was 
a lame-footed boy — for he was a good bit 
older than me — many a mile when I could 
not walk for pain ; — and how in after life he 
became lame-footed too, and I did not always 
(I fear) make allowances enough for him 



when he was impatient, and in pain, nor 
remember sufficiently how considerate he had 
been to me when I was lame-footed ; and 
how when he died, though he had not been 
dead an hour, it seemed as if he had died 
a great while ago, such a distance there is 
betwixt life and death ; and how I bore his 
death as I thought pretty well at first, but 
afterwards it haunted and haunted me ; and 
though I did not cry or take it to heart as 
some do, and as I think he would have done 
if I had died, yet I missed him all day long, 
and knew not till then how much I had 
loved him. I missed his kindness, and I 
missed his crossness, and wished him to be 
alive again, to be quarrelling with him (for 
we quarrelled sometimes), rather than not 
have him again, and was as uneasy without 
him, as he their poor uncle must have been 
when the doctor took off his limb. — Here the 
children fell a crying, and asked if their little 
mourning which they had on was not for 
uncle John, and they looked up, and prayed 
me not to go on about their uncle, but to tell 
them some stories about their pretty dead 
mother. Then I told how for seven long 
years, in hope sometimes, sometimes in de- 
spair, yet persisting ever, I courted the fair 
Alice W — n ; and, as much as children 
could understand, I explained to them what 
coyness, and difficulty, and denial, meant in 
maidens — when suddenly, turning to Alice, 
the soul of the first Alice looked out at her 
eyes with such a reality of re-presentment, 
that I became in doubt which of them stood 
there before me, or whose that bright hair 
was ; and while I stood gazing, both the 
children gradually grew fainter to my view, 
receding, and still receding, till nothing at 
last but two mournful features were seen in 
the uttermost distance, which, without speech, 
strangely impressed upon me the effects of 
speech : " We are not of Alice, nor of thee, 
nor are we children at all. The children of 
Alice call Bartrum father. We are nothing ; 
less than nothing, and dreams. We are only 
what might have been, and must wait upon 
the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages 

before we have existence, and a name " 

and immediately awaking, I found myself 
quietly seated in my bachelor arm-chair, 
where I had fallen asleep, with the faithful 
Bridget unchanged by my side — but John L. 
(or James Elia) was gone for ever. 



DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 



379 



DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 



IN A LETTER TO B. F. ESQ., AT SYDNEY, NEW SOUTH WALES. 



My dear F. — When I think how welcome 
the sight of a letter from the world where 
you were born must be to you in that 
strange one to which you have been trans- 
planted, I feel some compunctious visitings 
at my long silence. But, indeed, it is no 
easy effort to set about a correspondence at 
our distance. The weary world of waters 
between us oppresses the imagination. It is 
difficult to conceive how a scrawl of mine 
should ever stretch across it. It is a sort of 
presumption to expect that one's thoughts 
should live so far. It is like writing for pos- 
terity ; and reminds me of one of Mrs. 
Rowe's superscriptions, " Alcander to Stre- 
phon in the shades." Cowley's Post- Angel 
is no more than would be expedient in such 
an intercourse. One drops a packet at Lom- 
bard-street, and in twenty-four hours a friend 
in Cumberland gets it as fresh as if it came 
in ice. It is only like whispering through a 
long trumpet. But suppose a tube let down 
from the moon, with yourself at one end and 
the man at the other ; it would be some balk 
to the spirit of conversation, if you knew 
that the dialogue exchanged with that in- 
teresting theosophist would take two or three 
revolutions of a higher luminary in its pas- 
sage. Yet, for aught I know, you may be 
some parasangs nigher that primitive idea — 
Plato's man — than we in England here have 
the honour to reckon ourselves. 

Epistolary matter usually compriseth three 
topics ; news, sentiment, and puns. In the 
latter, I include all non- serious subjects ; or 
subjects serious in themselves, but treated 
after my fashion, non-seriously. — And first, 
for news. In them the most desirable cir- 
cumstance, I suppose, is that they shall be 
true. But what security can I have that 
what I now send you for truth shall not, 
before you get it, unaccountably turn into a 
lie 1 For instance, our mutual friend P. is at 
this present writing — my Now — in good 
health, and enjoys a fair share of worldly 
reputation. You are glad to hear it. This 



is natural and friendly. But at this present 
reading — your Now — he may possibly be in 
the Bench, or going to be hanged, which in 
reason ought to abate something of your 
transport (i. e. at hearing he was well, &c), 
or at least considerably to modify it. I am 
going to the play this evening, to have a 
laugh with Munden. You have no theatre, 

I think you told me, in your land of d d 

realities. You naturally lick your lips, and 
envy me my felicity. Think but a moment, 
and you will correct the hateful emotion. 
Why it is Sunday morning with you, and 
1823. This confusion of tenses, this grand 
solecism of two presents, is in a degree 
common to all postage. But if I sent you 
word to Bath or Devizes, that I was ex- 
pecting the aforesaid treat this evening, 
though at the moment you received the in- 
telligence my full feast of fun would be over, 
yet there would be for a day or two after, as 
you would well know, a smack, a relish left 
upon my mental palate, which would give 
rational encouragement for you to foster a 
portion, at least, of the disagreeable passion, 
which it was in part my intention to pro- 
duce. But ten months hence, your envy or 
your sympathy would be as useless as a 
passion spent upon the dead. Not only does 
truth, in these long intervals, un-essence 
herself, but (what is harder) one cannot 
venture a crude fiction, for the fear that it 
may ripen into a truth upon the voyage. 
What a wild improbable banter I put upon 

you, some three years since, of Will 

Weatherall having married a servant-maid ! 
I remember gravely consulting you how we 
were to receive her — for Will's wife was in 
no case to be rejected ; and your no less 
serious replication in the matter; how ten- 
derly you advised an abstemious introduction 
of literary topics before the lady, with a 
caution not to be too forward in bringing on 
the carpet matters more within the sphere of 
her intelligence; your deliberate judgment, 
or rather wise suspension of sentence, how 



380 



DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 



far jacks, and spits, and mops, could, with 
propriety, be introduced as subjects ; whether 
the conscious avoiding of all such matters in 
discourse would not have a worse look than 
the taking of them casually in our way ; in 
what manner we should carry ourselves to 
our maid Becky, Mrs. William Weatherall 
being by; whether we should show more 
delicacy, and a truer sense of respect for 
Will's wife, by treating Becky with our cus- 
tomary chiding before her, or by an unusual 
deferential civility paid to Becky, as to a 
person of great worth, but thrown by the 
caprice of fate into a humble station. There 
were difficulties, I remember, on both sides, 
which you did me the favour to state with 
the precision of a lawyer, united to the ten- 
derness of a friend. I laughed in my sleeve 
at your solemn pleadings, when lo ! while I 
was valuing myself upon this flam put upon 
you in New South Wales, the devil in Eng- 
land, jealous possibly of any lie-children not 
his own, or working after my copy, has 
actually instigated our friend (not three days 
since) to the commission of a matrimony, 
which I had only conjured up for your 
diversion. William Weatherall has married 
Mrs. (Dotterel's maid. But to take it in its 
truest sense, you will see, my dear F., that 
news from me must become history to you ; 
which I neither profess to write, nor indeed 
care much for reading. No person, under a 
diviner, can, with any prospect of veracity, 
conduct a correspondence at such an arm's 
length. Two prophets, indeed, might thus 
interchange intelligence with effect ; the 
epoch of the writer (Habakkuk) falling in 
with the true present time of the receiver 
(Daniel) ; but then we are no prophets. 

Then as to sentiment. It fares little 
better with that. This kind of dish, above 
all, requires to be served up hot, or sent off 
in water-plates, that your friend may have it 
almost as warm as yourself. If it have time 
to cool, it is the most tasteless of all cold 
meats. I have often smiled at a conceit of 
the late Lord C. It seems that travelling 
somewhere about Geneva, he came to some 
pretty green spot, or nook, where a willow, 
or something, hung so fantastically and in- 
vitingly over a stream — was it 1 — or a rock ? 
— no matter — but the stillness and the re- 
pose, after a weaiy journey, 'tis likely, in a 
languid moment of his Lordship's hot, rest- 



less life, so took his fancy that he could 
imagine no place so proper, in the event of 
his death, to lay his bones in. This was all 
very natural and excusable as a sentiment, 
and shows his character in a very pleasing 
light. But when from a passing sentiment 
it came to be an act ; and when, by a posi- 
tive testamentary disposal, his remains were 
actually carried all that way from England ; 
who was there, some desperate sentimen- 
talists excepted, that did not ask the ques- 
tion, Why could not his Lordship have found 
a spot as solitary, a nook as romantic, a tree 
as green and pendent, with a stream as em- 
blematic to his purpose, in Surrey, in Dorset, 
or in Devon 1 Conceive the sentiment 
boarded up, freighted, entered at the Custom 
House (startling the tide-waiters with the 
novelty), hoisted into a ship. Conceive it 
pawed about and handled between the rude 
jests of tarpaulin ruffians — a thing of its 
delicate texture — the salt bilge wetting it 
till it became as vapid as a damaged lustring. 
Suppose it in material danger (mariners have 
some superstition about sentiments) of being 
tossed over in a fresh gale to some propitia- 
tory shark (spirit of Saint Gothard, save us 
from a quietus so foreign to the deviser's 
purpose !) but it has happily evaded a fishy 
consummation. Trace it then to its lucky 
landing — at Lyons shall we say ? — I have 
not the map before me — jostled upon four 
men's shoulders — baiting at this town — 
stopping to refresh at t'other village — 
waiting a passport here, a license there ; the 
sanction of the magistracy in this district, 
the concurrence of the ecclesiastics in that 
canton ; till at length it arrives at its desti- 
nation, tired out and jaded, from a brisk 
sentiment into a feature of silly pride or 
tawdry senseless affectation. How few sen- 
timents, my dear F., I am afraid we can set 
down, in the sailor's phrase, as quite sea- 
worthy. 

Lastly, as to the agreeable levities, which, 
though contemptible in bulk, are the twink- 
ling corpuscula which should irradiate a 
right friendly epistle — your puns and small 
jests are, I apprehend, extremely circum- 
scribed in their sphere of action. They are 
so far from a capacity of being packed up 
and sent beyond sea, they will scarce endure 
to be transported by hand from this room to 
the next. Their vigour is as the instant of 



DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 



381 



their birth. Their nutriment for their brief 
existence is the intellectual atmosphere of 
the by-standers : or this last is the fine slime 
of Nilus — the melior lutus — whose maternal 
recipiency is as necessary as the sol pater to 
their equivocal generation. A pun hath a 
hearty kind of present ear-kissing smack 
with it ; you can no more transmit it in its 
pristine flavour than you can send a kiss. — 
Have you not tried in some instances to 
palm off a yesterday's pun upon a gentleman, 
and has it answered 1 Not but it was new 
to his hearing, but it did not seem to come 
new from you. It did not hitch in. It was 
like picking up at a village ale-house a two- 
days'-old newspaper. You have not seen it 
before, but you resent the stale thing as an 
affront. This sort of merchandise above all 
requires a quick return. A pun, and its 
recognitory laugh, must be co-instantaneous. 
The one is the brisk lightning, the other the 
fierce thunder. A moment's interval, and 
the link is snapped. A pun is reflected from 
a friend's face as from a mirror. Who would 
consult his sweet visnomy, if the polished 
surface were two or three minutes (not to 
speak of twelve months, my dear F.) in 
giving back its copy ? 

I cannot image to myself whereabout you 
are. When I try to fix it, Peter Wilkins's 
island comes across me. Sometimes you 
seem to be in the Hades of Thieves. I see 
Diogenes prying among you with his per- 
petual fruitless lantern. What must you be 
willing by this time to give for the sight of 
an honest man ! You must almost have for- 
gotten how we look. And tell me what your 
Sydneyites do ? are they th**v*ng all day 
long ? Merciful heaven ! what property can 
stand against such a depredation ! The 
kangaroos — your Aborigines — do they keep 
their primitive simplicity un-Europe-tainted, 
with those little short fore puds, looking like 
a lesson framed by nature to the pickpocket ! 
Marry, for diving into fobs they are rather 
lamely provided a priori ; but if the hue 
and cry were once up, they would show as 
fair a pair of hind-shifters as the expertest 
loco-motor in the colony. We hear the most 
improbable tales at this distance. Pray is 
it true that the young Spartans among you 
are born with six fingers, which spoils their 



scanning 1 — It must look very odd, but use 
reconciles. For their scansion, it is less to 
be regretted ; for if they take it into their 
heads to be poets, it is odds but they turn 
out, the greater part of them, vile plagiarists. 
Is there much difference to see, too, between 
the son of a th**f and the grandson 1 or 
where does the taint stop 1 Do you bleach 
in three or in four generations 1 I have 
many questions to put, but ten Delphic 
voyages can be made in a shorter time than 
it will take to satisfy my scruples. Do you 
grow your own hemp 1 — What is your staple 
trade, — exclusive of the national profession, 
I mean ? Your locksmiths, I take it, are 
some of your great capitalists. 

I am insensibly chatting to you as fami- 
liarly as when we used to exchange good- 
morrows out of our old contiguous windows, 
in pump-famed Hare-court in the Temple. 
Why did you ever leave that quiet corner 1 
— Why did I 1 — -with its complement of four 
poor elms, from whose smoke-dyed barks, 
the theme of jesting ruralists, I picked my 
first lady-birds ! My heart is as dry as that 
spring sometimes proves in a thirsty August, 
when I revert to the space that is between 
us ; a length of passage enough to render 
obsolete the phrases of our English letters 
before they can reach you. But while I talk 
I think you hear me, — thoughts dallying 
with vain surmise — 

Aye me ! while thee the seas and sounding shores 
Hold far away. 

Come back, before I am grown into a very 
old man, so as you shall hardly know me. 
Come, before Bridget walks on crutches. 
Girls whom you left children have become 
sage matrons while you are tarrying there. 
The blooming Miss W — r (you remember 
Sally W — r) called upon us yesterday, an 
aged crone. Folks whom you knew die off 
every year. Formerly, I thought that death 
was wearing out, — I stood ramparted about 
with so many healthy friends. The depar- 
ture of J. W., two springs back, corrected 
my delusion. Since then the old divorcer 
has been busy. If you do not make haste to 
return, there will be little left to greet you, 
of me, or mine. 



382 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 



THE PEAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 



I like to meet a sweep — understand me — 
not a grown sweeper — old chimney-sweepers 
are by no means attractive — but one of those 
tender novices, blooming through their first 
nigritude, the maternal washings not quite 
effaced from the cheek — such as come forth 
with the dawn, or somewhat earlier, with 
their little professional notes sounding like 
the peep peep of a young sparrow ; or liker 
to the matin lark should I pronounce them, 
in their aerial ascents not seldom anticipating 
the sun-rise ? 

I have a kindly yearning toward these dim 
specks — poor blots — innocent blacknesses — 

I reverence these young Africans of our 
own growth — these almost clergy imps, who 
sport their cloth without assumption ; and 
from their little pulpits (the tops of chimneys,) 
in the nipping air of a December morning, 
preach a lesson of patience to mankind. 

When a child, what a mysterious pleasure 
it was to witness their operation ! to see a 
chit no bigger than one's-self, enter, one knew 
not by what process, into what seemed the 
fauces Avemi — to pursue him in imagination, 
as he went sounding on through so many dark 
stifling caverns, horrid shades ! to shudder 
with the idea that " now, surely, he must be 
lost for ever ! " — to revive at hearing his 
feeble shout of discovered day-light — and 
then (0 fulness of delight!) running out of 
doors, to come just in time to see the sable 
phenomenon emerge in safety, the brandished 
weapon of his art victorious like some flag 
waved over a conquered citadel ! I seem to 
remember having been told, that a bad sweep 
was once left in a stack with his brush, to 
indicate which way the wind blew. It was 
an awful spectacle certainly ; not much 
unlike the old stage direction in Macbeth, 
where the " Apparition of a child crowned, 
with a tree in his hand, rises." 

Reader, if thou meetest one of these small 
gentry in thy early rambles, it is good to give 
him a penny. It is better to give him two- 
pence. If it be starving weather, and to the 
proper troubles of his hard occupation, a pair 



of kibed heels (no unusual accompaniment) 
be superadded, the demand on thy humanity 
will surely rise to a tester. 

There is a composition, the ground-work 
of which I have understood to be the sweet 
wood 'yclept sassafras. This wood boiled 
down to a kind of tea, and tempered with an 
infusion of milk and sugar, hath to some 
tastes a delicacy beyond the China luxury. 
I know not how thy palate may relish it ; 
for myself, with every deference to the 
judicious Mr. Eead, who hath time out of 
mind kept open a shop (the only one he avers 
in London) for the vending of this " whole- 
some and pleasant beverage," on the south- 
side of Fleet-street, as thou approachest 
Bridge-street — the only Salopian house — I 
have never yet adventured to dip my own 
particular lip in a basin of his commended 
ingredients — a cautious premonition to the 
olfactories constantly whispering to me, that 
my stomach must infallibly, with all due 
courtesy, decline it. Yet I have seen palates, 
otherwise not uninstructed in dietetical 
elegancies, sup it up with avidity. 

I know not by what particular conforma- 
tion of the organ it happens, but I have 
always found that this composition is sur- 
prisingly gratifying to the palate of a young 
chimney-sweeper — whether the oily particles 
(sassafras is slightly oleaginous) do attenuate 
and soften the fuliginous concretions, which 
are sometimes found (in dissections) to adhere 
to the roof of the mouth in these unfledged 
practitioners ; or whether Nature, sensible 
that she had mingled too much of bitter wood 
in the lot of these raw victims, caused to 
grow out of the earth her sassafras for a 
sweet lenitive — but so it is, that no possible 
taste or odour to the senses of a young 
chimney-sweeper can convey a delicate ex- 
citement comparable to this mixture. Being 
penniless, they will yet hang their black 
heads over the ascending steam, to gratify 
one sense if possible, seemingly no less 
pleased than those domestic animals — cats — 
when they purr over a new-found sprig of 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 



383 



valerian. There is something more in these 
sympathies than philosophy can inculcate. 

Now albeit Mr. Eead boasteth, not with- 
out reason, that his is the only Salopian house; 
yet be it known to thee, reader — if thou art 
one who keepest what are called good hours, 
thou art haply ignorant of the fact — he hath 
a race of industrious imitators, who from 
stalls, and under open sky, dispense the same 
savoury mess to humbler customers, at that 
dead time of the dawn, when (as extremes 
meet) the rake, reeling home from his mid- 
night cups, and the hard-handed artisan 
leaving his bed to resume the premature 
labours of the day, jostle, not unfrequently 
to the manifest disconcerting of the "former, 
for the honours of the pavement. It is the 
time when, in summer, between the expired 
and the not yet relumined kitchen-fires, the 
kennels of our fair metropolis give forth their 
least satisfactory odours. The rake, who 
wisheth to dissipate his o'ernight vapours in 
more grateful coffee, curses the ungenial 
fume, as he passeth ; but the artisan stops to 
taste, and blesses the fragrant breakfast. 

This is saloop — the precocious herb-woman's 
darling — the delight of the early gardener, 
who transports his smoking cabbages by 
break of day from Hammersmith to Covent- 
garden's famed piazzas — the delight, and oh ! 
I fear, too often the envy, of the unpennied 
sweep. Him shouldst thou haply encounter, 
with his dim visage pendent over the grateful 
steam, regale him with a sumptuous basin 
(it will cost thee but three-halfpennies) and a 
slice of delicate bread and butter (an added 
halfpenny) — so may thy culinary fires, eased 
of the o'er-charged secretions from thy worse- 
placed hospitalities, curl up a lighter volume 
to the welkin — so may the descending soot 
never taint thy costly well-ingredienced 
soups — nor the odious cry, quick-reaching 
from street to street, of the fired chimney, 
invite the rattling engines from ten adjacent 
parishes, to disturb for a casual scintillation 
thy peace and pocket ! 

I am by nature extremely susceptible of 
street affronts ; the jeers and taunts of the 
populace ; the low-bred triumph they display 
over the casual trip, or splashed stocking, of 
a gentleman. Yet can I endure the jocularity 
of a young sweep with something more than 
forgiveness. — In the last winter but one, 
pacing along Cheapside with my accustomed 



precipitation when I walk westward, a 
treacherous slide brought me upon my back 
in an instant. I scrambled up with pain 
and shame enough — yet outwardly trying to 
face it down, as if nothing had happened — 
when the roguish grin of one of these young 
wits encountered me. There he stood, point- 
ing me out with his dusky finger to the mob, 
and to a poor woman (I suppose his mother) 
in particular, till the tears for the exquisite- 
ness of the fun (so he thought it) worked 
themselves out at the corners of his poor red 
eyes, red from many a previous weeping, and 
soot-inflamed, yet twinkling through all with 
such a joy, snatched out of desolation, that 

Hogarth but Hogarth has got him 

already (how could he miss him ?) in the 
March to Finchley, grinning at the pieman 
— there he stood, as he stands in the picture, 
irremovable, as if the jest was to last for ever 
— with such a maximum of glee, and minimum 
of mischief, in his mirth — for the grin of a 
genuine sweep hath absolutely no malice in 
it — that I could have been content, if the 
honour of a gentleman might endure it, to 
have remained his butt and his mockery till 
midnight. 

I am by theory obdurate to the seductive- 
ness of what are called a fine set of teeth. 
Every pair of rosy lips (the ladies must 
pardon me) is a casket presumably holding 
such jewels ; but, methinks, they should take 
leave to " air " them as frugally as possible. 
The fine lady, or fine gentleman, who show 
me their teeth, show me bones. Yet must I 
confess, that from the mouth of a true sweep 
a display (even to ostentation) of those white 
and shining ossifications, strikes me as an 
agreeable anomaly in manners, and an allow- 
able piece of foppery. It is, as when 

A sable cloud 
Turns forth her silver lining on the night. 

It is like some remnant of gentry not quite 
extinct ; a badge of better days ; a hint of 
nobility : — and, doubtless, under the ob- 
scuring darkness and double night of their 
forlorn disguisement, oftentimes lurketh good 
blood, and gentle conditions, derived from 
lost ancestry, and a lapsed pedigree. The 
premature apprenticements of these tender 
victims give but too much encouragement, 
I fear, to clandestine and almost infantile 
abductions ; the seeds of civility and true 



3S4 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 



courtesy, so often discernible in these young 
grafts (not otherwise to be accounted for) 
plainly hint at some forced adoptions ; many 
noble Eachels mourning for their children, 
even in our days, countenance the fact ; the 
tales of fairy-spiriting may shadow a lament- 
able verity, and the recovery of the young 
Montagu be but a solitary instance of good 
fortune out of many irreparable and hopeless 
defiliations. 

In one of the state-beds at Arundel Castle, 
a few years since — under a ducal canopy — 
(that seat of the Howards is an object of 
curiosity to visitors, chiefly for its beds, in 
which the late duke was especially a connois- 
seur) — encircled with curtains of delicatest 
crimson, with starry coronets inwoven — 
folded between a pair of sheets whiter and 
softer than the lap where Yenus lulled 
Ascanius — was discovered by chance, after 
all methods of search had failed, at noon-day, 
fast asleep, a lost chimney-sweeper. The 
little creature, having somehow confounded 
his passage among the intricacies of those 
lordly chimneys, by some unknown aperture 
had alighted upon this magnificent chamber ; 
and, tired with his tedious explorations, was 
unable to resist the delicious invitement to 
repose, which he there saw exhibited ; so 
creeping between the sheets very quietly, 
laid his black head upon the pillow, and slept 
like a young Howard. 

Such is the account given to the visiters 
at the Castle. — But I cannot help seeming to 
perceive a confirmation of what I had just 
hinted at in this story. A high instinct 
was at work in the case, or I am mistaken. 
Is it probable that a poor child of that descrip- 
tion, with whatever weariness he might be 
visited, would have ventured, under such a 
penalty as he would be taught to expect, to 
uncover the sheets of a Duke's bed, and 
deliberately to lay himself down between 
them, when the rug, or the carpet, presented 
an obvious couch, still far above his preten- 
sions — is this probable, I would ask, if the 
great power of nature, which I contend for, 
had not been manifested within him, prompt- 
ing to the adventure ? Doubtless this young 
nobleman (for such my mind misgives me 
that he must be) was allured by some memory, 
not amounting to full consciousness, of his 
condition in infancy, when he was used to be 
lapped by his mother, or his nurse, in just 



such sheets as he there found, into which he 
was now but creeping back as into his proper 
incunabula, and resting-place. — By no other 
theory than by this sentiment of a pre- 
existent state (as I may call it), can I explain 
a deed so venturous, and, indeed, upon any 
other system, so indecorcus, in this tender, 
but unseasonable, sleeper. 

My pleasant friend Jem White was so 
impressed with a belief of metamorphoses 
like this frequently taking place, that in some 
sort to reverse the wrongs of fortune in these 
poor changelings, he instituted an annual 
feast of chimney-sweepers, at which it was 
his pleasure to officiate as host and waiter. 
It was a solemn supper held in Smithfield, 
upon the yearly return of the fair of St. 
Bartholomew. Cards were issued a week 
before to the master-sweeps in and about the 
metropolis, confining the invitation to their 
younger fry. Now and then an elderly 
stripling would get in among us, and be good- 
naturedly winked at ; but our main body 
were infantry. One unfortunate wight, 
indeed, who, relying upon his dusky suit, 
had intruded himself into our party, but by 
tokens was providentially discovered in time 
to be no chimney-sweeper, (all is not soot 
which looks so,) was quoited out of the 
presence with universal indignation, as not 
having on the wedding garment ; but in 
general the greatest harmony prevailed. The 
place chosen was a convenient spot among 
the pens, at the north side of the fair, not so 
far distant as to be impervious to the agree- 
able hubbub of that vanity ; but remote 
enough not to be obvious to the interruption 
of every gaping spectator in it. The guests 
assembled about seven. In those little tem- 
porary parlours three tables were spread 
with napery, not so fine as substantial, and 
at every board a comely hostess presided 
with her pan of hissing sausages. The 
nostrils of the young rogues dilated at the 
savour. James White, as head waiter, had 
charge of the first table ; and myself, with 
our trusty companion Bigod, ordinarily 
ministered to the other two. There was 
clambering and jostling, you may be sure, 
who should get at the first table — for 
Eochester in his maddest days could not 
have done the humours of the scene with 
more spirit than my friend. After some 
general expression of thanks for the honour 



A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 



385 



the company had done him, his inaugural 
ceremony was to clasp the greasy waist of 
old dame Ursula (the fattest of the three), 
that stood frying and fretting, half-blessing, 
half-cursing " the gentleman," and imprint 
upon her chaste lips a tender salute, whereat 
the universal host would set up a shout that 
tore the concave, while hundreds of grinning 
teeth startled the night with their brightness. 
O it was a pleasure to see the sable younkers 
lick in the unctuous meat, with his more 
unctuous sayings — how he would fit the tit- 
bits to the puny mouths, reserving the 
lengthier links for the seniors — how he 
would intercept a morsel even in the jaws of 
some young desperado, declaring it . " must 
to the pan again to be browned, for it was 
not fit for a gentleman's eating " — how he 
would recommend this slice of white bread, 
or that piece of kissing-crust, to a tender 
juvenile, advising them all to nave a care of 
cracking their teeth, which were their best 
patrimony, — how genteely he would deal 
about the small ale, as if it were wine> 
naming the brewer, and protesting, if it were 
not good, he should lose their custom ; with 
a special recommendation to wipe the lip 
before drinking. Then we had our toasts — 



" The King,"—" the Cloth,"— which, whether 
they understood or not, was equally diverting 
and flattering ; — and for a crowning senti- 
ment, which never failed, " May the Brush 
supersede the Laurel ! " All these, and 
fifty other fancies, which were rather felt 
than comprehended by his guests, would he 
utter, standing upon tables, and prefacing 
every sentiment with a " Gentlemen, give 
me leave to propose so and so," which was a 
prodigious comfort to those young orphans ; 
every now and then stuffing into his mouth 
(for it did not do to be squeamish on these 
occasions) indiscriminate pieces of those 
reeking sausages, which pleased them 
mightily, and was the savouriest part, you 
may believe, of the entertainment. 

Golden lads and lasses must, 

As chimney-sweepers, come to dust — 

James White is extinct, and with him 
these suppers have long ceased. He carried 
away with him half the fun of the world when 
he died — of my world at least. His old 
clients look for him among the pens ; and, 
missing him, reproach the altered feast of 
St. Bartholomew, and the glory of Smithfield 
departed for ever. 



A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGAES, 



IN THE METROPOLIS. 



The all-sweeping besom of societarian re- 
formation — your only modern Alcides' club 
to rid the time of its abuses — is uplift with 
many-handed sway to extirpate the last 
fluttering tatters of the bugbear Mendicity 
from the metropolis. Scrips, wallets, bags — 
staves, dogs, and crutches — the whole men- 
dicant fraternity, with all their baggage, 
are fast posting out of the purlieus of this 
eleventh persecution. From the crowded 
crossing, from the corners of streets and 
turnings of alleys, the parting Genius of 
Beggary is " with sighing sent." 

I do not approve of this wholesale going 
to work, this impertinent crusado, or helium 
ad exterminationem, proclaimed against a 
species. Much good might be sucked from 
these Beggars. 



They were the oldest and the honourablest 
form of pauperism. Their appeals were to 
our common nature ; less revolting to an in- 
genuous mind than to be a suppliant to the 
particular humours or caprice of any fellow- 
creature, or set of fellow-creatures, parochial 
or societarian. Theirs were the only rates 
uninvidious in the levy, ungrudged in the 
assessment. 

There was a dignity springing from the 
very depth of their desolation ; as to be 
naked is to be so much nearer to the being 
a man, than to go in livery. 

The greatest spirits have felt this in their 
reverses; and when Dionysius from king 
turned schoolmaster, do we feel anything 
towards him but contempt ? Could Yan- 
dyke have made a picture of him, swaying 



386 



A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 



a ferula for a sceptre, which would have 
affected our minds with the same heroic 
pity, the same compassionate admiration, 
with which we regard his Belisarius begging 
for an obolum? Would the moral have been 
more graceful, more pathetic ? 

The Blind Beggar in the legend — the father 
of pretty Bessy — whose story doggrel rhymes 
and ale-house signs cannot so degrade or 
attenuate but that some sparks of a lustrous 
spirit will shine through the disguisements 
— this noble Earl of Cornwall (as indeed he 
was) and memorable sport of fortune, fleeing 
from the unjust sentence of his liege lord, 
stript of all, and seated on the flowering 
green of Bethnal, with his more fresh and 
springing daughter by his side, illumining 
his rags and his beggary — would the child 
and parent have cut a better figure doing 
the honours of a counter, or expiating their 
fallen condition upon the three-foot eminence 
of some sempstering shop-board 1 

In tale or history your Beggar is ever the 
just antipode to your King. The poets and 
romancical writers (as dear Margaret New- 
castle would call them,) when they would 
most sharply and feelingly paint a reverse of 
fortune, never stop till they have brought 
down their hero in good earnest to rags and 
the wallet. The depth of the descent illus- 
trates the height he falls from. There is no 
medium which can be presented to the 
imagination without offence. There is no 
breaking the fall. Lear, thrown from his 
palace, must divest him of his garments, till 
he answer " mere nature ; " and Cresseid, 
fallen from a prince's love, must extend her 
pale arms, pale with other whiteness than of 
beauty, supplicating lazar arms with bell 
and clap-dish. 

The Lucian wits knew this very well ; 
and, with a converse policy, when they would 
express scorn of greatness without the pity, 
they show us an Alexander in the shades 
cobbling shoes, or a Semiramis getting up 
foul linen. 

How would it sound in song, that a great 
monarch had declined his affections upon the 
daughter of a baker ! yet do we feel the 
imagination at all violated when we read the 
" true ballad," where King Cophetua woos 
the beggar maid ? 

Pauperism, pauper, poor man, are expres- 
sions of pity, but pity alloyed with contempt. 



No one properly contemns a Beggar. Poverty 
is a comparative thing, and each degree of 
it is mocked by its " neighbour grice." Its 
poor rents and comings-in are soon summed 
up and told. Its pretences to property are 
almost ludicrous. Its pitiful attempts to 
save excite a smile. Every scornful com- 
panion can weigh his trifle-bigger purse 
against it. Poor man reproaches poor man 
in the street with impolitic mention of his 
condition, his own being a shade better, 
while the rich pass by and jeer at both. No 
rascally comparative insults a Beggar, or 
thinks of weighing purses with him. He is 
not in the scale of comparison. He is not 
under the measure of property. He con- 
fessedly hath none, any more than a dog or 
a sheep. No one twitteth him with ostenta- 
tion above his means. No one accuses him 
of pride, or upbraideth him with mock 
humility. None jostle with him for the 
wall, or pick quarrels for precedency. No 
wealthy neighbour seeketh to eject him from 
his tenement. No man sues him. No man 
goes to law with him. If I were not the in- 
dependent gentleman that I am, rather than 
I would be a retainer to the great, a led 
captain, or a poor relation, I would choose, 
out of the delicacy and true greatness of my 
mind, to be a Beggar. 

Rags, which are the reproach of poverty, 
are the Beggar's robes, and graceful insignia 
of his profession, his tenure, his full dress, 
the suit in which he is expected to show 
himself in public. He is never out of the 
fashion, or limpeth awkwardly behind it. 
He is not required to put on court mourn- 
ing. He weareth all colours, fearing none. 
His costume hath undergone less change 
than the Quaker's. He is the only man 
in the universe who is not obliged to study 
appearances. The ups and downs of the 
world concern him no longer. He alone 
continueth in one stay. The price of stock 
or land affecteth him not. The fluctuations 
of agricultural or commercial prosperity 
touch him not, or at worst but change his 
customers. He is not expected to become 
bail or surety for any one. No man troubleth 
him with questioning his religion or politics. 
He is the only free man in the universe. 

The Mendicants of this great city were so 
many of her sights, her lions. I can no more 
spare them than I could the Cries of London. 



A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 



387 



No corner of a street is complete without 
them. They are as indispensable as the 
Ballad Singer ; and in their picturesque 
attire as ornamental as the signs of old 
London. They were the standing morals, 
emblems, mementos, dial-mottos, the spital 
sermons, the books for children, the salutary 
checks and pauses to the high and rushing 
tide of greasy citizenry — 



-Look 



Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there. 

Above all, those old blind Tobits that used 
to line the wall of Lincoln's-inn Garden, 
before modern fastidiousness had expelled 
them, casting up their ruined orbs to catch 
a ray of pity, and (if possible) of light, with 
their faithful Dog Guide at their feet, — 
whither are they fled ? or into what corners, 
blind as themselves, have they been driven, 
out of the wholesome air and sun-warmth ? 
immersed between four walls, in what wither- 
ing poor-house do they endure the penalty of 
double darkness, where the chink of the 
dropt half-penny no more consoles their for- 
lorn bereavement, far from the sound of the 
cheerful and hope-stirring tread of the pas- 
senger ? Where hang their useless staves ? 
and who will farm their dogs? — Have the 
overseers of St. L — caused them to be shot ? 
or were they tied up in sacks and dropt into 
the Thames, at the suggestion of B— -, the 

mild rector of 1 

Well fare the soul of unfastidious Vincent 
Bourne, most classical, and at the same time, 
most English of the Latinists ! — who has 
treated of this human and quadrupedal 
alliance, this dog and man friendship, in 
the sweetest of his poems, the Epitaphium 
in Canem, or, Bog's Epitaph. Eeader, peruse 
it ; and say, if customary sights, which could 
call up such gentle poetry as this, were of a 
nature to do more harm or good to the moral 
sense of the passengers through the daily 
thoroughfares of a vast and busy metropolis. 

Pauperis hie Iri requiesco Lyciscus, herilis, 

Dum vixi, tutela vigil columenque senectas, 

Dux cseco fidus : nee, me ducente, solebat, 

Praetenso hinc atque hinc baculo, per iniqua locorum 

Incertam explorare viam ; sed fila secutus, 

Quae dubios regerent passus, vestigia tuta 

Fixit inoffenso gressu ; gelidumque sedile 

In nudo nactus saxo, qua praetereuntium 

Unda frequens confluxit, ibi miserisque tenebras 

Lamentis, noctemque oeulis ploravit obortam. 

Ploravit nee frustra ; obolum dedit alter et alter, 



Queis corda et men tern indiderat natura benignam. 

Ad latus interea jacui sopitus herile, 

Vel mediis vigil in somnis ; ad herilia jussa 

Auresque atque animum arreetus, seu frustula amic6 

Porrexit sociasque dapes, seu longa diei 

Taodia perpessus, reditum sub nocte parabat. 

Hi mores, haec vita fuit, dum fata sinebant, 
Dum neque languebam morbis, nee inerte senecta ; 
Quae tandem obrepsit, veterique satellite caecum 
Orbavit dominum : prisci sed gratia facti 
Ne tota intereat, longos delecta per annos, 
Exiguum hunc Irus tumulum de cespite fecit, 
Etsi inopis, non ingratse, munuscula dextrae ; 
Carmine signavitque brevi, dominumque canemque 
Quod memoret, fidumque canem dominumque benignum. 

Poor Irus' faithful wolf-dog here I lie, 

That wont to tend my old blind master's steps, 

His guide and guard ; nor, while my service lasted, 

Had he occasion for that staff, with which 

He now goes picking out his path in fear 

Over the highways and crossings ; but would plant, 

Safe in the conduct of my friendly string, 

A firm foot forward still, till he had reach'd 

His poor seat on some stone, nigh where the tide 

Of passers by in thickest confluence flow'd : 

To whom with loud and passionate laments 

From morn to eve his dark estate he wail'd. 

Nor wail'd to all in vain : some here and there, 

The well-disposed and good, their pennies gave. 

I meantime at his feet obsequious slept ; 

Not all-asleep in sleep, but heart and ear 

Prick'd up at his least motion ; to receive 

At his kind hand my customary crumbs, 

And common portion in his feast of scraps ; 

Or when night warn'd us homeward, tired and spent 

With our long day and tedious beggary. 

These were my manners, this my way of life, 
Till age and slow disease me overtook, 
And sever'd from my sightless master's side. 
But lest the grace of so good deeds should die, 
Through tract of years in mute oblivion lost, 
This slender tomb of turf hath Irus reared, 
Cheap monument of no ungrudging hand, 
And with short verse inscribed it, to attest, 
In long and lasting union to attest, 
The virtues of the Beggar and his Dog. 

These dim eyes have in vain explored for 
some months past a well-known figure, or 
part of the figure of a man, who used to 
glide his comely upper half over the pave- 
ments of London, wheeling along with most 
ingenious celerity upon a machine of wood ; 
a spectacle to natives, to foreigners, and to 
children. He was of a robust make, with a 
florid sailor-like complexion, and his head 
was bare to the storm and sunshine. He 
was a natural curiosity, a speculation to the 
scientific, a prodigy to the simple. The in- 
fant would stare at the mighty man brought 
down to his own level. The common cripple 
would despise his own pusillanimity, viewing 
the hale stoutness, and hearty heart, of this 
half-limbed giant. Few but must have 
noticed him ; for the accident which brought 
him low took place during the riots of 1 780, 
and he has been a groundling so long. He 



cc 2 



383 



A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGAES. 



seemed earth-born, an Antseus, and to suck 
in fresh vigour from the soil which he neigh- 
boured. He was a grand fragment ; as 
good as an Elgin marble. The nature, 
which should have recruited his reft legs 
and thighs, was not lost, but only retired 
into his upper parts, and he was half a 
Hercules. I heard a tremendous voice thun- 
dering and growling, as before an earth- 
quake, and casting down my eyes, it was 
this mandrake reviling a steed that had 
started at his portentous appearance. He 
seemed to want but his just stature to have 
rent the offending quadruped in shivers. 
He was as the man-part of a centaur, from 
which the horse-half had been cloven in 
some dire Lapithan controversy. He moved 
on, as if he could have made shift with yet 
half of the body-portion which was left him. 
The os sublime was not wanting ; and he 
threw out yet a jolly countenance upon the 
heavens. Forty-and-two years had he driven 
this out-of-door trade, and now that his hair 
is grizzled in the service, but his good spirits 
no way impaired, because he is not content 
to exchange his free air and exercise for the 
restraints of a poor-house, he is expiating his 
contumacy in one of those houses (ironically 
christened) of Correction. 

Was a daily spectacle like this to be 
deemed a nuisance, which called for legal in- 
terference to remove ? or not rather a salu- 
tary and a touching object to the passers- 
by in a great city? Among her shows, 
her museums, and supplies for ever-gaping 
curiosity (and what else but an accumula- 
tion of sights — endless sights — is a great 
city ; or for what else is it desirable ?) was 
there not room for one Lusus (not Natural, 
indeed, but) Accidentium ? What if in forty- 
and-two-years' going about, the man had 
scraped together enough to give a portion to 
his child, (as the rumour ran) of a few hun- 
dreds — whom had he injured ? — whom had 
he imposed upon? The contributors had 
enjoyed their sight for their pennies. What 
if after being exposed all day to the heats, 
the rains, and the frosts of heaven — shuffling 
his ungainly trunk along in an elaborate and 
painful motion — he was enabled to retire at 
night to enjoy himself at a club of his fellow 
cripples over a dish of hot meat and vege- 
tables, as the charge was gravely brought 
against him by a clergyman deposing before 



a House of Commons' Committee — was this, 
or was his truly paternal consideration, 
which (if a fact) deserved a statue rather 
than a whipping-post, and is inconsistent, at 
least, with the exaggeration of nocturnal 
orgies which he has been slandered with — a 
reason that he should be deprived of his 
chosen, harmless, nay edifying, way of life, 
and be committed in hoary age for a sturdy 
vagabond ? — 

There was a Yorick once, whom it would 
not have shamed to have sate down at the 
cripples' feast, and to have thrown in his 
benediction, ay, and his mite too, for a com- 
panionable symbol. "Age, thou hast lost 
thy breed."— 

Half of these stories about the prodigious 
fortunes made by begging are (I verily be- 
lieve) misers' calumnies. One was much 
talked of in the public papers some time 
since, and the usual charitable inferences 
deduced. A clerk in the Bank was surprised 
with the announcement of a five-hundred- 
pound legacy left him by a person whose 
name he was a stranger to. It seems that 
in his daily morning walks from Peckham 
(or some village thereabouts) where he lived, 
to his office, it had been his practice for the 
last twenty years to drop his halfpenny duly 
into the hat of some blind JBartimeus, that 
sate begging alms by the way-side in the 
Borough. The good old beggar recognised 
his daily benefactor by the voice only ; and, 
when he died, left all the amassings of his 
alms (that had been half a century perhaps 
in the accumulating) to his old Bank friend. 
Was this a story to purse up people's hearts, 
and pennies, against giving an alms to the 
blind ?• — or not rather a beautiful moral of 
well-directed charity on the one part, and 
noble gratitude upon the other ? 

I sometimes wish I had been that Bank 
clerk. 

I seem to remember a poor old grateful 
kind of creature, blinking, and looking up 
with his no eyes in the sun — 

Is it possible I could have steeled my purse 
against him ? 

Perhaps I had no small change. 

Eeader, do not be frightened at the hard 
words imposition, imposture — give, and ask 
no questions. Cast thy bread upon the waters. 
Some have unawares (like this Bank clerk) 
entertained angels. 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 



389 



Shut not thy purse-strings always against 
painted distress. Act a charity sometimes. 
When a poor creature (outwardly and visibly 
such) comes before thee, do not stay to in- 
quire whether the "seven small children," 
in whose name he implores thy assistance, 
have a veritable existence. Rake not into 
the bowels of unwelcome truth to save a half- 
penny. It is good to believe him. If he be 



not all that he pretendeth, give, and under a 
personate father of a family, think (if thou 
pleasest) that thou hast relieved an indigent 
bachelor. When they come with their coun- 
terfeit looks, and mumping tones, think them 
players. You pay your money to see a 
comedian feign these things, which, concern- 
ing these poor people, thou canst not cer- 
tainly tell whether they are feigned or not. 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 



Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, 
which my friend M. was obliging enough to 
read and explain to me, for the first seventy 
thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing 
or biting it from the living animal, just as 
they do in Abyssinia to this day. This 
period is not obscurely hinted at by their 
great Confucius in the second chapter of his 
Mundane Mutations, where he designates a 
kind of golden age by the term Cho-fang, 
literally the Cooks' Holiday. The manuscript 
goes on to say, that the art of roasting, or 
rather broiling (which I take to be the elder 
brother) was accidentally discovered in the 
manner following. The swine-herd, Ho-ti, 
having gone out into the woods one morning, 
as his manner was, to collect mast for his 
hogs, left his cottage in the care of his eldest 
son Bo-bo, a great lubberly boy, who being 
fond of playing with fire, as younkers of his 
age commonly are, let some sparks escape 
into a bundle of straw, which kindling quickly, 
spread the conflagration over every part of 
their poor mansion, till it was reduced to 
ashes. Together with the cottage (a sorry 
antediluvian make-shift of a building, you 
may think it), what was of much more im- 
portance, a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs, 
no less than nine in number, perished. China 
pigs have been esteemed a luxury all over 
the East, from the remotest periods that we 
read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost consterna- 
tion, as you may think, not so much for the 
sake of the tenement, which his father and 
he could easily build up again with a few 
dry branches, and the labour of an hour or 
two, at any time, as for the loss of the pigs. 
While he was thinking what he should say 



to his father, and wringing his hands over 
the smoking remnants of one of those un- 
timely sufferers, an odour assailed his nostrils, 
unlike any scent which he had before ex- 
perienced. What could it proceed from ? — 
not from the burnt cottage — he had smelt 
that smell before — indeed this was by no 
means the first accident of the kind which 
had occurred through the negligence of this 
unlucky young fire-brand. Much less did it 
resemble that of any known herb, weed, or 
flower. A premonitory moistening at the 
same time overflowed his nether lip. He 
knew not what to think. He next stooped 
down to feel the pig, if there were any signs 
of life in it. He burnt his fingers, and to 
cool them he applied them in his booby 
fashion to his mouth. Some of the crumbs 
of the scorched skin had come away with his 
fingers, and for the first time in his life (in 
the world's life indeed, for before him no 
man had known it) he tasted — crackling ! 
Again he felt and fumbled at the pig. It 
did not burn him so much now, still he licked 
his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth 
at length broke into his slow understanding, 
that it was the pig that smelt so, and the pig 
that tasted so delicious ; and surrendering 
himself up to the new-born pleasure, he fell 
to tearing up whole handfuls of the scorched 
skin with the flesh next it, and was cramming- 
it down his throat in his beastly fashion, 
when his sire entered amid the smoking 
rafters, armed with retributory cudgel, and 
finding how affairs stood, began to rain blows 
upon the young rogue's shoulders, as thick 
as hail-stones, which Bo-bo heeded not 
any more than if they had been flies. The 



390 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 



tickling pleasure, which he experienced in his 
lower regions, had rendered him quite callous 
to any inconveniences he might feel in those 
remote quarters. His father might lay on, 
but he could not beat him from his pig, till 
he had fairly made an end of it, when, be- 
coming a little more sensible of his situation, 
something like the following dialogue ensued. 

" You graceless whelp, what have you got 
there devouring ? Is it not enough that 
you have burnt me down three houses with 
your dog's tricks, and be hanged to you ! but 
you must be eating fire, and I know not 
what — what have you got there, I say 1 " 

" O father, the pig, the pig ! do come and 
taste how nice the burnt pig eats." 

The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He 
cursed his son, and he cursed himself that 
ever he should beget a son that should eat 
burnt pig. 

Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully 
sharpened since morning, soon raked out 
another pig, and fairly rending it asunder, 
thrust the lesser half by main force into the 
fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out, " Eat, eat, 
eat the burnt pig, father, only taste — O 
Lord ! " — with such-like barbarous ejacula- 
tions, cramming all the while as if he would 
choke. 

Ho-ti trembled every joint while he 
grasped the abominable thing, wavering 
whether he should not put his son to death 
for an unnatural young monster, when the 
crackling scorching his fingers, as it had 
done his son's, and applying the same remedy 
to them, he in his turn tasted some of its 
flavour, which, make what sour mouths he 
would for a pretence, proved not altogether 
displeasing to him. In conclusion (for the 
manuscript here is a little tedious), both 
father and son fairly set down to the mess, 
and never left off till they had despatched all 
that remained of the litter. 

Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the 
secret escape, for the neighbours would cer- 
tainly have stoned them for a couple of 
abominable wretches, who could think of 
improving upon the good meat which God 
had sent them. Nevertheless, strange stories 
got about. It was observed that Ho-ti's 
cottage was burnt down now more frequently 
than ever. Nothing but fires from this time 
forward. Some would break out in broad 
day, others in the night-time. As often as 



the sow farrowed, so sure was the house of 
Ho-ti to be in a blaze ; and Ho-ti himself, 
which was the more remarkable, instead of 
chastising his son, seemed to grow more in- 
dulgent to him than ever. At length they 
were watched, the terrible mystery dis- 
covered, and father and son summoned to 
take their trial at Pekin, then an inconsider- 
able assize town. Evidence was given, the 
obnoxious food itself produced in court, and 
verdict about to be pronounced, when the 
foreman of the jury begged that some of the 
burnt pig, of which the culprits stood 
accused, might be handed into the box. He 
handled it, and they all handled it; and 
burning their fingers, as Bo-bo and his father 
had done before them, and nature prompting 
to each of them the same remedy, against the 
face of all the facts, and the clearest charge 
which judge had ever given, — to the surprise 
of the whole court, townsfolk, strangers, 
reporters, and all present — without leaving 
the box, or any manner of consultation what- 
ever, they brought in a simultaneous verdict 
of Not Guilty. 

The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, 
winked at the manifest iniquity of the 
decision : and when the court was dismissed, 
went privily and bought up all the pigs that 
could be had for love or money. In a few 
days his lordship's town-house was observed 
to be on fire. The thing took wing, and now 
there was nothing to be seen but fire in 
every direction. Fuel and pigs grew enor- 
mously dear all over the district. The 
insurance-offices one and all shut up shop. 
People built slighter and slighter every day, 
until it was feared that the very science of 
architecture would in no long time be lost to 
the world. Thus this custom of firing houses 
continued, till in process of time, says my 
manuscript, a sage arose, like our Locke, who 
made a discovery that the flesh of swine, 
or indeed of any other animal, might be 
cooked (burnt, as they called it) without the 
necessity of consuming a whole house to 
dress it. Then first began the rude form of 
a gridiron. Boasting by the string or spit 
came in a century or two later, I forget in 
whose dynasty. By such slow degrees, con- 
cludes the manuscript, do the most useful, 
and seemingly the most obvious, arts make 
their way among mankind 

Without placing too implicit faith in the 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 



391 



account above given, it must be agreed that 
if a worthy pretext for so dangerous an expe- 
riment as setting houses on fire (especially 
in these days) could be assigned in favour of 
any culinary object, that pretext and excuse 
might be found in roast pig. 

Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus 
edibilisj I will maintain it to be the most 
delicate — princeps obsoniorum. 

I speak not of your grown porkers — 
things between pig and pork — those hobby- 
dehoys — but a young and tender suckling — -„ 
under a moon old — guiltless as yet of the sty 
— with no original speck of the amor immun- 
ditioe, the hereditary failing of the first 
parent, yet ^manifest — his voice as - yet not 
broken, but something between a childish 
treble and a grumble — the mild forerunner 
or prceludium of a grunt. 

He must be roasted. I am not ignorant that 
our ancestors ate them seethed, or boiled — 
but what a sacrifice of the exterior tegument ! 

There is no flavour comparable, I will 
contend, to that of the crisp, tawny, well- 
watched, not over-roasted, crackling, as it is 
well called — the very teeth are invited to their 
share of the pleasure at this banquet in over- 
coming the coy, brittle resistance — with the 
adhesive oleaginous — O call it not fat ! but 
an indefinable sweetness growing up to it — 
the tender blossoming of fat — fat cropped in 
the bud — taken in the shoot — in the first 
innocence — the cream and quintessence of 

the child-pig's yet pure food the lean, no 

lean, but a kind of animal manna — or, 
rather, fat and lean (if it must be so) so 
blended and funning into each other, that 
both together make but one ambrosian 
result or common substance. 

Behold him, while he is "doing" — it 
seemeth rather a refreshing warmth, than a 
scorching heat, that he is so passive to. How 
equably he twirleth round the string ! — Now 
he is just done. To see the extreme sensibi- 
lity of that tender age ! he hath wept out 
his pretty eyes — radiant jellies — shooting 
stars. — 

See him in the dish, his second cradle, how 
meek he lieth ! — wouldst thou have had this 
innocent grow up to the grossness and indo- 
cility which too often accompany maturer 
swinehood? Ten to one he would have 
proved a glutton, a sloven, an obstinate, dis- 
agreeable animal — wallowing in all manner 



of filthy conversation — from these sins he is 
happily snatched away — 

Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade, 
Death, came with timely care — 

his memory is odoriferous — no clown curseth, 
while his stomach half rejecteth, the rank 
bacon — no coalheaver bolteth him in reeking 
sausages — he hath a fair sepulchre in the 
grateful stomach of the judicious epicure — 
and for such a tomb might be content to die. 

He is the best of sapors. Pine-apple is 
great. She is indeed almost too transcend- 
ent — a delight, if not sinful, yet so like to 
sinning that really a tender-conscienced 
person would do well to pause — too ravishing 
for mortal taste, she woundeth and exco- 
riateth the lips that approach her — like 
lovers' kisses, she biteth — she is a pleasure 
bordering on pain from the fierceness and 
insanity of her relish — but she stoppeth at 
the palate — she meddleth not with the appe- 
tite — and the coarsest hunger might barter 
her consistently for a mutton-chop. 

Pig — let me speak his praise — is no less 
provocative of the appetite, than he is satis- 
factory to the criticalness of the censorious 
palate. The strong man may batten on him, 
and the weakling refuseth not his mild juices. 

Unlike to mankind's mixed characters, a 
bundle of virtues and vices, inexplicably 
intertwisted, and not to be unravelled with- 
out hazard, he is — good throughout. No 
part of him is better or worse than another. 
He helpeth, as far as his little means extend, 
all around. He is the least envious of ban- 
quets. He is all neighbours' fare. 

I am one of those, who freely and un- 
grudgingly impart a share of the good things 
of this life which fall to their lot (few as 
mine are in this kiud) to a friend. I protest 
I take as great an interest in my friend's 
pleasures, his relishes, and proper satis- 
factions, as in mine own. " Presents," I 
often say, " endear Absents." Hares, 
pheaiants, partridges, ' snipes, barn-door 
chickens (those " tame villatic fowl,") capons, 
plovers, brawn, barrels of oysters, I dispense 
as freely as I receive them. I love to taste 
them, as it were, upon the tongue of my 
friend. But a stop must be put somewhere. 
One would not, like Lear, "give everything." 
I make my stand upon pig. Methinks it is 
an ingratitude to the Giver of all good flavours 



3 92 A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF THE BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE. 



to extra-doniiciliate, or send out of the house 
slightingly (under pretext of friendship, or I 
know not what) a blessing so particularly 
adapted, predestined, I may say, to my 
individual palate — It argues an insensibility. 
I remember a touch of conscience in this 
kind at school. My good old aunt, who 
never parted from me at the end of a holiday 
without stuffing a sweetmeat, or some nice 
thing into my pocket, had dismissed me one 
evening with a smoking plum-cake, fresh 
from the oven. In my way to school (it was 
over London bridge) a grey-headed old 
beggar saluted me (I have no doubt, at this 
time of day, that he was a counterfeit.) I 
had no pence to console him with, and in the 
vanity of self-denial, and the very coxcombry 
of charity, schoolboy-like, I made him a pre- 
sent of — the whole cake ! I walked on a 
little, buoyed up, as one is on such occasions, 
with a sweet soothing of self-satisfaction ; 
but before I had got to the end of the bridge, 
my better feelings returned, and I burst into 
tears, thinking how ungrateful I had been to 
my good aunt, to go and give her good gift 
away to a stranger that I had never seen 
before, and who might be a bad man for 
aught I knew ; and then I thought of the 
pleasure my aunt would be taking in think- 
ing that I — I myself, and not another — would 
eat her nice cake — and what should I say to 
her the next time I saw her — how naughty I 
was to part with her pretty present ! — and 
the odour of that spicy cake came back upon 
my recollection, and the pleasure and the 
curiosity I had taken in seeing her make it, 
and her joy when she sent it to the oven, and 
how disappointed she would feel that I had 
never had a bit of it in my mouth at last — 
and I blamed my impertinent spirit of alms- 



giving, and out of-place hypocrisy of good- 
ness ; and above all I wished never to see 
the face again of that insidious, good-for-no- 
thing, old grey imposter. 

Our ancestors were nice in their method 
of sacrificing these tender victims. We read 
of pigs whipt to death with something of a 
shock, as we hear of any other obsolete 
custom. The age of discipline is gone by, or 
it would be curious to inquire (in a philoso- 
phical light merely) what effect this process 
might have towards intenerating and dulci- 
fying a substance, naturally so mild and 
dulcet as the flesh of young pigs. It looks 
like refining a violet. Yet we should be 
cautious, while we condemn the inhumanity, 
how we censure the wisdom of the practice. 
It might impart a gusto. — 

I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by 
the young students, when I was at St. Omer's, 
and maintained with much learning and 
pleasantry on both sides, " Whether, sup- 
posing that the flavour of a pig who obtained 
his death by whipping {per flagellationem 
extremam) superadded a pleasure upon the 
palate of a man more intense than any 
possible suffering we can conceive in the 
animal, is man justified in using that method 
of putting the animal to death ? " I forget 
the decision. 

His sauce should be considered. Deci- 
dedly, a few bread crumbs, done up with his 
liver and brains, and a dash of mild sage. 
But banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I beseech you, 
the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your whole 
hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots, 
stuff them out with plantations of the rank 
and guilty garlic ; you cannot poison them, 
or make them stronger than they are — but 
consider, he is a weakling — a flower. 



A BACHELOE'S COMPLAINT OF THE BEHAYIOUE OF MAEEIED PEOPLE. 



As a single man, I have spent a good deal 
of my time in noting down the infirmities of 
Married People, to console myself for those 
superior pleasures, which they tell me I have 
lost by remaining as I am. 

I cannot say that the quarrels of men and 
their wives ever made any great impression 



upon me, or had much tendency to strengthen 
me in those anti-social resolutions, which I 
took up long ago upon more substantial con- 
siderations. What oftenest offends me at 
the houses of married persons where I visit, 
is an error of quite a different description ; — 
it is that they are too loving. 



A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF THE BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE. 



393 



Not too loving ^neither : that does not ex- 
plain my meaning. Besides, why should that 
offend me 1 The very act of separating them- 
selves from the rest of the world, to have the 
fuller enjoyment of each other's society, 
implies that they prefer one another to all 
the world. 

But what I complain of is, that they carry 
this preference so undisguisedly, they perk 
it up in the faces of us single people so 
shamelessly, you cannot be in their company 
a moment without being made to feel, by 
some indirect hint or open avowal, that you 
are not the object of this preference. Now 
there are some things which give no offence, 
while implied or taken for granted merely ; 
but expressed, there is much offence in them. 
If a man were to accost the first homely- 
featured or plain-dressed young woman of 
his acquaintance, and tell her bluntly, that 
she was not handsome or rich enough for 
him, and he could not marry her, he would 
deserve to be kicked for his ill manners ; yet 
no less is implied in the fact, that having 
access and opportunity of putting the question 
to her, he has never yet thought fit to do it. 
The young woman understands this as clearly 
as if it were put into words ; but no reason- 
able young woman would think of making 
this the ground of a quarrel. Just as little 
right have a married couple to tell me by 
speeches, and looks that are scarce less plain 
than speeches, that I am not the happy man, 
— the lady's choice. It is enough that I know 
I am not : I do not want this perpetual re- 
minding. 

The display of superior knowledge or riches 
may be made sufficiently mortifying ; but 
these admit of a palliative. The knowledge 
which is brought out to insult me, may acci- 
dentally improve me ; and in the rich man's 
houses and pictures, — his parks and gardens, 
I have a temporary usufruct at least. But 
the display of married happiness has none of 
these palliatives : it is throughout pure, un- 
recompensed, unqualified insult. 

Marriage by its best title is a monopoly, 
and not of the least invidious sort. It is the 
cunning of most possessors of any exclusive 
privilege to keep their advantage as much 
out of sight as possible, that their less 
favoured neighbours, seeing little of the 
benefit, may the less be disposed to question 
the right. But these married monopolists 



thrust the most obnoxious part of their 
patent into our faces. 

Nothing is to me more distasteful than 
that entire complacency and satisfaction 
which beam in the countenances of a new- 
married couple, — in that of the lady particu- 
larly : it tells you, that her lot is disposed of 
in this world : that you can have no hopes of 
her. It is true, I have none : nor wishes 
either, perhaps ; but this is one of those 
truths which ought, as I said before, to be 
taken for granted, not expressed. 

The excessive airs which those people give 
themselves, founded on the ignorance of us un- 
married people, would be more offensive if they 
were less irrational. We will allow them to 
understand the mysteries belonging to their 
own craft better than we, who have not had 
the happiness to be made free of the com- 
pany : but their arrogance is not content 
within these limits. If a single person pre- 
sume to offer his opinion in their presence, 
though upon the most indifferent subject, he 
is immediately silenced as an incompetent 
person. Nay, a young married lady of my ac- 
quaintance, who, the best of the jest was, had 
not changed her condition above a fortnight 
before, in a question on which I had the 
misfortune to differ from her, respecting the 
properest mode of breeding oysters for the 
London market, had the assurance to ask 
with a sneer, how such an old Bachelor as I 
could pretend to know anything about such 
matters ! 

But what I have spoken of hitherto is no- 
thing to the airs which these creatures give 
themselves when they come, as they generally 
do, to have children. ''When I consider how 
little of a rarity children are, — that every 
street and blind alley swarms with them, — 
that the poorest people commonly have them 
in most abundance, — that there are few mar- 
riages that are not blest with at least one of 
these bargains, — how often they turn out ill, 
and defeat the fond hopes of their parents, 
taking to vicious courses, which end in 
poverty, disgrace, the gallows, &c. — I cannot 
for my life tell what cause for pride there 
can possibly be in having them. If they were 
young phoenixes, indeed, that were born but 
one in a year, there might be a pretext. But 

when they are so common 

I do not advert to the insolent merit which 
they assume with their husbands on these 



394 A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF THE BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE. 



occasions. Let them look to that. But why | 
we, who are not their natural-born subjects, 
should be expected to bring our spices, myrrh, 
and incense, — our tribute and homage of 
admiration, — I do not see. 

" Like as the arrows in the hand of the 
giant, even so are the young children : " so 
says the excellent office in our Prayer-book 
appointed for the churching of women. 
" Happy is the man that hath his quiver full 
of them : " So say I ; but then don't let him 
discharge his quiver upon us that are weapon- 
less ; — let them be arrows, but not to gall 
and stick us. I have generally observed that 
these arrows are double-headed : they have 
two forks, to be sure to hit with one or the 
other. As for instance, where you come into 
a house which is full of children, if you 
happen to take no notice of them (you are 
thinking of something else, perhaps, and turn 
a deaf ear to their innocent caresses), you are 
set down as untractable, morose, a hater of 
children. On the other hand, if you find 
them more than usually engaging, — if you 
are taken with their pretty manners, and 
set about in earnest to romp and play 
with them, some pretext or other is sure 
to be found for sending them out of the 
room ; they are too noisy or boisterous, or 

Mr. does not like children. With one 

or other of these folks the arrow is sure to 
hit you. 

I could forgive their jealousy, and dispense 
with toying with their brats, if it gives them 
any pain ; but I think it unreasonable to be 
called upon to love them, where I see no 
occasion, — to love a whole family, perhaps 
eight, nine, or ten, indiscriminately, — to love 
all the pretty dears, because children are so 
engaging ! 

I know there is a proverb, " Love me, love 
my dog : " that is not always so very practi- 
cable, particularly if the dog be set upon you 
to tease you or snap at you in sport. But a 
dog, or a lesser thing — any inanimate sub- 
stance, as a keepsake, a watch or a ring, a 
tree, or the place where we last parted when 
my friend went away upon a long absence, 
I can make shift to love, because I love him, 
and anything that reminds me of him ; pro- 
vided it be in its nature indifferent, and apt 
to receive whatever hue fancy can give it. 
But children have a real character, and an 
essential being of themselves : they are 



amiable or unamiable per se ; I must love or 
hate them as I see cause for either in their 
qualities. A child's nature is too serious a 
thing to admit of its being regarded as a 
mere appendage to another being, and to be 
loved or hated accordingly : they stand with 
me upon their own stock, as much as men 
and women do. Oh ! but you will say, sure 
it is an attractive age, — there is something 
in the tender years of infancy that of itself 
charms us 1 That is the very reason why I 
am more nice about them. I know that a 
sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature, 
not even excepting the delicate creatures 
which bear them ; but the prettier the kind 
of a thing is, the more desirable it is that it 
should be pretty of its kind. One daisy 
differs not much from another in glory ; but . 
a violet should look and smell the daintiest. 
— I was always rather squeamish in my 
women and children. 

But this is not the worst : one must be 
admitted into their familiarity at least, before 
they can complain of inattention. It implies 
visits, and some kind of intercourse. But if 
the husband be a man with whom you have 
lived on a friendly footing before marriage — 
if you did not come in on the wife's side — if 
you did not sneak into the house in her 
train, but were an old friend in fast habits 
of intimacy before their courtship was so 
much as thought on, — look about you — your 
tenure is precarious — before a twelvemonth 
shall roll over your head, you shall find your 
old friend gradually grow cool and altered 
towards you, and at last seek opportunities 
of breaking with you. I have scarce a 
married friend of my acquaintance, upon 
whose firm faith I can rely, whose friendship 
did not commence after the period of his 
marriage. With some limitations, they can 
endure that ; but that the good man should 
have dared to enter into a solemn league of 
friendship in which they were not consulted, 
though it happened before they knew him, 
— before they that are now man and wife 
ever met, — this is intolerable to them. Every 
long friendship, every old authentic inti- 
macy, must be brought into their office to 
be new stamped with their currency, as 
a sovereign prince calls in the good old 
money that was coined in some reign before 
he was born or thought of, to be new marked 
and minted with the stamp of his authority, 



A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF THE BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE. 



395 



"before lie will let it pass current in the 
world. You may guess what luck generally 
befalls such a rusty piece of metal as I am 
in these new mintings. 

Innumerable are the ways which they take 
to insult and worm you out of their hus- 
band's confidence. Laughing at all you say 
with a kind of wonder, as if you were a 
queer kind of fellow that said good things, 
but an oddity, is one of the ways ; — they have 
a particular kind of stare for the purpose ; — 
till at last the husband, who used to defer to 
your judgment, and would pass over some 
excrescences of understanding and manner 
for the sake of a general vein of observation 
(not quite vulgar) which he perceived in 
you, begins to suspect whether you are not 
altogether a humourist, — afellow well enough 
to have consorted with in his bachelor days, 
but not quite so proper to be introduced to 
ladies. This may be called the staring way ; 
and is that which has oftenest been put in 
practice against me. 

Then there is the exaggerating way, or 
the way of irony ; that is, where they find 
you an object of especial regard with their 
husband, who is not so easily to be shaken 
from the lasting attachment founded on 
esteem which he has conceived towards you, 
by never qualified exaggerations to cry up 
all that you say or do, till the good man, 
who understands well enough that it is all 
done in compliment to him, grows weary of 
the debt of gratitude which is due to so 
much candour, and by relaxing a little on 
his part, and taking down a peg or two in 
his enthusiasm, sinks at length to the kindly 
level of moderate esteem — that " decent 
affection and complacent kindness " towards 
you, where she herself can join in sympathy 
with him without much stretch and violence 
to her sincerity. 

Another way (for the ways they have to 
accomplish so desirable a purpose are infi- 
nite) is, with a kind of innocent simplicity, 
continually to mistake what it was which 
first made their husband fond of you. If an 
esteem for something excellent in your moral 
character was that which riveted the chain 
which she is to break, upon any imaginary 
discovery of a want of poignancy in your 
conversation, she will cry, " I thought, my 

dear, you described your friend, Mr. , 

as a great wit 1 " If, on the other hand, it 



was for some supposed charm in your conver- 
sation that he first grew to like you, and was 
content for this to overlook some trifling 
irregularities in your moral deportment, upon 
the first notice of any of these she as readily 
exclaims, " This, my dear, is your good 
Mr ! " One good lady whom I took 



the liberty of expostulating with for not 
showing me quite so much respect as I 
thought due to her husband's old friend, had 
the candour to confess to me that she had 
often heard Mr. speak of me before 



marriage, and that she had conceived a great 
desire to be acquainted with me, but that 
the sight of me had very much disappointed 
her expectations ; for from her husband's 
representations of me, she had formed a 
notion that she was to see a fine, tall, officer- 
like-looking man (I use her very words), the 
very reverse of which proved to be the 
truth. This was candid ; and I had the 
civility not to ask her in return, how she 
came to pitch upon a standard of personal 
accomplishments for her husband's friends 
which differed so much from his own ; for 
my friend's dimensions as near as possible 
approximate to mine ; he standing five feet 
five in his shoes, in which I have the advan- 
tage of him by about half an inch ; and he 
no more than myself exhibiting any indica- 
tions of a martial character in his air or 
countenance. 

These are some of the mortifications which 
I have encountered in the absurd attempt 
to visit at their houses. To enumerate 
them all would be a vain endeavour ; I shall 
therefore just glance at the very common 
impropriety of which married ladies are 
guilty, — of treating us as if we were their 
husbands, and vice versa. I mean, when 
they use us with familiarity, and their hus- 
bands with ceremony. Testacea, for instance, 
kept me the other night two or three hours 
beyond my usual time of supping, while she 

was fretting because Mr. • did not come 

home, till the oysters were all spoiled, rather 
than she would be guilty of the impoliteness 
of touching one in his absence. This was 
reversing the point of good manners : for 
ceremony is an invention to take off the 
uneasy feeling which we derive from know- 
ing ourselves to be less the object of love 
and esteem with a fellow-creature than some 
other person is. It endeavours to make up, 



396 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 



by superior attentions in little points, for 
that invidious preference which it is forced 
to deny in the greater. Had Testacea kept 
the oysters back for me, and withstood her 
husband's importunities to go to supper, she 
would have acted according to the strict 
rules of propriety. I know no ceremony 
that ladies are bound to observe to their 
husbands, beyond the point of a modest 
behaviour and decorum : therefore I must 
protest against the vicarious gluttony of 
Cerasia, who at her own table sent away 



a dish of Morellas, which I was applying to 
with great good-will, to her husband at the 
other end of the table, and recommended a 
plate of less extraordinary gooseberries to 
my unwedded palate in their stead. Neither 

can I excuse the wanton affront of 

But I am weary of stringing up all my 
married acquaintance by Eoman denomina- 
tions. Let them amend and change their 
manners, or I promise to record the full- 
length English of their names, to the terror 
of all such desperate offenders in future. 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTOES. 



The casual sight of an old Play Bill, 
which I picked up the other day — I know 
not by what chance it was preserved so long 
— tempts me to call to mind a few of the 
Players, who make the principal figure in it. 
It presents the cast of parts in the Twelfth 
Night, at the old Drury-lane Theatre two- 
and-thirty years ago. There is something 
very touching in these old remembrances. 
They make us think how we once used to 
read a Play Bill — not, as now peradventure, 
singling out a favourite performer, and cast- 
ing a negligent eye over the rest ; but spell- 
ing out every name, down to the very mutes 
and servants of the scene ; — when it was 
a matter of no small moment to us whether 
Whitfield, or Packer, took the part of Fabian ; 
when Benson, and Burton, and Phillimore — 
names of small account — had an importance, 
beyond what we can be content to attribute 
now to the time's best actors. — " Orsino, by 
Mr. Barrymore."— What a full Shakspearian 
sound it carries ! how fresh to memory arise I 
the image and the manner of the gentle actor ! j 

Those who have only seen Mrs. Jordan 
within the last ten or fifteen years, can have 
no adequate notion of her performance of 
such parts as Ophelia ; Helena, in All's Well 
that Ends Well ; and Viola in this play. 
Her voice had latterly acquired a coarseness, 
which suited well enough with her Nells and 
Hoydens, but in those days it sank, with her 
steady, melting eye, into the heart. Her 
joyous parts — in which her memory now 
chiefly lives — in her youth were outdone by 



her plaintive ones. There is no giving an 
account how she delivered the disguised 
story of her love for Orsino. It was no set 
speech, that she had foreseen, so as to weave 
it into an harmonious period, line necessarily 
following line, to make up the music — yet I i 
have heard it so spoken, or rather read, not 
without its grace and beauty — but, when she 
had declared her sister's history to be a 
" blank," and that she "never told her love," 
there was a pause, as if the story had ended 
— and then the image of the " worm in the 
bud," came up as a new suggestion — and the 
heightened image of" Patience " still followed 
after that, as by some growing (and not 
mechanical) process, thought springing up 
after thought, I would almost say, as they 
were watered by her tears. So in those fine 
lines — 

Bight loyal cantos of contemned love — 
Hollow your name to the reverberate hills — 

there was no preparation made in the fore- 
going image for that which was to follow. 
She used no rhetoric in her passion ; or it 
was nature's own rhetoric, most legitimate 
then, when it seemed altogether without rule 
or law. 

Mrs. Powel (now Mrs. Benard), then in 
the pride of her beauty, made an admirable 
Olivia. She was particularly excellent in 
her unbending scenes in conversation with 
the Clown. I have seen some Olivias — and 
those very sensible actresses too — who in 
these interlocutions have seemed to set their 



ON" SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 



397 



wits at the jester, and to vie conceits with 
him in downright emulation. But she used 
him for her sport, like what he was, to trifle 
a leisure sentence or two with, and then to 
be dismissed, and she to be the Great Lady 
still. She touched the imperious fantastic 
humour of the character with nicety. Her 
fine spacious person filled the scene. 

The part of Malvolio has, in my judgment, 
been so often misunderstood, and the general 
merits of the actor, who then played it, so 
unduly appreciated, that I shall hope for 
pardon, if I am a little prolix upon these 
points. 

Of all the actors who flourished in my 
time — a melancholy phrase if taken - aright, 
reader — Bensley had most of the swell of 
soul, was greatest in the delivery of heroic 
conceptions, the emotions consequent upon 
the presentment of a great idea to the fancy. 
He had the true poetical enthusiasm — the 
rarest faculty among players. None that I 
remember possessed even a portion of that 
fine madness which he threw out in Hot- 
spur's famous rant about glory, or the trans- 
ports of the Yenetian incendiary at the 
vision of the fired city. His voice had the 
dissonance, and at times the inspiriting 
effect, of the trumpet. His gait was uncouth, 
and stiff, but no way embarrassed by affec- 
tation ; and the thorough-bred gentleman 
was uppermost in every movement. He 
seized the moment of passion with greatest 
truth ; like a faithful clock, never striking 
before the time ; never anticipating or 
leading you to anticipate. He was totally 
destitute of trick and artifice. He seemed 
come upon the stage to do the poet's message 
simply, and he did it with as genuine fidelity 
as the nuncios in Homer deliver the errands 
of the gods. He let the passion or the 
sentiment do its own work without prop or 
bolstering. He would have scorned to 
mountebank it ; and betrayed none of that 
cleverness which is the bane of serious acting. 
For this reason, his Iago was the only 
endurable one which I remember to have 
seen. No spectator, from his action, could 
divine more of his artifice than Othello was 
supposed to do. His confessions in soliloquy 
alone put you in possession of the mystery. 
There were no by-intimations to make the 
audience fancy their own discernment so 
much greater than that of the Moor — who 



commonly stands like a great helpless mark, 
set up for mine Ancient, and a quantity of 
barren spectators, to shoot their bolts at. The,/ 
Iago of Bensley did not go to work so grossly. 
There was a triumphant tone about the 
character, natural to a general consciousness 
of power ; but none of that petty vanity 
which chuckles and cannot contain itself 
upon any little successful stroke of its 
knavery — as is common with your small 
villains, and green probationers in mischief. 
It did not clap or crow before its time. It 
was not a man setting his wits at a child, 
and winking all the while at other children, 
who are mightily pleased at being let into 
the secret ; but a consummate villain en- 
trapping a noble nature into toils, against 
which no discernment was available, where 
the manner was as fathomless as the purpose 
seemed dark, and without motive. , The part 
of Malvolio, in the Twelfth Night, was per- 
formed by Bensley, with a richness and a 
dignity, of which (to judge from some recent 
castings of that character) the very tradition 
must be worn out from the stage. No 
manager in those days would have dreamed 
of giving it to Mr. Baddeley, or Mr. Parsons ; 
when Bensley was occasionally absent from 
the theatre, John Kemble thought it no 
derogation to succeed to the part. Malvolio 
is not essentially ludicrous. He becomes 
comic but by accident. He is cold, austere, 
repelling ; but dignified, consistent, and, for 
what appears, rather of an over-stretched 
morality. Maria describes him as a sort of 
Puritan ; and he might have worn his gold 
chain with honour in one of our old round- 
head families, in the service of a Lambert, or 
a Lady Fairfax. But his morality and his 
manners are misplaced in Illyria. He is 
opposed to the proper levities of the piece, 
and falls in the unequal contest. Still his 
pride, or his gravity (call it which you will), is 
inherent, and native to the man, not mock or 
affected, which latter only are the fit objects 
to excite laughter. His quality is at the 
best unlovely, but neither buffoon nor con- 
temptible. His bearing is lofty, a little 
above his station, but probably not much 
above his deserts. We see no reason why 
he should not have been brave, honourable, 
accomplished. His careless committal of the 
ring to the ground (which he was com- 
missioned to restore to Cesario), bespeaks a 



398 



0¥ SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 



generosity of birth and feeling. His dialect 
on all occasions is that of a gentleman, and a 
man of education. "We must not confound 
him with the eternal old, low steward of 
comedy. He is master of the household to a 
great princess ; a dignity probably conferred 
upon him for other respects than age or 
length of service. Olivia, at the first indi- 
cation of his supposed madness, declares that 
she " would not have him miscarry for half 
of her dowry." Does this look as if the 
character was meant to appear little or 
insignificant ? Once, indeed, she accuses 
him to his face — of what ? — of being " sick 
of self-love," — but with a gentleness and 
considerateness, which could not have been, 
if she had not thought that this particular 
infirmity shaded some virtues. His rebuke 
to the knight, and his sottish revellers, is 
sensible and spirited ; and when we take 
into consideration the unprotected condition 
of his mistress, and the strict regard with 
which her state of real or dissembled 
mourning would draw the eyes of the world 
upon her house-affairs, Malvolio might feel 
the honour of the family in some sort in his 
keeping ; as it appears not that Olivia had 
any more brothers, or kinsmen, to look to it 
— for Sir Toby had dropped all such nice 
respects at the buttery-hatch. That Malvolio 
was meant to be represented as possessing 
estimable qualities, the expression of the 
Duke, in his anxiety to have him reconciled, 
almost infers: "Pursue him, and entreat 
him to a peace." Even in his abused state 
of chains and darkness, a sort of greatness 
seems never to desert him. He argues 
highly and well with the supposed Sir Topas, 
and philosophises gallantly upon his straw.* 
There must have been some shadow of worth 
about the man ; he must have been some- 
thing more than a mere vapour — a thing of 
straw, or Jack in office — before Fabian and 
Maria could have ventured sending him upon 
a courting-errand to Olivia. There was some 
consonancy (as he would say) in the under- 
taking, or the jest would have been too bold 
even for that house of misrule. 



* Clown. What is the opinion of Pythagoras con- 
cerning wild fowl ? 

Mai. That the soul of our grandam might haply in- 
habit a bird. 

Clown. What thinkest thou of his opinion ? 

Mai. I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve of 
his opinion. 



Bensley, accordingly, threw over the part 
an air of Spanish loftiness. He looked, 
spake, and moved like an old Castilian. He 
was starch, spruce, opinionated, but his 
superstructure of pride seemed bottomed 
upon a sense of worth. There was some- 
thing in it beyond the coxcomb. It was big 
and swelling, but you could not be sure that 
it was hollow. Yon might wish to see it 
taken down, but you felt that it was upon an 
elevation. He was magnificent from the 
outset ; but when the decent sobrieties of 
the character began to give way, and the 
poison of self-love, in his conceit of the 
Countess's affection, gradually to work, you 
would have thought that the hero of La 
Mancha in person stood before you. How 
he went smiling to himself ! with what 
ineffable carelessness would he twirl his gold 
chain ! what a dream it was ! you were 
infected with the illusion, and did not wish 
that it should be removed ! you had no room 
for laughter ! if an unseasonable reflection 
of morality obtruded itself, it was a deep 
sense of the pitiable infirmity of man's 
nature, that can lay him open to such 
frenzies — but, in. truth, you rather admired 
than pitied the lunacy while it lasted — you 
felt that an hour of such mistake was worth 
an age with the eyes open. Who would not 
wish to live but for a day in the conceit of 
such a lady's love as Olivia 1 "Why, the 
Duke would have given his principality but 
for a quarter of a minute, sleeping or waking, 
to have been so deluded. The man seemed 
to tread upon air, to taste manna, to walk 
with his head in the clouds, to mate Hyperion. 
O ! shake not the castles of his pride — endure 
yet for a season bright moments of confidence 
— "stand still, ye watches of the element," 
that Malvolio may be still in fancy fair 
Olivia's lord ! — but fate and retribution say 
no — I hear the mischievous titter of Maria 
— the witty taunts of Sir Toby — the still 
more insupportable triumph of the foolish 
knight — the counterfeit Sir Topas is un- 
masked — and " thus the whirligig of time," 
as the true clown hath it, " brings in his 
revenges." I confess that I never saw the 
catastrophe of this character, while Bensley 
played it, without a kind of tragic interest. 
There was good foolery too. Few now 
remember Dodd. What an Aguecheek the 
stage lost in him ! Lovegrove, who came 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 



399 



nearest to the old actors, revived the 
character some few seasons ago, and made it 
sufficiently grotesque ; but Dodd was it, as it 
came out of nature's hands. It might be 
said to remain in puris naturalibus. In 
expressing slowness of apprehension, this 
actor surpassed all others. You could see 
the first dawn of an idea stealing slowly over 
his countenance, climbing up by little and 
little, with a painful process, till it cleared 
up at last to the fulness of a twilight con- 
ception — its highest meridian. He seemed 
to keep back his intellect, as some have had 
the power to retard their pulsation. The 
balloon takes less time in filling than it took 
to cover the expansion of his broad moony 
face over all its quarters with expression. 
A glimmer of understanding would appear 
in a corner of his eye, and for lack of fuel 
go out again. A part of his forehead would 
catch a little intelligence, and be a long time 
in communicating it to the remainder. 

I am ill at dates, but I think it is now 
better than five-and-twenty years ago, that 
walking in the gardens of Gray's Inn — they 
were then far finer than they are now — the 
accursed Yerulam Buildings had not en- 
croached upon all the east side of them, 
cutting out delicate green crankles, and 
shouldering away one of two of the stately 
alcoves of the terrace — the survivor stands 
gaping and relationless as if it remembered 
its brother — they are still the best gardens 
of any of the Inns of Court, my beloved 
Temple not forgotten — have the gravest 
character ; their aspect being altogether 
reverend and law-breathing — Bacon has left 
the impress of his foot upon their gravel 

walks taking my afternoon solace on a 

summer day upon the aforesaid terrace, a 
comely sad personage came towards me, 
whom, from his grave air and deportment, I 
judged to be one of the old Benchers of the 
Inn. He had a serious, thoughtful forehead, 
and seemed to be in meditations of mortality. 
As I have an instinctive awe of old Benchers, 
I was passing him with that sort of sub- 
indicative token of respect which one is apt 
to demonstrate towards a venerable stranger, 
and which rather denotes an inclination to 
greet him, than any positive motion of the 
body to that effect — a species of humility 
and will-worship which I observe, nine times 
out of ten, rather puzzles than pleases the 



person it is offered to — when the face turning 
full upon me, strangely identified itself with 
that of Dodd. Upon close inspection I was 
not mistaken. But could this sad thoughtful 
countenance be the same vacant face of folly 
which I had hailed so often under circum- 
stances of gaiety ; which I had never seen 
without a smile, or recognised but as the 
usher of mirth ; that looked out so formally 
flat in Foppington, so frothily pert in 
Tattle, so impotently busy in Backbite ; so 
blankly divested of all meaning, or resolutely 
expressive of none, in Acres, in Fribble, and 
a thousand agreeable impertinences ? Was 
this the face — full of thought and carefulness 
— that had so often divested itself at will of 
every trace of either to give me diversion, to 
clear my cloudy face for two or three hours 
at least of its furrows 1 "Was this the face — 
manly, sober, intelligent — which I had so 
often despised, made mocks at, made merry 
with 1 The remembrance of the freedoms 
which I had taken with it came upon me 
with a reproach of insult. I could have 
asked it pardon. I thought it looked upon 
me with a sense of injury. There is some- 
thing strange as well as sad in seeing actors 
— your pleasant fellows particularly — sub- 
jected to and suffering the common lot ; — 
their fortunes, their casualties, their deaths, 
seem to belong to the scene, their actions to 
be amenable to poetic justice only. We can 
hardly connect them with more awful 
responsibilities. The death of this fine actor 
took place shortly after this meeting. He 
had quitted the stage some months ; and, as 
I learned afterwards, had been in the habit 
of resorting daily to these gardens, almost to 
the day of his decease. In these serious 
walks, probably, he was divesting himself of 
many scenic and some real vanities — weaning 
himself from the frivolities of the lesser and 
the greater theatre — doing gentle penance 
for a life of no very reprehensible fooleries — 
taking off by degrees the buffoon mask, 
which he might feel he had worn too long — 
and rehearsing for a more solemn cast of 
part. Dying, he " put on the weeds of 
Dominic." * 

* Dodd was a man of reading, and left at his death, a 
choice collection of old English literature. I should 
judge him to have been a man of wit. I know one 
instance of an impromptu which no length of study 
could have bettered. My merry friend, Jem White, had 
seen him one evening in Aguecheek, and recognising 



400 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTOES. 



If few can remember Dodd, many yet 
living will not easily forget the pleasant 
creature, who in those days enacted the part 
of the Clown to Dodd's Sir Andrew. — 
Richard, or rather Dicky Suett — for so in 
his life-time he delighted to be called, and 
time hath ratified the appellation — lieth 
buried on the north side of the cemetery of 
Holy Paul, to whose service his nonage and 
tender years were dedicated. There are 
who do yet remember him at that period — 
his pipe clear and harmonious. He would 
often speak of his chorister days, when he 
was " cherub Dicky." 

What clipped his wings, or made it expe- 
dient that he should exchange the holy for the 
profane state ; whether he had lost his good 
voice (his best recommendation to that 
office), like Sir John, "with hallooing and 
singing of anthems ;" or whether he was 
adjudged to lack something, even in those 
early years, of the gravity indispensable to 
an occupation which professeth to "com- 
merce with the skies," — I could never rightly 
learn ; but we find him, after the probation 
of a twelvemonth or so, reverting to a secular 
condition, and become one of us. 

I think he was not altogether of that 
timber out of which cathedral seats and 
sounding-boards are hewed. But if a glad 
heart — kind, and therefore glad — be any 
part of sanctity, then might the robe of 
Motley, with which he invested himself with 
so much humility after his deprivation, and 
which he wore so long with so much blame- 
less satisfaction to himself and to the public, 
be accepted for a surplice — his white stole, 
and albe. 

The first fruits of his secularisation was 
an engagement upon the boards of Old 
Drury, at which theatre he commenced, as I 
have been told, with adopting the manner of 
Parsons in old men's characters. At the 
period in which most of us knew him, he 
was no more an imitator than he was in any 
true sense himself imitable. 

He was the Robin Goodfellow of the stage. 
He came in to trouble all things with a 
welcome perplexity, himself no whit troubled 

Dodd the next day in Fleet Street, was irresistibly im- 
pelled to take off his hat and salute him as the identical 
Knight of the preceding evening with a " Save you, Sir 
Andrew." Dodd, not at all disconcerted at this unusual 
address from a stranger, with a coui-teous half-rebuking 
wave of the hand, put him off with an "Away, Fool." 



for the matter. He was known, like Puck, 
by his note — Ha! Ha! Ha! — sometimes 
deepening to Ho ! Ho ! Ho ! with an irre- 
sistible accession, derived, perhaps, remotely 
from his ecclesiastical education, foreign to 
his prototype of — La ! Thousands of 
hearts yet respond to the chuckling La ! 
of Dicky Suett, brought back to their remem- 
brance by the faithful transcript of his friend 
Mathews's mimicry. The " force of nature 
could no further go." He drolled upon the 
stock of these two syllables richer than the 
cuckoo. 

Care, that troubles all the world, was for- 
gotten in his composition. Had he had but 
two grains (nay, half a grain) of it, he could 
never have supported himself upon those 
two spider's strings, which served him (in 
the latter part of his unmixed existence) as 
legs. A doubt or a scruple must have made 
him totter, a sigh have puffed him down ; 
the weight of a frown had staggered him, a 
wrinkle made him lose his balance. But on 
he went, scrambling upon those airy stilts of 
his, with Robin Goodfellow, " thorough brake, 
thorough briar," reckless of a scratched face 
or a torn doublet. 

Shakspeare foresaw him, when he framed 
his fools and jesters. They have all the true 
Suett stamp, a loose and shambling gait, a 
slippery tongue, this last the ready midwife 
to a without-pain-delivered jest ; in words, 
light as air, venting truths deep as the 
centre ; with idlest rhymes tagging conceit 
when busiest, singing with Lear in the 
tempest, or Sir Toby at the buttery-hatch. 

Jack Bannister and he had the fortune to 
be more of personal favourites with the town 
than any actors before or after. The differ- 
ence, I take it, was this: — Jack was more 
beloved for his sweet, good-natured, moral 
pretensions. Dicky was more liked for his 
sweet, good-natured, no pretensions at all. 
Your whole conscience stirred with Ban- 
nister's performance of Walter in the Chil- 
dren in the Wood — but Dicky seemed like a 
thing, as Shakspeare says of Love, too young 
to know what conscience is. He put us 
into Yesta's days. Evil fled before him— not 
as from Jack, as from an antagonist, — but 
because it could not touch him, any more 
than a cannon-ball a fly. He was delivered 
from the burthen of that death ; and, when 
Death came himself, not in metaphor, to 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 



401 



fetch Dicky, it is recorded of him by Robert 
Palmer, who kindly watched his exit, that 
he received the last stroke, neither varying 
his accustomed tranquillity, nor tune, with 
the simple exclamation, worthy to have been 
recorded in his epitaph — La ! La ! Bobby ! 

The elder Palmer (of stage-treading cele- 
brity) commonly played Sir Toby in those 
days ; but there is a solidity of wit in the 
jests of that half-Falstaff which he did not 
quite fill out. He was as much too showy 
as Moody (who sometimes took the part) was 
dry and sottish. In sock or buskin there 
was an air of swaggering gentility about 
Jack Palmer. He was a gentleman with a 
slight infusion of the footman. His brother 
Bob (of recenter memory), who was his 
shadow in everything while he lived, and 
dwindled into less than a shadow afterwards 
— was a gentleman with a little stronger in- 
fusion of the latter ingredient ; that was all. 
It is amazing how a little of the more or less 
makes a difference in these things. When 
you saw Bobby in the Duke's Servant,* you 
said " What a pity such a pretty fellow was 
only a servant ! " When you saw Jack 
figuring in Captain Absolute, you thought 
you could trace his promotion to some lady 
of quality who fancied the handsome fellow 
in his topknot, and had bought him a com- 
mission. Therefore Jack in Dick Amlet was 
insuperable. 

Jack had two voices, both plausible, hypo- 
critical, and insinuating ; but his secondary 
or supplemental voice still more decisively 
histrionic than his common one. It was 
reserved for the spectator ; and the dramatis 
personse were supposed to know nothing at 
all about it. The lies of Young Wilding, 
and the sentiments in Joseph Surface, were 
thus marked out in a sort of italics to the 
audience. This secret correspondence with 
the company before the curtain (which is 
the bane and death of tragedy) has an ex- 
tremely happy effect in some kinds of comedy, 
in the more highly artificial comedy of Con- 
greve or of Sheridan especially, where the' 
absolute sense of reality (so indispensable to 
scenes of interest) is not required, or would 
rather interfere to diminish your pleasure. 
The fact is, you do not believe in such cha- 
racters as Surface — the villain of artificial 
comedy — even while you read or see them. 

* High Life Below Stairs. 



If you did, they would shock and not divert 
you. When Ben, in Love for Love, returns 
from sea, the following exquisite dialogue 
occurs at his first meeting with his father : — 

Sir Sampson. Thou hast been many a weary league, 
Ben, since I saw thee. 

Ben. Ey, ey, been. Been far enough, an that be all. 
— Well, father, and how do all at home? how does 
brother Dick, and brother Val ? 

Sir Sampson. Dick ! body o' me, Dick has been dead 
these two years. I writ you word when you were at 
Leghorn. 

Ben. Mess, that's true ; Marry, I had forgot. Dick's 
dead, as you say — well, and how? — I have a many 
questions to ask you — 

Here is an instance of insensibility which 
in real life would be revolting, or rather in 
real life could not have co-existed with the 
warm-hearted temperament of the character. 
But when you read it in the spirit with 
which such playful selections and specious 
combinations rather than strict metaphrases 
of nature should be taken, or when you saw 
Bannister play it, it neither did, nor does, 
wound the moral sense at all. For what is 
Ben — the pleasant sailor which Bannister 
gives us — but a piece of satire — a creation 
of Congreve's fancy — a dreamy combination 
of all the accidents of a sailor's character — 
his contempt of money — his credulity to 
women — with that necessary estrangement 
from home which it is just within the 
verge of credibility to suppose might produce 
such an hallucination as is here described. 
We never think the worse of Ben for it, or 
feel it as a stain upon his character. But 
when an actor comes, and instead of the 
delightful phantom — the creature dear to 
half-belief — which Bannister exhibited — dis- 
plays before our eyes a downright concretion 
of a Wapping sailor — a jolly warm-hearted 
Jack Tar — and nothing else — when instead 
of investing it with a delicious confusedness 
of the head, and a veering undirected good- 
ness of purpose — he gives to it a downright 
daylight understanding, and a full conscious- 
ness of its actions ; thrusting forward the 
sensibilities of the character with a pretence 
as if it stood upon nothing else, and was to 
be judged by them alone — we feel the discord 
of the thing ; the scene is disturbed ; a real 
man has got in among the dramatis personse, 
and puts them out. We want the sailor 
turned out. We feel that his true place is 
not behind the curtain, but in the first or 
second gallery. 



D D 



402 



ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 



ON THE AETIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 



The artificial Comedy, or Comedy of man- 
ners, is quite extinct on our stage. Congreve 
and Farquhar show their heads once in seven 
years only, to be exploded and put down 
instantly. The times cannot bear them. Is 
it for a few wild speeches, an occasional 
licence of dialogue ? I think not altogether. 
The business of their dramatic characters 
will not stand the moral test. We screw 
everything up to that. Idle gallantry in a 
fiction, a dream, the passing pageant of an 
evening, startles us in the same way as the 
alarming indications of profligacy in a son 
or ward in real life should startle a parent 
or guardian. We have no such middle 
emotions as dramatic interests left. We see 
a stage libertine playing his loose pranks of 
two hours' duration, and of no after conse- 
quence, with the severe eyes which inspect 
real vices with their bearings upon two 
worlds. We are spectators to a plot or 
intrigue (not reducible in life to the point of 
strict morality), and take it all for truth. 
We substitute a real for a dramatic person, 
and judge him accordingly. We try him in 
our courts, from which there is no appeal to 
the dramatis personam, his peers. We have 
been spoiled with — not sentimental comedy 
— but a tyrant far more pernicious to our 
pleasures which has succeeded to it, the ex- 
clusive and all-devouring drama of common 
life ; where the moral point is everything ; 
where, instead of the fictitious half-believed 
personages of the stage (the phantoms of old 
comedy), we recognise ourselves, our brothers, 
aunts, kinsfolk, allies, patrons, enemies, — the 
same as in life, — with an interest in what is 
going on so hearty and substantial, that we 
cannot afford our moral judgment, in its 
deepest and most vital results, to compromise 
or slumber for a moment. What is there 
transacting, by no modification is made to 
affect us in any other manner than the same 
events or characters would do in our relation- 
ships of life. We carry our fire-side concerns 
to the theatre with us. We do not go thither, 



like our ancestors, to escape from the pressure 
of reality, so much as to confirm our expe- 
rience of it ; to make assurance double, and 
take a bond of fate. We must live our toil- 
some lives twice over, as it was the mournful 
privilege of Ulysses to descend twice to the 
shades. All that neutral ground of character, 
which stood between vice and virtue ; or 
which in fact was indifferent to neither, 
where neither properly was called in ques- 
tion ; that happy breathing-place from the 
burthen of a perpetual moral questioning — 
the sanctuary and quiet Alsatia of hunted 
casuistry — is broken up and disfranchised, 
as injurious to the interests of society. The 
privileges of the place are taken away by 
law. We dare not dally with images, or 
names, of wrong. We bark like foolish dogs 
at shadows. We dread infection from the 
scenic representation of disorder, and fear a 
painted pustule. In our anxiety that our 
morality should not take cold, we wrap it 
up in a great blanket surtout of precaution 
against the breeze and sunshine. 

I confess for myself that (with no great 
delinquencies to answer for) I am glad for a 
season to take an airing beyond the diocese 
of the strict conscience, — not to live always 
in the precincts of the law-courts, — but now 
and then, for a dream-while or so, to imagine 
a world with no meddling restrictions — to 
get into recesses, whither the hunter cannot 
follow me — 



-Secret shades 



Of woody Ida's inmost grove, 
While yet there was no fear of Jove. 



I come back to my cage and my restraint 
the fresher and more healthy for it. I wear 
my shackles more contentedly for having 
respired the breath of an imaginary freedom. 
I do not know how it is with others, but I 
feel the better always for the perusal of one 
of Congreve's — nay, why should I not add 
even of Wycherley's — comedies. I am the 
gayer at least for it ; and I could never 



ON" THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 



403 



connect those sports of a witty fancy in any 
shape with any result to be drawn from 
them to imitation in real life. They are a 
world of themselves almost as much as fairy- 
land. Take one of their characters, male or 
female (with few exceptions they are alike), 
and place it in a modern play, and my 
virtuous indignation shall rise against the 
profligate wretch as warmly as the Catos of 
the pit could 'desire ; because in a modern 
play I am. to judge of the right and the 
wrong. The standard of police is the measure 
of political justice. The atmosphere will 
blight it ; it cannot live here. It has got into 
a moral world, where it has no business, 
from which it must needs fall headlong ; as 
dizzy, and incapable of making a stand, as a 
Swedenborgian bad spirit that has wandered 
unawares into the sphere of one of his Good 
Men, or Angels. But in its own world do 
we feel the creature is so very bad 1 — The 
Fainalls and the Mirabels, the Dorimants 
and the Lady Touchwoods, in their own 
sphere, do not offend my moral sense ; in 
fact they do not appeal to it at all. They 
seem engaged in their proper element. They 
break through no laws, or conscientious 
restraints. They know of none. They have 
got out of Christendom into the land — what 
shall I call it ? — of cuckoldry — the Utopia 
of gallantry, where pleasure is duty, and the 
manners perfect freedom. It is altogether a 
speculative scene of things, which has no 
reference whatever to the world that is. No 
good person can be justly offended as a 
spectator, because no good person suffers on 
the stage. Judged morally, every character 
in these plays — the few exceptions only are 
mistakes — is alike essentially vain and worthA 
less. The great art of Congreve is especially 
shown in this, that he has entirely excluded 
from his scenes — some little generosities in 
the part of Angelica perhaps excepted — not 
only anything like a faultless character, but 
any pretensions to goodness or good feelings 
whatsoever. Whether he did this designedly, 
or instinctively, the effect is as happy, as] 
the design (if design) was bold. I used td 
wonder at the strange power which his Wa| 
of the "World in particular possesses of 
interesting you all along in the pursuits jbf 
characters, for whom you absolutely care 
nothing — for you neither hate nor love his 
personages — and I think it is owing to this 



very indifference for any, that you endure 
the whole. He has spread a privation of 
moral light, I will call it, rather than by 
the ugly name of palpable darkness, over 
his creations ; and his shadows flit before 
you without distinction or preference. 
Had he introduced a good character, a single 
gush of moral feeling, a revulsion of the 
judgment to actual life and actual duties, 
the impertinent Goshen would have only 
lighted to the discovery of deformities, 
which now are none, because we think 
them none. 

Translated into real life, the characters of 
his, and his friend Wycherley's dramas, are 
profligates and strumpets, — the business of 
their brief existence, the undivided pursuit 
of lawless gallantry. No other spring of 
action, or possible motive of conduct, is re- 
cognised ; principles which, universally acted 
upon, must reduce this frame of things to a 
chaos. But we do them wrong in so trans- 
lating them. No such effects are produced, 
in their world. When we are among them, 
we are amongst a chaotic people. We are 
not to judge them by our usages. No re- 
verend institutions are insulted by their pro- 
ceedings — for they have none among them. 
No peace of families is violated — for no 
family ties exist among them. No purity of 
the marriage bed is stained — for none is sup- 
posed to have a being. No deep affections 
are disquieted, no holy wedlock bands are 
snapped asunder — for affection's depth and 
wedded faith are not of the growth of that 
soil. There is neither right nor wrong, — 
gratitude or its opposite, — claim or duty, — 
paternity or sonship. Of what consequence 
is it to "Virtue, or how is she at all concerned 
about it, whether Sir Simon, or Dapperwit 
steal away Miss Martha ; or who is the 
father of Lord Froth's or Sir Paul Pliant's 
children % 

The whole is a passing pageant, where we 
should sit as unconcerned at the issues, for 
life or death, as at a battle of the frogs and 
mice. But, like Don Quixote, we take part 
against the puppets, and quite as imperti- 
nently. We dare not contemplate an At- 
lantis, a scheme, out of which our cox- 
combical moral sense is for a little transitory 
ease excluded. We have not the courage to 
imagine a state of things for which there is 
neither reward nor punishment. We cling 



d d 2 



404 



ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 



to the painful necessities of shame and blame. 
We would indict our very dreams. 

Amidst the mortifying circumstances at- 
tendant upon growing old, it is something to 
have seen the School for Scandal in its glory. 
This comedy grew out of Congreve and 
Wycherley, but gathered some allays of the 
sentimental comedy which followed theirs. 
It is impossible that it should be now acted, 
though it continues, at long intervals, to be 
announced in the bills. Its hero, when 
Palmer played it at least, was Joseph Sur- 
face. When I remember the gay boldness, 
the graceful solemn plausibility, the measured 
step, the insinuating voice — to express it in 
a word — the downright acted villany of the 
part, so different from the pressure of con- 
scious actual wickedness, — the hypocritical 
assumption of hypocrisy, — which made Jack 
so deservedly a favourite in that character, I 
must needs conclude the present generation 
of playgoers more virtuous than myself, or 
more dense. I freely confess that he divided 
the palm with me with his better brother ; 
that, in fact, I liked him quite as well. Not 
but there are passages, — like that, for in- 
stance, where Joseph is made to refuse a 
pittance to a poor relation, — incongruities 
which Sheridan was forced upon by the 
attempt to join the artificial with the senti- 
mental comedy, either of which must destroy 
the other — but over these obstructions Jack's 
manner floated him so lightly, that a refusal 
from him no more shocked you, than the 
easy compliance of Charles gave you in reality 
any pleasure ; you got over the paltry ques- 
tion as quickly as you could, to get back into 
the regions of pure comedy, where no cold 
moral reigns. The highly artificial manner 
of Palmer in this character counteracted 
every disagreeable impression which you 
might have received from the contrast, sup- 
posing them real, between the two brothers. 
You did not believe in Joseph with the same 
faith with which you believed in Charles. 
The latter was a pleasant reality, the former 
a no less pleasant poetical foil to it. The 
comedy, I have said, is incongruous ; a 
mixture of Congreve with sentimental in- 
compatibilities ; the gaiety upon the whole 
is buoyant ; but it required the consummate 
art of Palmer to reconcile the discordant 
elements. 

A player with Jack's talents, if we had one 



now, would not dare to do the part in the 
same manner. He would instinctively avoid 
every turn which might tend to unrealise, 
and so to make the character fascinating. He 
must take his cue from his spectators, who 
would expect a bad man and a good man as 
rigidly opposed to each other as the death- 
beds of those geniuses are contrasted in the 
prints, which I am sorry to say have disap- 
peared from the windows of my old friend 
Carrington Bowles, of St. Paul's Churchyard 
memory — (an exhibition as venerable as the 
adjacent cathedral, and almost coeval) of the 
bad and good man at the hour of death ; 
where the ghastly apprehensions of the 
former, — and truly the grim phantom with 
his reality of a toasting-fork is not to be 
despised, — so finely contrast with the meek 
complacent kissing of the rod, — taking it in 
like honey and butter, — with which the latter 
submits to the scythe of the gentle bleeder, 
Time, who wields his lancet with the appre- 
hensive finger of a popular young ladies' 
surgeon. What flesh, like loving grass, would 
not covet to meet half-way the stroke of 
such a delicate mower ? — John Palmer was 
twice an actor in this exquisite part. He 
was playing to you all the while that he was 
playing upon Sir Peter and his lady. You 
had the first intimation of a sentiment be- 
fore it was on his lips. His altered voice 
was meant to you, and you were to suppose 
that his fictitious co-flutterers on the stage 
perceived nothing at all of it. What was it to 
you if that half reality, the husband, was over- 
reached by the puppetry — or the thin thing 
(Lady Teazle's reputation) was persuaded it 
was dying of a plethory ? The fortunes of 
Othello and Desdemona were not concerned 
in it. Poor Jack has passed from the stage 
in good time, that he did not live to this our 
age of seriousness. The pleasant old Teazle 
King, too, is gone in good time. His manner 
would scarce have passed current in otfr day. 
We must love or hate — acquit or condemn — 
censure or pity — exert our detestable cox- 
combry of moral judgment upon everything. 
Joseph Surface, to go down now, must be a 
downright revolting villain — no compromise 
— his first appearance must shock and give 
horror — his specious plausibilities, which the 
pleasurable faculties of our fathers welcomed 
with such hearty greetings, knowing that no 
harm (dramatic harm even) could come, or 



ON THE AETIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 



405 



was meant to come, of them, must inspire 
a cold and killing aversion. Charles (the 
real canting person of the scene — for the 
hypocrisy of Joseph has its ulterior legitimate 
ends, but his brother's professions of a good 
heart centre in downright self-satisfaction) 
must be loved, and Joseph hated. To balance 
one disagreeable reality with another, Sir 
Peter Teazle must be no longer the comic 
idea of a fretful old bachelor bridegroom, 
whose teasings (while King acted it) were 
evidently as much played off at you, as they 
were meant to concern anybody on the stage, 
— he must be a real person, capable in law 
of sustaining an injury — a person towards 
whom duties are to be acknowledged — the 
genuine crim. con. antagonist of the villanous 
seducer Joseph. To realise him more, his 
sufferings under his unfortunate match must 
have the downright pungency of life — must 
(or should) make you not mirthful but un- 
comfortable, just as the same predicament 
would move you in a neighbour or old friend. 
The delicious scenes which give the play its 
name and zest, must affect you in the same 
serious manner as if you heard the reputa- 
tion of a dear female friend attacked in your 
real presence. Crabtree and Sir Benjamin — 
those poor snakes that live but in the sun- 
shine of your mirth — must be ripened by 
this hot-bed process of realisation into asps 
or amphisbsenas ; and Mrs. Candour — O ! 
frightful ! — become a hooded serpent. Oh ! 
who that remembers Parsons and Dodd — 
the wasp and butterfly of the School for 
Scandal — in those two characters ; and 
charming natural Miss Pope, the perfect 
gentlewoman as distinguished from the fine 
lady of comedy, in this latter part — would 
forego the true scenic delight — the escape 
from life — the oblivion of consequences — the 
holiday barring out of the pedant Eeflection 
— those Saturnalia of two or three brief 
hours, well won from the world — to sit in- 
stead at one of our modern plays — to have 
his coward conscience (that forsooth must 
not be left for a moment) stimulated with 
perpetual appeals — dulled rather, and 
blunted, as a faculty without repose must be 
— and his moral vanity pampered with images 
of notional justice, notional beneficence, lives 
saved without the spectator's risk, and 
fortunes given away that cost the author 
nothing ? 



No piece was, perhaps, ever so completely 
cast in all its parts as this manager's comedy. 
Miss Farren had succeeded to Mrs. Abington 
in Lady Teazle ; and Smith, the original 
Charles, had retired when I first saw it. The 
rest of the characters, with very slight ex- 
ceptions, remained. I remember it was then 
the fashion to cry down John Kemble, who 
took the part of Charles after Smith ; but, I 
thought, very unjustly. Smith, I fancy was 
more airy, and took the eye with a certain 
gaiety of person. He brought with him no 
sombre recollections of tragedy. He had 
not to expiate the fault of having pleased 
beforehand in lofty declamation. He had no 
sins of Hamlet or of Eichard to atone for. 
His failure in these parts was a passport to 
success in one of so opposite a tendency. 
But, as far as I could judge, the weighty 
sense of Kemble made up for more personal 
incapacity than he had to answer for. His 
harshest tones in this part came steeped and 
dulcified in good-humour. He made his 
defects a grace. His exact declamatory 
manner, as he managed it, only served to 
convey the points of his dialogue with more 
precision. It seemed to head the shafts to 
carry them deeper. Not one of his sparkling 
sentences was lost. I remember minutely 
how he delivered each in succession, and 
cannot by any effort imagine how any of 
them could be altered for the better. No 
man could deliver brilliant dialogue — the 
dialogue of Congreve or of Wycherley — be- 
cause none understood it — half so well as 
John Kemble. His Valentine, in Love for 
Love, was, to my recollection, faultless. He 
flagged sometimes in the intervals of tragic 
passion. He would slumber over the level 
parts of an heroic character. His Macbeth 
has been known to nod. But he always 
seemed to me to be particularly alive to 
pointed and witty dialogue. The relaxing 
levities of tragedy have not been touched by 
any since him — the playful court-bred spirit 
in which he condescended to the players 
in Hamlet — the sportive relief which he 
threw into the darker shades of Eichard 
— disappeared with him. He had his 
sluggish moods, his torpors — but they were 
the halting-stones and resting-place of his 
tragedy — politic savings, and fetches of 
the breath — husbandry of the lungs, where 
nature pointed him to be an economist — 



406 



ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN. 



rather, I think, than errors of the judg- 
ment. They were, at worst, less painful 
than the eternal tormenting unappeasable 



vigilance, — the " lidless dragon eyes,' 
present fashionable tragedy. 



of 



ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN. 



Not many nights ago, I had come home 
from seeing this extraordinary performer in 
Cockletop ; and when I retired to my pillow, 
his whimsical image still stuck by me, in a 
manner as to threaten sleep. In vain I tried 
to divest myself of it, by conjuring up the 
most opposite associations. I resolved to be 
serious. I raised up the gravest topics of 
life ; private misery, public calamity. All 
would not do : 

There the antic sate 

Mocking our state ■ 

his queer visnomy — his bewildering costume 
■ — all the strange things which he had raked 
together — his serpentine rod, swagging about 
in his pocket — Cleopatra's tear, and the rest 
of his relics — O'Keefe's wild farce, and his 
wilder commentary — till the passion of laugh- 
ter, like grief in excess, relieved itself by its 
own weight, inviting the sleep which in the 
first instance it had driven away. 

But I was not to escape so easily. No 
sooner did I fall into slumbers, than the 
same image, only more perplexing, assailed 
me in the shape of dreams. Not one Munden, 
but five hundred, were dancing before me, 
like the faces which, whether you will or no, 
come when you have been taking opium — 
all the strange combinations, which this 
strangest of all strange mortals ever shot 
his proper countenance into, from the day he 
came commissioned to dry up the tears of 
the town for the loss of the now almost 
forgotten Edwin. O for the power of the 
pencil to have fixed them when I awoke ! 
A season or two since, there was exhibited 
a Hogarth gallery. I do not see why there 
should not be a Munden gallery. In rich- 
ness and variety, the latter would not fall 
far short of the former. 

There is one face of Farley, one face of 
Knight, one (but what a one it is !) of Liston ; 
but Munden has none that you can properly 



pin down, and call his. When you think he 
has exhausted his battery of looks, in un- 
accountable warfare with your gravity, 
suddenly he sprouts out an entirely new set 
of features, like Hydra. He is not one, but 
legion ; not so much a comedian, as a com- 
pany. If his name could be multiplied like 
his countenance, it might fill a play-bill. 
He, and he alone, literally makes faces : 
applied to any other person, the phrase is 
a mere figure, denoting certain modifications 
of the human countenance. Out of some 
invisible wardrobe he dips for faces, as his 
friend Suett used for wigs, and fetches 
them out as easily. I should not be sur- 
prised to see him some day put out the 
head of a river-horse ; or come forth a 
pewitt, or lapwing, some feathered metamor- 
phosis. 

I have seen this gifted actor in Sir Chris- 
topher Curry — in old Dornton — diffuse a 
glow of sentiment which has made the pulse 
of a crowded theatre beat like that of one 
man ; when he has come in aid of the pulpit, 
doing good to the moral heart of a people. 
I have seen some faint approaches to this 
sort of excellence in other players. But in 
the grand grotesque of farce, Munden stands 
out as single and unaccompanied as Hogarth. 
Hogarth, strange to tell, had no followers. 
The school of Munden began, and must end, 
with himself. 

Can any man wonder, like him ? can any 
man see ghosts, like him 1 or fight with his 
own shadow — "sessa" — as he does in that 
strangely-neglected thing, the Cobbler of 
Preston — where his alternations from the 
Cobbler to the Magnifico, and from the 
Magnifico to the Cobbler, keep the brain of 
the spectator in as wild a ferment, as if 
some Arabian Night were being acted before 
him. Who like him can throw, or ever 
attempted to throw, a preternatural interest 
over the commonest daily-life objects 1 A 



ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN. 



m 



table or a joint-stool, in his conception, rises 
into a dignity equivalent to Cassiopeia's 
chair. It is invested with constellatory im- 
portance. Yon could not speak of it with 
more deference, if it were mounted into the 
firmament. A beggar in the hands of 
Michael Angelo, says Fuseli, rose the Patri- 
arch of Poverty. So the gusto of Munden 
antiquates and ennobles what it touches. 



His pots and his ladles are as grand and 
primal as the seething-pots and hooks seen 
in old prophetic vision. A tub of butter, 
contemplated by him, amounts to a Platonic 
idea. He understands a leg of mutton in 
its quiddity. He stands wondering, amid 
the common-place materials of life, like 
primaeval man with the sun and stars about 
him. 



THE 



LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



PREFACE. 

BY A FRIEND OF THE LATE ELIA. 



This poor gentleman, who for some months past had been in a declining way, 
hath at length paid his final tribute to nature. 

To say truth, it is time he were gone. The humour of the thing, if ever there 
was much in it, was pretty well exhausted ; and a two years' and a half existence has 
been a tolerable duration for a phantom. 

I am now at liberty to confess, that much which I have heard objected to my late 
friend's writings was well-founded. Crude they are, I grant you — a sort of unlicked, 
incondite things — villanously pranked in an affected array of antique modes and 
phrases. They had not been his, if they had been other than such ; and better it is, 
that a writer should be natural in a self-pleasing quaintness, than to affect a naturalness 
(so called) that should be strange to him. Egotistical they have been pronounced by 
some who did not know, that what he tells us, as of himself, was often true only 
(historically) of another ; as in a former Essay (to save many instances) — where under 
th.Q first 'person (his favourite figure) he shadows forth the forlorn estate of a country- 
boy placed at a London school, far from his friends and connections — in direct opposition 
to his own early history. If it be egotism to imply and twine with his own identity 
the griefs and affections of another — making himself many, or reducing many unto 
himself — then is the skilful novelist, who all along brings in his hero or heroine, 
speaking of themselves, the greatest egotist of all ; who yet has never, therefore, been 
accused of that narrowness. And how shall the intenser dramatist escape being faulty, 
who, doubtless, under cover of passion uttered by another, oftentimes gives blameless 
vent to his most inward feelings, and expresses his own story modestly ? 

My late friend was in many respects a singular character. Those who did not 
like him, hated him ; and some, who once liked him, afterwards became his bitterest 
haters. The truth is, he gave himself too little concern what he uttered, and in whose 
presence. He observed neither time nor place, and would e'en out with what came 
uppermost. "With the severe religionist he would pass for a free-thinker ; while the 
other faction set him down for a bigot, or persuaded themselves that he belied his 
sentiments. Few understood him ; and I am not certain that at all times he quite 
understood himself. He too much affected that dangerous figure — irony. He sowed 
doubtful speeches, and reaped plain, unequivocal hatred. — He would interrupt the 
gravest discussion with some light jest ; and yet, perhaps, not quite irrelevant in ears 
that could understand it. Your long and much talkers hated him. The informal 
habit of his mind, joined to an inveterate impediment of speech, forbade him to be an 



412 PREFACE. 



orator ; and he seemed determined that no one else should play that part when he was 
present. He was petit and ordinary in his person and appearance. I have seen him 
sometimes in what is called good company, but where he has been a stranger, sit 
silent, and be suspected for an odd fellow ; till some unlucky occasion provoking it, he 
would stutter out some senseless pun (not altogether senseless perhaps, if rightly 
taken), which has stamped his character for the evening. It was hit or miss with him ; 
but nine times out of ten, he contrived by this device to send away a whole company 
his enemies. His conceptions rose kindlier than his utterance, and his happiest 
impromptus had the appearance of effort. He has been accused of trying to be witty, 
when in truth he was but struggling to give his poor thoughts articulation. He chose 
his companions for some individuality of character which they manifested.— Hence, 
not many persons of science, and few professed literati, were of his councils. They 
were, for the most part, persons of an uncertain fortune ; and, as to such people 
commonly nothing is more obnoxious than a gentleman of settled (though moderate) 
income, he passed with most of them for a great miser. To my knowledge this was 
a mistake. His intimados, to confess a truth, were in the world's eye a ragged 
regiment. He found them floating on the surface of society ; and the colour, or 
something else, in the weed pleased him. The burrs stuck to him — but they were 
good and loving burrs for all that. He never greatly cared for the society of what 
are called good people. If any of these were scandalised (and offences were sure to 
arise) he could not help it. When he has been remonstrated with for not making 
more concessions to the feelings of good people, he would retort by asking, what one 
point did these good people ever concede to him ? He was temperate in his meals 
and diversions, but always kept a little on this side of abstemiousness. Only in the 
use of the Indian weed he might be thought a little excessive. He took it, he would 
say, as a solvent of speech. Marry — as the friendly vapour ascended, how his prattle 
would curl up sometimes with it ! the ligaments which tongue-tied him, were loosened, 
and the stammerer proceeded a statist ! 

I do not know whether I ought to bemoan or rejoice that my old friend is departed. 
His jests were beginning to grow obsolete, and his stories to be found out. He felt 
the approaches of age ; and while he pretended to cling to life, you saw how slender 
were the ties left to bind him. Discoursing with him latterly on this subject, he 
expressed himself with a pettishness, which I thought unworthy of him. In our 
walks about his suburban retreat (as he called it) at Shacklewell, some children 
belonging to a school of industry had met us, and bowed and curtseyed, as he thought, 
in an especial manner to him. " They take me for a visiting governor," he muttered 
earnestly. He had a horror, which he carried to a foible, of looking like anything 
important and parochial. He thought that he approached nearer to that stamp daily. 
He had a general aversion from being treated like a grave or respectable character, 
and kept a wary eye upon the advances of age that should so entitle him. He herded 
always, while it was possible, with people younger than himself. He did not conform 
to the march of time, but was dragged along in the procession. His manners lagged 
behind his years. He was too much of the boy-man. The toga virilis never sate 
gracefully on his shoulders. The impressions of infancy had burnt into him, and he 
resented the impertinence of manhood. These were weaknesses ; but such as they 
were, they are a key to explicate some of his writings. 



THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE. 



I do not know a pleasure more affecting 
than to range at will over the deserted 
apartments of some fine old family mansion. 
The traces of extinct grandeur admit of a 
better passion than envy : and contempla- 
tions on the great and good, whom we fancy 
in succession to have been its inhabitants, 
weave for us illusions, incompatible with the 
bustle of modern occupancy, and vanities of 
foolish present aristocracy. The same differ- 
ence of feeling, I think, attends us between 
entering an empty and a crowded church. 
In the latter it is chance but some present 
human frailty — an act of inattention on the 
part of some of the auditory — or a trait of 
affectation, or worse, vain-glory on that of 
the preacher — puts us by our best thoughts, 
disharmonising the place and the occasion. 
But wouldst thou know the beauty of holi- 
ness ? — go alone on some week-day, borrow- 
ing the keys of good Master Sexton, traverse 
the cool aisles of some country church : 
think of the piety that has kneeled there — 
the congregations, old and young, that have 
found consolation there — the meek pastor — 
the docile parishioner. With no disturbing 
emotions, no cross conflicting comparisons, 
drink in the tranquillity of the place, till 
thou thyself become as fixed and motionless 
as the marble effigies that kneel and weep 
around thee. 

Journeying northward lately, I could not 
resist going some few miles out of my road 
to look upon the remains of an old great 



house with which I had been impressed in 
this way in infancy. I was apprised that 
the owner of it had lately pulled it down ; 
still I had a vague notion that it could not 
all have perished, that so much solidity with 
magnificence could not have been crushed 
all at once into the mere dust and rubbish 
which I found it. 

The work of ruin had proceeded with a 
swift hand indeed, and the demolition of a 
few weeks had reduced it to — an antiquity. 

I was astonished at the indistinction of 
everything. "Where had stood the great 
gates 1 What bounded the court-yard ? 
Whereabout did the out-houses commence 1 
A few bricks only lay as representatives of 
that which was so stately and so spacious. 

"Death does not shrink up his human vic- 
tim at this rate. The burnt ashes of a man 
weigh more in their proportion. 

Had I seen these brick-and-mortar knaves 
at their process of destruction, at the pluck- 
ing of every panel I should have felt the 
varlets at my heart. I should have cried 
out to them to spare a plank at least out of 
the cheerful store-room, in whose hot window- 
seat I used to sit and read Cowley, with the 
grass-plot before, and the hum and flappings 
of that one solitary wasp that ever haunted 
it about me — it is in mine ears now, as oft 
as summer returns ; or a panel of the yellow- 
room. 

Why, every plank and panel of that house 
for me had magic in it. The tapestried 



414 



BLAKESMOOR IN" H- 



SHIRE. 



bedrooms — tapestry so much better than 
painting — not adorning merely, bnt peopling 
the wainscots — at which childhood ever and 
anon would steal a look, shifting its coverlid 
(replaced as quickly) to exercise its tender 
courage in a momentary eye-encounter with 
those stern bright visages, staring reci- 
procally — all Ovid on the walls, in colours 
vivider than his descriptions. Action in 
mid sprout, with the unappeasable prudery 
of Diana; and the still more provoking, 
and almost culinary coolness of Dan 
Phoebus, eel-fashion, deliberately divesting 
of Marsyas. 

Then, that haunted room — in which old 
Mrs. Battle died — whereinto I have crept, 
but always in the daytime, with a passion of 
fear ; and a sneaking curiosity, terror-tainted, 
to hold communication with the past. — How 
shall they build it up again ? 

It was an old deserted place, yet not so 
long deserted but that traces of the splen- 
dour of past inmates were everywhere appa- 
rent. Its furniture was still standing — even 
to the tarnished gilt leather battledores, and 
crumbling feathers of shuttlecocks in the 
nursery, which told that children had once 
played there. But I was a lonely child, and 
had the range at will of every apartment, 
knew every nook and corner, wondered and 
worshipped everywhere. 

The solitude of childhood is not so much 
the mother of thought, as it is the feeder of 
love, and silence, and admiration. So strange 
a passion for the place possessed me in those 
years, that, though there lay — I shame to 
say how few roods distant from the mansion 
— half hid by trees what I judged some 
romantic lake, such was the spell which 
bound me to the house, and such my careful- 
ness not to pass its strict and proper pre- 
cincts, that the idle waters lay unexplored 
for me ; and not till late in life, curiosity 
prevailing over elder devotion, I found, to 
my astonishment, a pretty brawling brook 
had been the Lacus Incognitus of my infancy. 
Variegated views, extensive prospects — and 
those at no great distance from the house — 
I was told of such — what were they to me, 
being out of the boundaries of my Eden 1 — 
So far from a wish to roam, I would have 
drawn, methought, still closer the fences of 
my chosen prison ; and have been hemmed 
in by a yet securer cincture of those excluding 



garden walls. I could have exclaimed with 
that garden- loving poet — 

Bind me, ye woodbines, in your twines ; 
Curl me about, ye gadding vines ; 
And ob so close your circles lace, 
Tbat I may never leave tbis place ; 
But, lest your fetters prove too weak, 
Ere I your silken bondage break, 
Do you, brambles, cbain- me too, 
And, courteous briars, nail me tbrougb. 

I was here as in a lonely temple. Snug 
fire-sides — the low-built roof — parlours ten 
feet by ten — frugal boards, and all the home- 
liness of home — these were the condition of 
my birth — the wholesome soil which I was 
planted in. Yet, without impeachment to 
their tenderest lessons, I am not sorry to 
have had glances of something beyond ; and 
to have taken, if but a peep, in childhood, 
at the contrasting accidents of a great for- 
tune. 

To have the feeling of gentility, it is not 
necessary to have been born gentle. The 
pride of ancestry may be had on cheaper 
terms than to be obliged to an importunate 
race of ancestors ; and the coatless anti- 
quary in his unemblazoned cell, revolving 
the long line of a Mowbray's or De Clifford's 
pedigree, at those sounding names may warm 
himself into as gay a vanity as these who do 
inherit them. The claims of birth are ideal 
merely, and what herald shall go about to 
strip me of an idea 1 Is it trenchant to 
their swords ? can it be hacked off as a spur 
can 1 or torn away like a tarnished garter 1 

"What else were the families of the great 
to us ? what pleasure should we take in their 
tedious genealogies, or their capitulatory 
brass monuments ? What to us the unin- 
terrupted current of their bloods, if our own 
did not answer within us to a cognate and 
correspondent elevation. 

Or wherefore else, O tattered and dimin- 
ished 'Scutcheon that hung upon the 
time-worn walls of thy princely stairs, 
Blakesmoor ! have I in childhood so oft 
stood poring upon the mystic characters — 
thy emblematic supporters, with their pro- 
phetic " Eesurgam " — till, every dreg of 
peasantry purging off, I received into myself 
Very Gentility ? Thou wert first in my 
morning eyes ; and of nights hast detained 
my steps from bedward, till it was but a step 
from gazing at thee to dreaming on thee. 

This is the only true gentry by adoption ; 



POOR RELATIONS. 



415 



the veritable change of blood, and not, as 
empirics have fabled, by transfusion. 

Who it was by dying that had earned the 
splendid trophy, I know not, I inquired not ; 
but its fading rags, and colours cobweb- 
stained, told that its subject was of two 
centuries back. 

And what if my ancestor at that date was 
some Damoetas — feeding flocks — not his own, 
upon the hills of Lincoln — did I in less 
earnest vindicate to myself the family trap- 
pings of this once proud vEgon ? repaying by 
a backward triumph the insults he might 
possibly have heaped in his life-time upon 
my poor pastoral progenitor. 

If it were presumption so to speculate, the 
present owners of the mansion had least 
reason to complain. They had long forsaken 
the old house of their fathers for a newer 
trifle ; and I was left to appropriate to 
myself what images I could pick up, to raise 
my fancy, or to soothe my vanity. 

I was the true descendant of those old 

W s ; and not the present family of that 

name, who had fled the old waste places. 

Mine was that gallery of good old family 
portraits, which as. I have gone over, giving 
them in fancy my own family name, one — 
and then another — would seem to smile, 
reaching forward from the canvas, to recog- 
nise the new relationship; while the rest 
looked grave, as it seemed, at the vacancy 
in their dwelling, and thoughts of fled 
posterity. 

The Beauty with the cool blue pastoral 
drapery, and a lamb — that hung next the 
great bay window — with the bright yellow 

H shire hair, and eye of watchet hue — so 

like my Alice ! — I am persuaded she was a 
true Elia — Mildred Elia, I take it. 



Mine, too, Blakesmoor, was thy noble 
Marble Hall, with its mosaic pavements, and 
its Twelve Caesars — stately busts in marble 
— ranged round ; of whose countenances, 
young reader of faces as I was, the frowning 
beauty of Nero, I remember, had most of my 
wonder : but the mild Galba had my love. 
There they stood in the coldness of death, 
yet freshness of immortality. 

Mine, too, thy lofty Justice Hall, with its 
one chair of authority, high-backed and 
wickered, once the terror of luckless poacher, 
or self-forgetful maiden — so common since, 
that bats have roosted in it. 

Mine, too, — whose else ? — thy costly fruit- 
garden, with its sun-baked southern wall ; 
the ampler pleasure-garden, rising backwards 
from the house in triple terraces, with 
flower-pots now of palest lead, save that a 
speck here and there, saved from the 
elements, bespake their pristine state to have 
been gilt and glittering ; the verdant quarters 
backwarder still ; and, stretching still beyond, 
in old formality, thy firry wilderness, the 
haunt of the squirrel, and the day-long 
murmuring wood-pigeon, with that antique 
image in the centre, God or Goddess I wist 
not ; but child of Athens or old Eome paid 
never a sincerer worship to Pan or to 
Sylvanus in their native groves, than I to 
that fragmental mystery. 

Was it for this, that I kissed my childish 
hands too fervently in your idol-worship, 
walks and windings of Blakesmoor ! for 
this, or what sin of mine, has the plough 
passed over your pleasant places ? I some- 
times think that as men, when they die, 
do not die all, so of their extinguished 
habitations there may be a hope — a germ to 
be revivified. 



POOE EELATIONS. 



A Poor Relation — is the most irrelevant 
thing in nature, — a piece of impertinent 
correspondency, — an odious approximation, 
— a haunting conscience, — a preposterous 
shadow, lengthening in the noon-tide of our 
prosperity, — an unwelcome remembrancer, — 
a perpetually recurring mortification, — a 



drain on your purse, a more intolerable dun 
upon your pride, — a drawback upon success, 
— a rebuke to your rising, — a stain in your 
blood, — a blot on your 'scutcheon, — a rent in 
your garment, — a death's-head at your ban- 
quet, — Agathocles' pot, — a Mordecai in your 
gate, a Lazarus at your door, — a lion in your 



416 



POOR RELATIONS. 



path, — a frog in your chamber, — a fly in 
your ointment, — a mote in your eye, — a 
triumph to your enemy, an apology to your 
friends, — the one thing not needful,— the 
hail in harvest, — the ounce of sour in a 
pound of sweet. 

He is known by his knock. Your heart 

telleth you "That is Mr. ." A rap, 

between familiarity and respect ; that de- 
mands, and at the same time seems to 
despair of, entertainment. He entereth 
smiling and — embarrassed. He holdeth out 
his hand to you to shake, and — draweth it 
back again. He casually looketh in about 
dinner-time — when the table is full. He 
offereth to go away, seeing you have company 
— but is induced to stay. He filleth a chair, 
and your visitor's two children are accom- 
modated at a side-table. He never cometh 
upon open days, when your wife says, with 
some complacency, "My dear, perhaps Mr. 

will drop in to-day." He remembereth 

birth-days — and professeth he is fortunate to 
have stumbled upon one. He declareth 
against fish, the turbot being small — yet 
suffereth himself to be importuned into a 
slice, against his first resolution. He sticketh 
by the port — yet will be prevailed upon to 
empty the remainder glass of claret, if a 
stranger press it upon him. He is a puzzle 
to the servants, who are fearful of being too 
obsequious, or not civil enough, to him. The 
guests think "they have seen him before." 
Every one speculateth upon his condition ; 
and the most part take him to be — a tide- 
waiter. He calleth you by your Christian 
name, to imply that his other is the same 
with your own. He is too familiar by half, 
yet you wish he had less diffidence. With 
half the familiarity, he might pass for a 
casual dependant ; with more boldness, he 
would be in no danger of being taken for 
what he is. He is too humble for a friend ; 
yet taketh on him more state than befits a 
client. He is a worse guest than a country 
tenant, inasmuch as he bringeth up no rent 
— yet 'tis odds, from his garb and demeanour, 
that your guests take him for one. He is 
asked to make one at the whist table ; 
refuseth on the score of poverty, and — 
resents being left out. When the company 
break up, he proffereth to go for a coach — 
and lets the servant go. He recollects 
your grandfather ; and will thrust in some 



mean and quite unimportant anecdote — of 
the family. He knew it when it was not 
quite so flourishing as " he is blest in seeing 
it now." He reviveth past situations, to 
institute what he calleth — favourable com- 
parisons. With a reflecting sort of con- 
gratulation, he will inquire the price of your 
furniture ; and insults you with a special 
commendation of your window-curtains. 
He is of opinion that the urn is the more 
elegant shape, but, after all, there was some- 
thing more comfortable about the old tea- 
kettle — which you must remember. He 
dare say you must find a great convenience 
in having a carriage of your own, and 
appealeth to your lady if it is not so. 
Inquireth if you have had your arms done 
on vellum yet ; and did not know, till lately, 
that such-and-such had been the crest of the 
family. His memory is unseasonable ; his 
compliments perverse ; his talk a trouble ; 
his stay pertinacious ; and when he goeth 
away, you dismiss his chair into a corner, as 
precipitately as possible, and feel fairly rid 
of two nuisances. 

There is a worse evil under the sun, and 
that is — a female Poor Eelation. You may 
do something with the other ; you may pass 
him off tolerably well ; but your indigent 
she-relative is hopeless. "He is an old 
humourist," you may say, " and affects to go 
threadbare. His circumstances are better 
than folks would take them to be. You are 
fond of having a Character at your table, 
and truly he is one." But in the indications 
of female poverty there can be no disguise. 
No woman dresses below herself from caprice. 
The truth must out without shuffling. " She 

is plainly related to the L s ; or what 

does she at their house V She is, in all 
probability, your wife's cousin. Nine times 
out of ten, at least, this is the case. — Her 
garb is something between a gentlewoman 
and a beggar, yet the former evidently 
predominates. She is most provokingly 
humble, and ostentatiously sensible to her 
inferiority. He may require to be repressed 
sometimes — aliquando suffiaminandus erat — 
but there is no raising her. You send her 
soup at dinner, and she begs to be helped — 

after the gentlemen. Mr. requests the 

honour of taking wine with her ; she 
hesitates between Port and Madeira, and 
chooses the former — because he does. She 



POOR RELATIONS. 



417 



calls the servant Sir ; and insists on not 
troubling him to hold her plate. The house- 
keeper patronises her. The children's 
governess takes upon her to correct her, 
when she has mistaken the piano for 
harpsichord. 

Eichard Amlet, Esq., in the play, is a 
notable instance of the disadvantages to 
which this chimerical notion of affinity 
constituting a claim to acquaintance, may- 
subject the spirit of a. gentleman. A little 
foolish blood is all that is betwixt him and a 
lady with a great estate. His stars are 
perpetually crossed by the malignant 
maternity of an old woman, who persists in 
calling him "her son Dick." But she has 
wherewithal in the end to recompense his 
indignities, and float him again upon the 
brilliant surface, under which it had been 
her seeming business and pleasure all along 
to sink him. All men, besides, are not of 
Dick's temperament. I knew an Amlet in 
real life, who, wanting Dick's buoyancy, sank 

indeed. Poor W was of my own 

standing at Christ's, a fine classic, and a 
youth of promise. If he had a blemish, it 
was too much pride ; but its quality was 
inoffensive ; it was not of that sort which 
hardens the heart, and serves to keep 
inferiors at a distance ; it only sought to 
ward off derogation from itself. It was the 
principle of self-respect carried as far as it 
could go, without infringing upon that 
respect, which he would have every one else 
equally maintain for himself. He would 
have you to think alike with him on this 
topic. Many a quarrel have I had with him, 
when we were rather older boys, and our 
tallness made us more obnoxious to obser- 
vation in the blue clothes, because I would 
not thread the alleys and blind ways of the 
town with him to elude notice, when we have 
been out together on a holiday in the streets 
of this sneering and prying metropolis. 

W went, sore with these notions, to 

Oxford, where the dignity and sweetness of 
a scholar's life, meeting with the alloy of a 
humble introduction, wrought in him a 
passionate devotion to the place, with a 
profound aversion from the society. The 
servitor's gown (worse than his school array) 
clung to him with Nessian venom. He 
thought himself ridiculous in a garb, under 
which Latimer must have walked erect, and 



in which Hooker, in his young days, possibly 
flaunted in a vein of no discommendable 
vanity. In the depth of college shades, or in 
his lonely chamber, the poor student shrunk 
from observation. He found shelter among 
books, which insult not ; and studies, that 
ask no questions of a youth's finances. He 
was lord of his library, and seldom cared for 
looking out beyond his domains. The healing 
influence of studious pursuits was upon him, 
to soothe and to abstract. He was almost a 
healthy man ; when the waywardness of his 
fate broke out against him with a second and 

worse malignity. The father of W had 

hitherto exercised the humble profession of 

house-painter at N , near Oxford. A 

supposed interest with some- of the heads of 
colleges had now induced him to take up his 
abode in that city, with the hope of being 
employed upon some public works which 
were talked of. From that moment I read 
in the countenance of the young man the 
determination which at length tore him from 
academical pursuits for ever. To a person 
unacquainted with our universities, the 
distance between the gownsmen and the 
townsmen, as they are called — the trading 
part of the latter especially — is carried to an 
excess that would appear harsh and incre- 
dible. The temperament of W 's father 

was diametrically the reverse of his own. 
Old W was a little, busy, cringing- 
tradesman, who, with his son upon his arm, 
would stand bowing and scraping, cap in 
hand, to any thing that wore the semblance 
of a gown — insensible to the winks and 
opener remonstrances of the young man, to 
whose chamber-fellow, or equal in standing, 
perhaps, he was thus obsequiously and 
gratuitously ducking. Such a state of things 

could not last. W must change the air 

of Oxford, or be suffocated. He chose the 
former ; and let the sturdy moralist, who 
strains the point of the filial duties as high 
as they can bear, censure the dereliction ; he 
cannot estimate the struggle. I stood with 

W , the last afternoon I ever saw him, 

under the eaves of his paternal dwelling. 
It was in the fine lane leading from the 
High-street to the back of * * * * college, 

where W kept his rooms. He seemed 

thoughtful and more reconciled. I ventured 
to rally him — finding him in a better mood — 
upon a representation of the Artist Evan- 



418 



POOR RELATIONS. 



gelist, which the old man, whose affairs were 
beginning to flourish, had caused to be set 
up in a splendid sort of frame over his really- 
handsome shop, either as a token of pros- 
perity or badge of gratitude to his saint. 

W looked up at the Luke, and, like 

Satan, " knew his mounted sign — and fled." 
A letter on his father's table, the next 
morning, announced that he had accepted a 
commission in a regiment about to embark 
for Portugal. He was among the first who 
perished before the walls of St. Sebastian. 

I do not know how, upon a subject which 
I began with treating half seriously, I should 
have fallen upon a recital so eminently pain- 
ful ; but this theme of poor relationship is 
replete with so much matter for tragic as well 
as comic associations, that it is difficult to 
keep the account distinct without blending. 
The earliest impressions which I received on 
this matter, are certainly not attended with 
anything painful, or very humiliating, in the 
recalling. At my father's table (no very 
splendid one) was to be found, every Satur- 
day, the mysterious figure of an aged gentle- 
man, clothed in neat black, of a sad yet 
comely appearance. His deportment was of 
the essence of gravity ; his words few or 
none ; and I was not to make a noise in his 
presence. I had little inclination to have 
done so — for my cue was to admire in silence. 
A particular elbow-chair was appropriated 
to him, which was in no case to be violated. 
A peculiar sort of sweet pudding, which 
appeared on no other occasion, distinguished 
the days of his coming. I used to think him 
a prodigiously rich man. All I could make 
out of him was, that he and my father had 
been schoolfellows, a world ago, at Lincoln, 
and that he came from the Mint. The Mint 
I knew to be a place where all the money 
was coined — and I thought he was the owner 
of all that money. Awful ideas of the Tower 
twined themselves about his presence. He 
seemed above human infirmities and passions. 
A sort of melancholy grandeur invested him. 
From some inexplicable doom I fancied him 
obliged to go about in an eternal suit of 
mourning ; a captive — a stately being let out 
of the Tower on Saturdays. Often have I 
wondered at the temerity of my father, who, 
in spite of an habitual general respect which 
we all in common manifested towards him, 
would venture now and then to stand up 



against him in some argument, touching their 
youthful days. The houses of the ancient 
city of Lincoln are divided (as most of my 
readers know) between the dwellers on the 
hill and in the valley. This marked dis- 
tinction formed an obvious division between 
the boys who lived above (however brought 
together in a common school) and the boys 
whose paternal residence was on the plain ; a 
sufficient cause of hostility in the code of 
these young Grotiuses. My father had been 
a leading Mountaineer ; and would still main- 
tain the general superiority, in skill and 
hardihood, of the Above Boys (his own 
faction) over the Below Boys (so were they 
called), of which party his contemporary had 
been a chieftain. Many and hot were the 
skirmishes on this topic — the only one upon 
which the old gentleman was ever brought 
out — and bad blood bred ; even sometimes 
almost to the recommencement (so I ex- 
pected) of actual hostilities. But my father, 
who scorned to insist upon advantages, 
generally contrived to turn the conversation 
upon some adroit by-commendation of the 
old Minster ; in the general preference of 
which, before all other cathedrals in the 
island, the dweller on the hill, and the plain- 
born, could meet on a conciliating level, and 
lay down their less important differences. 
Once only I saw the old gentleman really 
ruffled, and I remembered with anguish the 
thought that came over me : " Perhaps he 
will never come here again." He had been 
pressed to take another plate of the viand, 
which I have already mentioned as the indis- 
pensable concomitant of his visits. He had 
refused with a resistance amounting to 
rigour, when my aunt, an old Lincolnian, but 
who had something of this, in common with 
my cousin Bridget, that she would sometimes 
press civility out of season — ■ uttered the 
following memorable application — " Do take 
another slice, Mr. Billet, for you do not get 
pudding every day." The old gentleman 
said nothing at the time — but he took occa- 
sion in the course of the evening, when some 
argument had intervened between them, to 
utter with an emphasis which chilled the 
company, and which chills me now as I 
write it — "Woman, you are superannuated ! " 
John Billet did not survive long after the 
digesting of this affront ; but he survived 
long enough to assure me that peace was 



DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING. 



419 



actually restored ! and, if I remember aright, 
another pudding was discreetly substituted 
in the place of that which had occasioned the 
offence. He died at the Mint (anno 1781), 
where he had long held, what he accounted, 
a comfortable independence ; and with five 



pounds, fourteen shillings, and a penny, which 
were found in his escrutoire after his decease, 
left the world, blessing God that he had 
enough to bury him, and that he had never 
been obliged to any man for a sixpence. This 
was — a Poor Eelation. 



DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND EEADING. 



To mind the inside of a book is to entertain one's self with the forced product of another man's brain. Now 
I think a man of quality and breeding may be much amused with the natural sprouts of his own. 

Lord Foppington, in the Relapse. 



An ingenious acquaintance of my own was 
so much struck with this bright sally of his 
Lordship, that he has left off reading 
altogether, to the great improvement of his 
originality. At the hazard of losing some 
credit on this head, I must confess that I 
dedicate no inconsiderable portion of my 
time to other people's thoughts. I dream 
away my life in others' speculations. I love 
to lose myself in other men's minds. "When 
I am not walking, I am reading ; I cannot 
sit and think. Books think for me. 

I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not 
too genteel for me, nor Jonathan Wild too 
low. I can read anything which I call a book. 
There are things in that shape vhich I cannot 
allow for such. 

In this catalogue of boohs which are no 
books — biblia a-biblia — I reckon Court Calen- 
dars, Directories, Pocket Books, Draught 
Boards, bound and lettered on the back, 
Scientific Treatises, Almanacs, Statutes at 
Large : the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robert- 
son, Beattie, Soame Jenyns, and generally, 
all those volumes which " no gentleman's 
library should be without : " the Histories of 
Flavius Josephus (that learned Jew), and 
Paley's Moral Philosophy; With these ex- 
ceptions, I can read almost anything. I bless 
my stars for a taste so catholic, so unex- 
cluding. 

I confess that it moves my spleen to see 
these things in books' clothing perched upon 
shelves, like false saints, usurpers of true 
shrines, intruders into the sanctuary, thrust- 
ing out the legitimate occupants. To reach 
down a well-bound semblance of a volume, 
and hope it some kind-hearted play-book, 
then, opening what " seem its leaves," to 



come bolt upon a withering Population 
Essay. To expect a Steele or a Farquhar, 
and find — Adam Smith. To view a well- 
arranged assortment of block-headed Ency- 
clopaedias (Anglicanas or Metropolitanas) set 
out in an array of russia, or morocco, when a 
tithe of that good leather would comfortably 
re-clothe my shivering folios — would renovate 
Paracelsus himself, and enable old Raymund 
Lully to look like himself again in the world. 
I never see these impostors, but I long to 
strip them, to warm my ragged veterans in 
their spoils. 

To be strong-backed and neat-bound is the 
desideratum of a volume. Magnificence 
comes after. This, when it can be afforded, 
is not to be lavished upon all kinds of books 
indiscriminately. I would not dress a set of 
Magazines, for instance, in full suit. The 
dishabille, or half-binding (with russia backs 
ever) is our costume. A Shakspeare or a 
Milton (unless the first editions), it were 
mere foppery to trick out in gay apparel. 
The possession of them confers no distinction. 
The exterior of them (the things themselves 
being so common), strange to say, raises no 
sweet emotions, no tickling sense of property 
in the owner. Thomson's Seasons, again, 
looks best (I maintain it) a little torn and 
dog's-eared. How beautiful to a genuine 
lover of reading are the sullied leaves, and 
worn-out appearance, nay, the very odour 
(beyond russia), if we would not forget kind 
feelings in fastidiousness, of an old " Circu- 
lating Library " Tom Jones, or Yicar of 
Wakefield ! How they speak of the thou- 
sand thumbs that have turned over their 
pages with delight ! — of the lone sempstress, 
whom they may have cheered (milliner, or 



e e 2 



420 



DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND BEADING. 



harder-working mantua-maker) after her 
long day's needle-toil, running far into mid- 
night, when she has snatched an hour, ill 
spared from sleep, to steep her cares, as in 
some Lethean cup, in spelling out their 
enchanting contents ! "Who would have them 
a whit less soiled ? What better condition 
could we desire to see them in ? 

In some respects the better a book is, the 
less it demands from binding. Fielding, 
Smollett, Sterne, and all that class of per- 
petually self-reproductive volumes — Great 
Nature's Stereotypes — we see them indi- 
vidually perish with less regret, because we 
know the copies of them to be " eterne." 
But where a book is at once both good and 
rare — where the individual is almost the 
species, and when that perishes, 

We know not where is that Promethean torch 
That can its light relumine. 

such a book, for instance, as the Life of the 
Duke of Newcastle, by his Duchess — no 
casket is rich enough, no casing sufficiently 
durable, to honour and keep safe such a jewel. 
Not only rare volumes of this description, 
which seem hopeless ever to be reprinted, 
but old editions of writers, such as Sir Philip 
Sydney, Bishop Taylor, Milton in his prose 
works, Fuller — of whom we have reprints, 
yet the books themselves, though they go 
about, and are talked of here and there, we 
know have not endenizened themselves (nor 
possibly ever will) in the national heart, so 
as to become stock books — it is good to 
possess these in durable and costly covers. 
I do not care for a First Folio of Shakspeare. 
I rather prefer the common editions of Kowe 
and Tonson, without notes, and with plates, 
which, being so execrably bad, serve as maps 
or modest remembrancers, to the text ; and 
without pretending to any supposable emula- 
tion with it, are so much better than the 
Shakspeare gallery engravings, which did. 
I have a community of feeling with my 
countrymen about his Plays, and I like those 
editions of him best which have been oftenest 
tumbled about and handled. — On the con- 
trary, 1 cannot read Beaumont and Fletcher 
but in Folio. The Octavo editions are pain- 
ful to look at. I have no sympathy with 
them. If they were as much read as the 
current editions of the other poet, I should 
prefer them in that shape to the older one. 



I do not know a more heartless sight than 
the reprint of the Anatomy of Melancholy. 
What need was there of unearthing the bones 
of that fantastic old great man, to expose 
them in a winding-sheet of the newest fashion 
to modern censure ? what hapless stationer 
could dream of Burton ever becoming 
popular 1 — The wretched Malone could not 
do worse, when he bribed the sexton of 
Stratford church to let him whitewash the 
painted effigy of old Shakspeare, which stood 
there, in rude but lively fashion depicted, to 
the very colour of the cheek, the eye, the 
eyebrow, hair, the very dress he used to 
wear — the only authentic testimony we had, 
however imperfect, of these curious parts and 
parcels of him. They covered him over with 

a coat of white paint. By , if I had been 

a justice of peace for Warwickshire, I would 
have clapt both commentator and sexton fast 
in the stocks, for a pair of meddling sacri- 
legious varlets. 

I think I see them at their work — these 
sapient trouble-tombs. 

Shall I be thought fantastical, if I confess, 
that the names of some of our poets sound 
sweeter, and have a finer relish to the ear — 
to mine, at least — than that of Milton or of 
Shakspeare ? It may be, -that the latter are 
more staled and rung upon in common dis- 
course. The sweetest names, and which 
carry a perfume in the mention, are, Kit 
Marlowe, Drayton, Drummond of Haw- 
thornden, and Cowley. 

Much depends upon when and tohere you 
read a book. In the five or six impatient 
minutes, before the dinner is quite ready, 
who would think of taking up the Fairy 
Queen for a stop-gap, or a volume of Bishop 
Andrewes' sermons ? 

Milton almost requires a solemn service of 
music to be played before you enter upon 
him. But he brings his music, to which, 
who listens, had need bring docile thoughts, 
and purged ears. 

Winter evenings — the world shut out — 
with less of ceremony the gentle Shakspeare 
enters. At such a season the Tempest, or his 
own Winter's Tale — 

These two poets you cannot avoid reading 
aloud — to yourself, or (as it chances) to some 
single person listening. More than one — 
and it degenerates into an audience. 

Books of quick interest, that hurry on for 



DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING. 



421 



incidents, are for the eye to glide over only. 
It will not do to read them out. I could 
never listen to even the better kind of 
modern novels without extreme irksomeness. 

A newspaper, read out, is intolerable. In 
some of the Bank offices it is the custom (to 
save so much individual time) for one of the 
clerks — who is the best scholar — to com- 
mence upon the " Times," or the " Chronicle," 
and recite its entire contents aloud, pro bono 
publico, With every advantage of lungs and 
elocution, the effect is singularly vapid. In 
barbers' shops and public-houses a fellow 
will get up and spell out a paragraph, which 
he communicates as some discovery. Another 
follows with his selection. So the entire 
journal transpires at length by piece-meal. 
Seldom-readers are slow readers, and, with- 
out this expedient, no one in the company 
would probably ever travel through the con- 
tents of a whole paper. 

Newspapers always excite curiosity. No 
one ever lays one down without a feeling of 
disappointment. 

What an eternal time that gentleman in 
black, at Nando's, keeps the paper ! I am 
sick of hearing the water bawling out inces- 
santly, " The 'Chronicle ' is in hand, Sir." 

Coming into an inn at night — having 
ordered your supper — what can be more de- 
lightful than to find lying in the window- 
seat, left there time out of mind by the care- 
lessness of some former guest — two or three 
mimbers of the old Town and Country 
Magazine, with its amusing tete-a-tete pictures 

— " The Eoyal Lover and Lady G ; " 

" The Melting Platonic and the old Beau," — 
and such-like antiquated scandal 1 Would 
you exchange it — at that time, and in that 
place — for a better book ? 

Poor Tobin, who latterly fell blind, did not 
regret it so much for the weightier kinds of 
reading — the. Paradise Lost, or Comus, he 
could have read to him — but he missed the 
pleasure of skimming over with his own eye 
a magazine, or a light pamphlet. 

I should not care to be caught in the 
serious avenues of some cathedral alone, and 
reading Candide. 

I do not remember a more whimsical 
surprise than having been once detected — by 
a familiar damsel — reclined at my ease upon 
the grass, on Primrose Hill (her Cythera), 
reading — Pamela. There was nothing in the 



book to make a man seriously ashamed at 
the exposure ; but as she seated herself down 
by me, and seemed determined to read in 
company, I could have wished it had been 
— any other book. We read on very 
sociably for a few pages ; and, not finding 
the author much to her taste, she got up, and 
— went away. Gentle casuist, I leave it to 
thee to conjecture, whether the blush (for 
there was one between us) was the property 
of the nymph or the swain in this dilemma. 
From me you shall never get the secret. 

I am not much a friend to out-of-doors 
reading. I cannot settle my spirits to it. I 
knew a Unitarian minister, who was generally 
to be seen upon Snow-hill (as yet Skinner's- 
street was not), between the hours of ten and 
eleven in the morning, studying a volume of 
Lardner. I own this to have been a strain 
of abstraction beyond my reach. I used to 
admire how he sidled along, keeping clear of 
secular contacts. An illiterate encounter 
with a porter's knot, or a bread-basket, 
would have quickly put to flight all the 
theology I am master of, and have left me 
worse than indifferent to the five points. 

There is a class of street readers, whom I 
can never contemplate without affection — 
the poor gentry, who, not having where- 
withal to buy or hire a book, filch a little 
learning at the open stalls — the owner, with 
his hard eye, casting envious looks at them 
all the while, and thinking when they will 
have done. Venturing tenderly, page after 
page, expecting every moment when he shall 
interpose his interdict, and yet unable to 
deny themselves the gratification, they 

"snatch a fearful joy." Martin B , in this 

way, by daily fragments, got through two 
volumes of Clarissa, when the stall-keeper 
damped his laudable ambition, by asking 
him (it was in his younger days) whether he 
meant to purchase the work. M. declares, 
that under no circumstance in his life did he 
ever peruse a book with half the satisfaction 
which he took in those uneasy snatches. A 
quaint poetess of our day has moralised upon 
this subject in two very touching but homely 
stanzas. 



I saw a boy with, eager eye 
Open a book upon a stall, 
And read, as he'd devour it all ; 
Which when the stall-man did espy, 
Soon to the boy I heard him call, 



422 



STAGE ILLUSION. 



" You Sir, you never buy a book, 
Therefore in one you shall not look." 
The boy pass'd slowly on, and with a sigh 
He wish'd he never had been taught to read, 
Then of the old churl's books he should have had no 
need. 

Of sufferings the poor have many, 
Which never can the rich annoy : 



I soon perceived another boy, 

Who look'd as if he had not any 

Food, for that day at least — enjoy 

The sight of cold meat in a tavern larder. 

This boy's case, then thought I, is surely harder, 

Thus hungry, longing, thus without a penny, 

Beholding choice of dainty-dressed meat : 

No wonder if he wish he ne'er had learn'd to eat. 



STAGE ILLUSION. 



A play is said to be well or ill acted, in 
proportion to the scenical illusion produced. 
"Whether such illusion can in any case be 
perfect, is not the question. The nearest 
approach to it, we are told, is, when the actor 
appears wholly unconscious of the presence 
of spectators. In tragedy — in all which is 
to affect the feelings — this undivided atten- 
tion to his stage business seems indispens- 
able. Yet it is, in fact, dispensed with every 
day by our cleverest tragedians ; and while 
these references to an audience, in the shape 
of rant or sentiment, are not too frequent or 
palpable, a sufficient quantity of illusion for 
the purposes of dramatic interest may be said 
to be produced in spite of them. But, tragedy 
apart, it may be inquired whether, in certain 
characters in comedy, especially those which 
are a little extravagant, or which involve 
some notion repugnant to the moral sense, 
it is not a proof of the highest skill in the 
comedian when, without absolutely appealing 
to an audience, he keeps up a tacit under- 
standing with them : and makes them, un- 
consciously to themselves, a party in the 
scene. The utmost nicety is required in the 
mode of doing this ; but we speak only of the 
great artists in the profession. 

The most mortifying infirmity in human 
nature, to feel in ourselves, or to contemplate 
in another, is, perhaps, cowardice. To see a 
coward done to the life upon a stage would 
produce anything but mirth. Yet we most 
of us remember Jack Bannister's cowards. 
Could anything be more agreeable, more 
pleasant 1 We loved the rogues. How was 
this effected but by the exquisite art of the 
actor in a perpetual sub-insinuation to us, 
the spectators, even in the extremity of the 
shaking fit, that he was not half such a 



coward as we took him for ? We saw all 
the common symptoms of the malady upon 
him ; the quivering lip, the cowering knees, 
the teeth chattering ; and could have sworn 
" that man was frightened." But we forgot 
all the while — or kept it almost a secret to 
ourselves — that he never once lost his self- 
possession ; that he let out, by a thousand 
droll looks and gestures — meant at us, and 
not at all supposed to be visible to his fellows 
in the scene, that his confidence in his own 
resources had never once deserted him. Was 
this a genuine picture of a coward ; or not 
rather a likeness, which the clever artist 
contrived to palm upon us instead of an 
original ; while we secretly connived at the 
delusion for the purpose of greater pleasure, 
than a more genuine counterfeiting of the 
imbecility, helplessness, and utter self-de- 
sertion, which we know to be concomitants 
of cowardice in real life, could have given us ? 

Why are misers so hateful in the world, 
and so endurable on the stage, but because 
the skilful actor, by a sort of sub-reference, 
rather than direct appeal to us, disarms the 
character of a great deal of its odiousness, by 
seeming to engage our compassion for the 
insecure tenure by which he holds his money- 
bags and parchments 1 By this subtle vent 
half of the hatefulness of the character — the 
self-closeness with which in real life it coils 
itself up from the sympathies of men — 
evaporates. The miser becomes sympathetic ; 
i. e. is no genuine miser. Here again a 
diverting likeness is substituted for a very 
disagreeable reality. 

Spleen, irritability—the pitiable infirmities 
of old men, which produce only pain to be- 
hold in the realities, counterfeited upon a 
stage, divert not altogether for the comic 



STAGE ILLUSION. 



423 



appendages to them, but in part from an 
inner conviction that they are being acted 
before us ; that a likeness only is going on, 
and not the thing itself. They please by 
being done under the life, or beside it ; not 
to the life. When Gattie acts an old man, is 
he angry indeed ? or only a pleasant counter- 
feit, just enough of a likeness to recognise, 
without pressing upon us the uneasy sense of 
a reality 1 

Comedians, paradoxical as it may seem, 
may be too natural. It was the case with a 
late actor. Nothing could be more earnest 
or true than the manner of Mr. Emery ; this 
told excellently in his Tyke, and characters 
of a tragic cast. But when he carried the 
same rigid exclusiveness of attention to the 
stage business, and wilful blindness and obli- 
vion of everything before the curtain into 
his comedy, it produced a harsh and dissonant 
effect. He was out of keeping with the rest 
of the Personce Dramatis. There was as little 
link between him and them, as betwixt him- 
self and the audience. He was a third estate, 
dry, repulsive, and unsocial to all. In- 
dividually considered, his execution was 
masterly. But comedy is not this unbending 
thing ; for this reason, that the same degree 
of credibility is not required of it as to 
serious scenes. The degrees of credibility 
demanded to the two things, may be illus- 
trated by the different sort of truth which we 
expect when a man tells us a mournful or a 
merry story. If we suspect the former of 
falsehood in any one tittle, we reject it alto- 
gether. Our tears refuse to flow at a 
suspected imposition. But the teller of a 
mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. "We 
are content with less than absolute truth. 
'Tis the same with dramatic illusion. We 
confess we love in comedy to see ah audience 
naturalised behind the scenes, taken into the 
interest of the drama, welcomed as by- 
standers however. There is something un- 
gracious in a comic actor holding himself 
aloof from all participation or concern with 
those who are come to be diverted by him. 
Macbeth must see the dagger, and no ear but 
his own be told of it ; but an old fool in 
farce may think he sees something, and by 



conscious words and looks express it, as 
plainly as he can speak, to pit, box, and gal- 
lery. When an impertinent in tragedy, an 
Osric, for instance, breaks in upon the 
serious passions of the scene, we approve of 
the contempt with which he is treated. But 
when the pleasant impertinent of comedy, 
in a piece purely meant to give delight, and 
raise mirth out of whimsical perplexities, 
worries the studious man with taking up his 
leisure, or making his house his home, the 
same sort of contempt expressed (however 
natural) would destroy the balance of delight 
in the spectators. To make the intrusion 
comic, the actor who plays the annoyed man 
must a little desert nature ; he must, in short, 
be thinking of the audience, and express only 
so much dissatisfaction and peevishness as 
is consistent with the pleasure of comedy. 
In other words, his perplexity must seem 
half put on. If he repel the intruder with 
the sober set face of a man in earnest, and 
more especially if he deliver his expostula- 
tions in a tone which in the world must 
necessarily provoke a duel; his real-life 
manner will destroy the whimsical and 
purely dramatic existence of the other cha- 
racter (which to render it comic demands 
an antagonist comicality on the part of the 
character opposed to it), and convert what 
was meant for mirth, rather than belief, into 
a downright piece of impertinence indeed, 
which would raise no diversion in us, but 
rather stir pain, to see inflicted in earnest 
upon any unworthy person. A very judicious 
actor (in most of his parts) seems to have 
fallen into an error of this sort in his playing 
with Mr. Wrench in the farce of Free and 
Easy. 

Many instances would be tedious ; these 
may suffice to show that comic acting at least 
does not always demand from the performer 
that strict abstraction from all reference to 
an audience which is exacted of it ; but that 
in some cases a sort of compromise may take 
place, and all the purposes of dramatic de- 
light be attained by a judicious understand- 
ing, not too openly announced, between the 
ladies and gentlemen — on both sides of the 
curtain. 



424 



TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON. 



TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON. 



Joyousest of once embodied spirits, whither 
at length hast thou flown '! to what genial 
region are we permitted to conjecture that 
thou hast flitted ? 

Art thou sowing thy wild oats yet (the 
harvest time was still to come with thee) 
upon casual sands of Avernus ? or art thou 
enacting Rover (as we would gladlier think) 
by wandering Elysian streams ? 

This mortal frame, while thou didst play 
thy brief antics amongst us, was in truth 
anything but a prison to thee, as the vain 
Platonist dreams of this body to be no better 
than a county gaol, forsooth, or some house 
of durance vile, whereof the five senses are 
the fetters. Thou knewest better than to be 
in a hurry to cast off those gyves ; and had 
notice to quit, I fear, before thou wert quite 
ready to abandon this fleshy tenement. It 
was thy Pleasure-House, thy Palace of 
Dainty Devices : thy Louvre, or thy White- 
Hall. 

What new mysterious lodgings dost thou 
tenant now % or when may we expect thy 
aerial house-warming 1 

Tartarus we know, and we have read of 
the Blessed Shades ; now cannot I intelligibly 
fancy thee in either. 

Is it too much to hazard a conjecture, that 
(as the schoolmen admitted a receptacle 
apart for Patriarchs and un-chrisom babes) 
there may exist — not far perchance from 
that store-house of all vanities, which Milton 
saw in vision — a Limbo somewhere for 
Players % and that 

Dp thither like aerial vapours fly 

Both all Stage things, and all that in Stage things 

Built their fond hopes of glory, or lasting fame ? 

All the unaccomplished works of Authors' hands, 

Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mixed, 

Damn'd upon earth, fleet thither — 

Play, Opera, Farce, Avith all their trumpery.— 

There, by the neighbouring moon (by 
some not improperly supposed thy Regent 
Planet upon earth), mayst thou not still be 
acting thy managerial pranks, great dis- 
embodied Lessee % but Lessee still, and still 
a manager. 



In Green Rooms, impervious to mortal 
eye, the muse beholds thee wielding posthu- 
mous empire. 

Thin ghosts of Figurantes (never plump 
on earth) circle thee in endlessly, and still 
their song is Fie on sinful Phantasy J 

Magnificent were^ thy capriccios on this 
globe of earth, Robert William Elliston ! 
for as yet we know not thy new name in 
heaven. 

It irks me to think, that, stript of thy 
regalities, thou shouldst ferry over, a poor 
forked shade, in crazy Stygian wherry. 
Methinks 1 hear the old boatman, paddling 
by the weedy wharf, with raucid voice, 
bawling " Sculls, Sculls : " to which, with 
waving hand, and majestic action, thou 
deignest no reply, other than in two curt 
monosyllables, " No : Oars." 

But the laws of Pluto's kingdom know 
small difference between king, and cobbler ; 
manager, and call-boy ; and, if haply your 
dates of life were conterminant, you are 
quietly taking your passage, cheek by cheek 
(O ignoble levelling of Death) with the 
shade of some recently departed candle- 
snuffer. 

But mercy ! what strippings, what tearing 
off of histrionic robes, and private vanities ! 
what denudations to the bone, before the 
surly Ferryman will admit you to set a foot 
within his battered lighter. 

Crowns, sceptres ; shield, sword, and 
truncheon ; thy own coronation robes (for 
thou hast brought the whole property- 
man's wardrobe with thee, enough to sink a 
navy) ; the judge's., ermine ; the coxcomb's 
wig ; the snuffbox d la Foppington — all 
must overboard, he positively swears — and 
that Ancient Mariner brooks no denial; 
for, since the tiresome monodrame of 
the old Thracian Harper, Charon, it is 
to be believed, hath shown small taste for 
theatricals. 

Ay, now 'tis done. You are just boat- 
weight ; pura et puta, anima. 

But, bless me, how little you look ! 



ELLISTONIANA. 



425 



So shall we all look — kings and keysars — 
stripped for the last voyage. 

But the murky rogue pushes off. Adieu, 
pleasant, and thrice pleasant shade ! with 
my parting thanks for many a heavy hour of 
life lightened by thy harmless extravaganzas, 
public or domestic. 

Ehada'manthus, who tries the lighter 
causes below, leaving to his two brethren 
the heavy calendars — honest Bhadamanth, 
always partial to players, weighing their 
parti-coloured existence here upon earth, — 
making account of the few foibles, that may 
have shaded thy real life, as we call it, 



(though, substantially, scarcely less a vapour 
than thy idlest vagaries upon the boards of 
Drury,) as but of so many echoes, natural 
re-percussions, and results to be expected 
from the assumed extravagancies of thy 
secondary or mock life, nightly upon a stage 
— after a lenient castigation, with rods lighter 
than of those Medusean ringlets, but just 
enough to " whip the offending Adam out of 
thee," shall courteously dismiss thee at the 
right hand gate — the o. p. side of Hades — 
that conducts to masques and merry-makings 
in the Theatre Royal of Proserpine. 

PLAUDITO, ET VALETO. 



ELLISTONIANA. 



My acquaintance with the pleasant crea- 
ture, whose loss we all deplore, was but 
slight. 

My first introduction to E., which after- 
wards ripened into an acquaintance a little 
on this side of intimacy, was over a counter 
in the Leamington Spa Library, then newly 
entered upon by a branch of his family. 
E., whom nothing misbecame — to auspicate, 
I suppose, the filial concern, and set it a-going 
with a lustre — was serving in person two 
damsels fair, who had come into the shop 
ostensibly to inquire for some new publica- 
tion, but in reality to have a sight of the 
illustrious shopman, hoping some conference. 
With what an air did he reach down the 
volume, dispassionately giving his opinion of 
the worth of the work in question, and 
launching out into a dissertation on its com- 
parative merits with those of certain publi- 
cations of a similar stamp, its rivals ! his 
enchanted customers fairly hanging on his 
lips, subdued to their authoritative sentence. 
So have I seen a gentleman in comedy acting 
the shopman. So Lovelace sold his gloves in 
King Street. I admired the histrionic art, 
by which he contrived to carry clean away 
every notion of disgrace, from the occupation 
he had so generously submitted to ; and from 
that hour I judged him, with no after repent- 
ance, to be a person with whom it would be 
a felicity to be more acquainted. 

To descant upon his merits as a Comedian 



would be superfluous. With his blended 
private and professional habits alone I have 
to do ; that harmonious fusion of the manners 
of the player into those of every-day life, 
which brought the stage boards into streets, 
and dining-parlours, and kept up the play 
when the play was ended. — " I like Wrench," 
a friend was saying to him one day, "be- 
cause he is the same, natural, easy creature, 
on the stage, that he is off." "My case 
exactly," retorted Elliston — with a charming 
forgetfulness, that the converse of a pro- 
position does not always lead to the same 
conclusion — " I am the same person off the 
stage that I am on." The inference, at first 
sight, seems identical ; but examine it a 
little, and it confesses only, that the one 
performer was never, and the other always, 
acting. 

And in truth this was the charm of Ellis- 
ton's private deportment. You had spirited 
performance always going on before your 
eyes, with nothing to pay. As where a 
monarch takes up his casual abode for a 
night, the poorest hovel which he honours by 
his sleeping in it, becomes ipso facto for that 
time a palace ; so wherever Elliston walked, 
sate, or stood still, there was the theatre. 
He carried about with him his pit, boxes, 
and galleries, and set up his portable play- 
house at corners of streets, and in the market- 
places. Upon flintiest pavements he trod 
the boards still ; and if his theme chanced to 



426 



ELLISTONIANA. 



be passionate, the green baize carpet of 
tragedy spontaneously rose beneath his feet. 
Now this was hearty, and showed a love for 
his art. So Apelles always painted — in 
thought. So G. D. afouays poetises. I hate 
a lukewarm artist. I have known actors — 
and some of them of Elliston's own stamp — 
who shall have agreeably been amusing you 
in the part of a rake or a coxcomb, through 
the two or three hours of their dramatic 
existence ; but no sooner does the curtain 
fall with its leaden clatter, but a spirit of 
lead seems to seize on all their faculties. 
They emerge sour, morose persons, intolerable 
to their families, servants, &c. Another 
shall have been expanding your heart with 
generous deeds and sentiments, till it even 
beats with yearnings of universal sympathy ; 
you absolutely long to go home and do some 
good action. The play seems tedious, till 
you can get fairly out of the house, and 
realise your laudable intentions. At length 
the final bell rings, and this cordial repre- 
sentative of all that is amiable in human 
breasts steps forth — a miser. Elliston was 
more of a piece. Did he play Eanger ? and 
did Eanger fill the general bosom of the 
town with satisfaction % why should he not 
be Eanger, and diffuse the same cordial 
satisfaction among his. private circles ? with 
his temperament, his animal spirits, his good- 
nature, his follies perchance, could he do 
better than identify himself with his imper- 
sonation 1 Are we to like a pleasant rake, 
or coxcomb, on the stage, and give ourselves 
airs of aversion for the identical character, 
presented to us in actual life ? or what would 
the performer have gained by divesting him- 
self of the impersonation 1 Could the man 
Elliston have been essentially different from 
his part, even if he had avoided to reflect to 
us studiously, in private circles, the airy 
briskness, the forwardness, and 'scape-goat 
trickeries of his prototype ? 

"But there is something not natural in 
this everlasting acting ; we want the real 
man." 

Are you quite sure that it is not the man 
himself, whom you cannot, or will not see, 
under some adventitious trappings, which 
nevertheless, sit not at all inconsistently upon 
him ? What if it is the nature of some men 
to be highly artificial? The fault is least 
reprehensible in players. Gibber was his 



own Foppington, with almost as much wit as 
Vanbrugh could add to it. 

"My conceit of his person," — it is Ben 
Jonson speaking of Lord Bacon, — "was 
never increased towards him by his place or 
honours. But I have, and do reverence him 
for the greatness, that was only proper to 
himself ; in that he seemed to me ever one 
of the greatest men, that had been in many 
ages. In his adversity I ever prayed that 
Heaven would give him strength ; for great- 
ness he could not want." 

The quality here commended was scarcely 
less conspicuous in the subject of these idle 
reminiscences than in my Lord Verulam. 
Those who have imagined that an unexpected 
elevation to the direction of a great London 
Theatre affected the consequence of Elliston, 
or at all changed his nature, knew not the 
essential greatness of the man whom they 
disparage. It was my fortune to encounter 
him near St. Dunstan's Church (which, with 
its punctual giants, is now no more than 
dust and a shadow), on the morning of his 
election to that high office. Grasping my 
hand with a look of significance, he only 
uttered, — " Have you heard the news ? " — 
then, with another look following up the 
blow, he subjoined, "I am the future 
Manager of Drury Lane Theatre." — Breath- 
less as he saw me, he stayed not for con- 
gratulation or reply, but mutely stalked 
away, leaving me to chew upon his new- 
blown dignities at leisure. In fact, nothing 
could be said to it. Expressive silence alone 
could muse his praise. This was in his great 
style. 

But was he less great, (be witness, O ye 
Powers of Equanimity, that supported in 
the ruins of Carthage the consular exile, and 
more recently transmuted, for a more illus- 
trious exile, the barren constableship of Elba 
into an image of Imperial France), when, in 
melancholy after-years, again, much near the 
same spot, I met him, when that sceptre had 
been wrested from his hand, and his dominion 
was curtailed to the petty managership, and 
part proprietorship, of the small Olympic, 
his Elba ? He still played nightly upon the 
boards of Drury, but in parts, alas ! allotted 
to him, not magnificently distributed by him. 
Waiving his great loss as nothing, and mag- 
nificently sinking the sense of fallen material 
grandeur in the more liberal resentment of 



ELLISTONIANA. 



427 



depreciations done to his more lofty intellec- 
tual pretensions, " Have you heard " (his cus- 
tomary exordium) — " have you heard," said 
he, " how they treat me 1 they put me in 
comedy." Thought I — but his finger on his 
lips forbade any verbal interruption — " where 
could they have put you better % " Then, 
after a pause— " Where I formerly played 
Eomeo, I now play Mercutio," — and so again 
he stalked away, neither staying, nor caring 
for, responses. 

O, it was a rich scene, — but Sir A 

C , the best of story-tellers and surgeons, 

who mends a lame narrative almost as well 
as he sets a fracture, alone could do justice 
to it, — that I was a witness to, in the tar- 
nished room (that had once been green) of 
that same little Olympic. There, after his 
deposition from Imperial Drury, he substi- 
tuted a throne. That Olympic Hill was his 
" highest heaven ; " himself " Jove in his 
chair." There he sat in state, while before 
him, on complaint of prompter, was brought 
for judgment — how shall I describe her ?— 
one of those little tawdry things that flirt at 
the tails of choruses — a probationer for the 
town, in either of its senses — the pertest 
little drab — a dirty fringe and appendage of 
the lamp's smoke — who, it seems, on some 
disapprobation expressed by a "highly re- 
spectable " audience, — had precipitately 
quitted her station on the boards, and with- 
drawn her small talents in disgust. 

" And how dare you," said her manager, — 
assuming a censorial severity, which would 
have crushed the confidence of a Vestris, 
and disarmed that beautiful Eebel herself of 
her professional caprices — I verily believe, 
he thought her standing before him — " how 
dare you, Madam, withdraw yourself, without 
a notice, from your theatrical duties 1 " "I 
was hissed, Sir." " And you have the pre- 
sumption to decide upon the taste of the 
town ?'" "I don't know that, Sir, but I will 
never stand to be hissed," was the subjoinder 
of young Confidence — when gathering up 
his features into one significant mass of 
wonder, pity, and expostulatory indignation 
— in a lesson never to have been lost upon 
a creature less forward than she who stood 
before him — his words were these : " They 
have hissed me." 



'Twas the identical argument a fortiori, 
which the son of Peleus uses to Lycaon 
trembling under his lance, to persuade Ijim 
to take his destiny with a good grace. " I 
too am mortal." And it is to be believed 
that in both cases the rhetoric missed of its 
application, for want of a proper understand- 
ing with the faculties of the respective 
recipients. 

" Quite an Opera pit," he said to me, as he 
was courteously conducting me over the 
benches of his Surrey Theatre, the last 
retreat, and recess, of his every-day waning 
grandeur. 

Those who knew Elliston, will know the 
manner in which he pronounced the latter 
sentence of the few words I am about to 
record. One proud day to me he took his 
roast mutton with us in the Temple, to which 
I had superadded a preliminary haddock. 
After a rather plentiful partaking of the 
meagre banquet, not unrefreshed with the 
humbler sort of liquors, I made a sort of 
apology for the humility of the fare, observing 
that for my own part I never ate but one 
dish at dinner. " I too never eat but one 
thing at dinner," — was his reply — then after 
a pause — " reckoning fish as nothing." The 
manner was all. It was as if by one peremp- 
tory sentence he had decreed the annihilation 
of all the savoury esculents, which the pleasant 
and nutritious-food-giving Ocean pours forth 
upon poor humans from her watery bosom. 
This was greatness, tempered with considerate 
tenderness to the feelings of his scanty but 
welcoming entertainer. 

Great wert thou in thy life, Eobert William 
Elliston ! and not lessened in thy death, if 
report speak truly, which says that thou 
didst direct that thy mortal remains should 
repose under no inscription but one of pure 
Latinity. Classical was thy bringing up ! 
and beautiful was the feeling on thy last bed, 
which, connecting the man with the boy, 
took thee back to thy latest exercise of 
imagination, to the days when, undreaming 
of Theatres and Managerships, thou wert 
a scholar, and an early ripe one, under the 
roofs builded by the munificent and pious 
Colet. For thee the Pauline Muses weep. 
In elegies, that shall silence this crude prose, 
they shall celebrate thy praise. 



428 



THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 



THE OLD MAEGATE HOY. 



I am fond of passing my vacations (I believe 
I have said so before) at one or other of the 
Universities. Next to these my choice would 
fix me at some woody spot, such as the 
neighbourhood of Henley affords in abund- 
ance, on the banks of my beloved Thames. 
But somehow or other my cousin contrives 
to wheedle me, once in three or four seasons, 
to a watering-place. Old attachments cling- 
to her in spite of experience. We have been 
dull at "Worthing one summer, duller at 
Brighton another, dullest at Eastbourn a 
third, and are at this moment doing dreary 
penance at — Hastings ! — and all because we 
were happy many years ago for a brief week 
at Margate. That was our first sea-side 
experiment, and many circumstances com- 
bined to make it the most agreeable holiday 
of my life. We had neither of us seen the 
sea, and we had never been from home so 
long together in company. 

Can I forget thee, thou old Margate Hoy, 
with thy weather-beaten, sun-burnt captain, 
and his rough accommodations — ill ex- 
changed for the foppery and fresh-water 
niceness of the modern steam-packet ? To 
the winds and waves thou committedst thy 
goodly freightage, and didst ask no aid of 
magic fumes, and spells, and boiling caldrons. 
With the gales of heaven thou wentest 
swimmingly ; or, when it was their pleasure, 
stoodest still with sailor-like patience. Thy 
course was natural, not forced, as in a hot- 
bed ; nor didst thou go poisoning the breath 
of ocean with sulphureous smoke — a great 
sea chimera, chimneying and furnacing the 
deep ; ■ or liker to that fire-god parching up 
Scamander. 

Can I forget thy honest, yet slender crew, 
with their coy reluctant responses (yet to 
the suppression of anything like contempt) 
to the raw questions, which we of the great 
city would be ever and anon putting to them, 
as to the uses of this or that strange naval 
implement ? 'Specially can I forget thee, 
thou happy medium, thou shade of refuge 
between us and them, conciliating interpreter 



of their skill to our simplicity, comfortable 
ambassador between sea and land ! — whose 
sailor-trousers did not more convincingly 
assure thee to be an adopted denizen of the 
former, than thy white cap, and whiter apron 
over them, with thy neat-figured practice in 
thy culinary vocation, bespoke thee to have 
been of inland nurture heretofore — a master 
cook of Eastcheap ? How busily didst 
thou ply thy multifarious occupation, cook, 
mariner, attendant, chamberlain : here, there, 
like another Ariel, flaming at once about all 
parts of the deck, yet with kindlier minis- 
trations — not to assist the tempest, but, as if 
touched with a kindred sense of our infirmi- 
ties, to soothe the qualms which that untried 
motion might haply raise in our crude land- 
fancies. And when the o'erwashing billows 
drove us below deck (for it was far gone in 
October, and we had stiff and blowing 
weather), how did thy officious ministerings, 
still catering for our comfort, with cards, 
and cordials, and thy more cordial conversa- 
tion, alleviate the closeness and the confine- 
ment of thy else (truth to say) not very 
savoury, nor very inviting, little cabin 1 

With these additaments to boot, we had 
on board a fellow-passenger, whose discourse 
in verity might have beguiled a longer voyage 
than we meditated, and have made mirth 
and wonder abound as far as the Azores. 
He was a dark, Spanish-complexioned young 
man, remarkably handsome, with an officer- 
like assurance, and an insuppressible volu- 
bility of assertion. He was, in fact, the 
greatest liar I had met with then, or since. 
He was none of your hesitating, half-story- 
tellers (a most painful description of mortals) 
who go on sounding your belief, and only 
giving you as much as they see you can 
swallow at a time — the nibbling pickpockets 
of your patience — but one who committed 
downright, daylight depredations upon his 
neighbour's faith. He did not stand shivering 
upon the brink, but was a hearty, thorough- 
paced liar, and plunged at once into the 
depths of your credulity. I partly believe, 



THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 



429 



he made pretty sure of his company. Not 
many rich, not many wise, or learned, com- 
posed at that time the common stowage of a 
Margate packet. We were, I am afraid, a 
set of as unseasoned Londoners (let our 
enemies give it a worse name) as Alderman- 
bury, or Watling-street, at that time of day 
could have supplied. There might be an 
exception or two among us, but I scorn to 
make any invidious distinctions among such 
a jolly, companionable ship's company, as 
those were whom I sailed with. Something 
too must be conceded to the Genius Loci. 
Had the confident fellow told us half the 
legends on land, which he favoured us with 
on the other element, I flatter myself the 
good sense of most of us would have revolted. 
But we were in a new world, with every- 
thing unfamiliar about us, and the time and 
place disposed us to the reception of any 
prodigious marvel whatsoever. Time has 
obliterated from my memory much of his 
wild fablings ; and the rest would appear 
but dull, as written, and to be read on shore, 
He had been Aide-de-camp (among other 
rare accidents and fortunes) to a Persian 
Prince, and at one blow had stricken off the 
head of the King of Carimania on horseback. 
He, of course, married the Prince's daughter. 
I forget what unlucky turn in the politics of 
that court, combining with the loss of his 
consort, was the reason of his quitting Persia ; 
but, with the rapidity of a magician, he 
transported himself, along with his hearers, 
back to England, where we still found him in 
the confidence of great ladies. There was 
some story of a princess — Elizabeth, if I 
remember — having intrusted to his care an 
extraordinary casket of jewels, upon some 
extraordinary occasion — but, as I am not 
certain of the name or circumstance at this 
distance of time, I must leave it to the 
Royal daughters of England to settle the 
honour among themselves in private. I 
cannot call to mind half his pleasant wonders ; 
but I perfectly remember, that in the course 
of his travels he had seen a phoenix ; and he 
obligingly undeceived us of the vulgar error, 
that there is but one of that species at a time, 
assuring us that they were not uncommon in 
some parts of Upper Egypt. Hitherto he 
had found the most implicit listeners. His 
dreaming fancies had transported us beyond 
the "ignorant present." But when (still 



hardying more and more in his triumphs 
over our simplicity) he went on to affirm 
that he had actually sailed through the legs 
of the Colossus at Rhodes, it really became 
necessary to make a stand. And here I 
must do justice to the good sense and 
intrepidity of one of our party, a youth, that 
had hitherto been one of his most deferential 
auditors, who, from his recent reading, made 
bold to assure the gentleman, that there 
must be some mistake, as " the Colossus in 
question had been destroyed long since ; " 
to whose opinion, delivered with all modesty, 
our hero was obliging enough to concede 
thus much, that "the figure was indeed a 
little damaged." This was' the only opposi- 
tion he met with, and it did not at all seem 
to stagger him, for he proceeded with his 
fables, which the same youth appeared to 
swallow with still more complacency than 
ever, — confirmed, as it were, by the extreme 
candour of that concession. With these 
prodigies he wheedled us on till we came in 
sight of the Reculvers, which one of our own 
company (having been the voyage before) 
immediately recognising, and pointing out to 
us, was considered by us as no ordinary 
seaman. 

All this time sat upon the edge of the deck 
quite a different character. It was a lad, 
apparently very poor, very infirm, and very 
patient. His eye was ever on the sea, with 
a smile ; and, if he caught now and then 
some snatches of these wild legends, it was 
by accident, and they seemed not to concern 
him. The waves to him whispered more 
pleasant stories. He was as one, being with 
us, but not of us. He heard the bell of 
dinner ring without stirring ; and when 
some of us pulled out our private stores — 
our cold meat and our salads — he produced 
none, and seemed to want none. Only a 
solitary biscuit he had laid in ; provision for 
the one or two days and nights, to which 
these vessels then were oftentimes obliged 
to prolong their voyage. Upon a nearer 
acquaintance with him, which he seemed 
neither to court nor decline, we learned that 
he was going to Margate, with the hope of 
being admitted into the Infirmary there for 
sea-bathing. His disease was a scrofula, 
which appeared to have eaten all over him. 
He expressed great hopes of a cure ; and 
when we asked him, whether he had any 



430 



THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 



friends where he was going, he replied, "he 
had no friends." 

These pleasant, and some mournful pas- 
sages with the first sight of the sea, co- 
operating with youth, and a sense of holi- 
days, and out-of-door adventure, to me 
that had been pent up in populous cities for 
many months before, — have left upon my 
mind the fragrance as of summer days gone 
by, bequeathing nothing but their remem- 
brance for cold and wintry hours to chew 
upon. 

Will it be thought a digression (it may 
spare some unwelcome comparisons), if I 
endeavour to account for the dissatisfaction 
which I have heard so many persons confess 
to have felt (as I did myself feel in part on 
this occasion), at the sight of the sea for the 
first time ? I think the reason usually given 
— referring to the incapacity of actual ob- 
jects for satisfying our preconceptions of 
them — scarcely goes deep enough into the 
question. Let the same person see a lion, an 
elephant, a mountain for the first time in his 
life, and he shall perhaps feel himself a little 
mortified. The things do not fill up that 
space, which the idea of them seemed to take 
up in his mind. But they have still a cor- 
respondency to his first notion, and in time 
grow up to it, so as to produce a very similar 
impres'sion : enlarging themselves (if I may 
say so) upon familiarity. But the sea re- 
mains a disappointment. — Is it not, that in 
the latter we had expected to behold (absurdly, 
I grant, but, I am afraid, by the law of 
imagination, unavoidably) not a definite ob- 
ject, as those wild beasts, or that mountain 
compassable by the eye, but all the sea at 

Once, THE COMMENSURATE ANTAGONIST OF THE 

earth 1 I do not say we tell ourselves so 
much, but the craving of the mind is to be 
satisfied with nothing less. I will suppose 
the case of a young person of fifteen (as I 
then was) knowing nothing of the sea, but 
from description. He comes to it for the 
first time — all that he has been reading of it 
all his life, and that the most enthusiastic 
part of life, — all he has gathered from narra- 
tives of wandering seamen, — what he has 
gained from true voyages, and what he 
cherishes as credulously from romance and 
poetry, — crowding their images, and exacting 
strange tributes from expectation. — He 
thinks of the great deep, and of those who 



go down unto it ; of its thousand isles, and 
of the vast continents it washes ; of its re- 
ceiving the mighty Plate, or Orellana, into 
its bosom, without disturbance, or sense of 
augmentation ; of Biscay swells, and the 
mariner 

For many a day, and many a dreadful night, 
Incessant labouring round the stormy Cape ; 

of fatal rocks, and the " still-vexed Ber- 
moothes ; " of great whirlpools, and the 
water-spout ; of sunken ships, and sumless 
treasures swallowed up in the unrestoring 
depths ; of fishes and quaint monsters, to 
which all that is terrible on earth — 

Be but as buggs to frighten babes -withal, 
Compared with the creatures in the sea's entral, 

of naked savages, and Juan Fernandez ; of 
pearls, and shells ; of coral beds, and of en- 
chanted isles ; of mermaids' grots — 

I do not assert that in sober earnest he 
expects to be shown all these wonders at 
once, but he is under the tyranny of a mighty 
faculty, which haunts him with confused 
hints and shadows of all these ; and when 
the actual object opens first upon him, seen 
(in tame weather, too, most likely) from our 
unromantic coasts — a speck, a slip of sea- 
water, as it shows to him— -what can it prove 
but a very unsatisfying and even diminutive 
entertainment ? Or if he has come to it 
from the mouth of a river, was it much more 
than the river widening ? and, even out of 
sight of land, what had he but a flat watery 
horizon about him, nothing comparable to 
the vast o'er-curtaining sky, his familiar 
object, seen daily without dread or amaze- 
ment ? — Who, in similar circumstances, has 
not been tempted to exclaim with Charoba, 
in the poem of Gebir, 

Is this the mighty ocean ? is this all ? 

I love town, or country ; but this detest- 
able Cinque Port is neither, I hate these 
scrubbed shoots, thrusting out their starved 
foliage from between the horrid fissures of 
dusty innutritious rocks ; which the amateur 
calls " verdure to the edge of the sea." I 
require woods, and they show me stunted 
coppices. I cry out for the water-brooks, 
and pant for fresh streams, and inland 
murmurs. I cannot stand all day on the 
naked beach, watching the capricious hues 



THE OLD MAKGATE HOY. 



431 



of the sea, shifting like the colours of a dying 
mullet. I am tired of looking out at the 
windows of this island-prison. I would fain 
retire into the interior of my cage. While I 
gaze upon the sea, I want to be on it, over it, 
across it. It binds me in with chains, as of 
iron. My thoughts are abroad. I should 
not so feel in Staffordshire. There is no 
home for me here. There is no sense of 
home at Hastings. It is a place of fugitive 
resort, an heterogeneous assemblage of sea- 
mews and stock-brokers, Amphitrites of the 
town, and misses that coquet with the Ocean. 
If it were what it was in its primitive shape, 
and what it ought to have remained, a fair, 
honest fishing-town, and no more, it were 
something — with a few straggling fishermen's 
huts scattered about, artless as its cliffs, and 
with their materials filched from them, it 
were something. I could abide to dwell 
with Meshech ; to assort with fisher- swains, 
and smugglers. There are, or I dream there 
are, many of this latter occupation here. 
Their faces become the place. I like a 
smuggler. He is the only honest thief. He 
robs nothing but the revenue, — an abstrac- 
tion I never greatly cared about. I could go 
out with them in their mackerel boats, or 
about their less ostensible business, with 
some satisfaction. I can even tolerate those 
poor victims to monotony, who from day to 
day pace along the beach, in endless progress 
and recurrence, to watch their illicit country- 
men — townsfolk or brethren perchance — 
whistling to the sheathing and unsheathing 
of their cutlasses (their only solace), who, 
under the mild name of preventive service, 
keep up a legitimated civil warfare in the 
deplorable absence of a foreign one, to show 
their detestation of run hollands, and zeal 
for Old England. But it is the visitants from 
town, that come here to say that they have 
been here, with no more relish of the sea 
than a pond-perch or a dace might be sup- 
posed to have, that are my aversion. I feel 
like a foolish dace in these regions, and have 
as little toleration for myself here, as for 
them. What can they want here 1 if they 
had a true relish of the ocean, why have 
they brought all this land luggage with 
them 1 or why pitch their civilised tents in 
the desert ? What mean these scanty book- 
rooms — marine libraries as they entitle them 



— if the sea were, as they would have us 
believe, a book " to read strange matter in ? " 
what are their foolish concert-rooms, if they 
come, as they would fain be thought to do, 
to listen to the music of the waves ? All is 
false and hollow pretension. They come, 
because it is the fashion, and to spoil the 
nature of the place. They are, mostly, as I 
have said, stock-brokers ; but I have watched 
the better sort of them — now and then, an 
honest citizen (of the old stamp), in the 
simplicity of his heart, shall bring down his 
wife and daughters, to taste the sea breezes. 
I always know the date of their arrival. It 
is easy to see it in their countenance. A 
day or two they go wandering on the 
shingles, picking up cockle-shells, and think- 
ing them great things ; but, in a poor week, 
imagination slackens : they begin to discover 
that cockles produce no pearls, and then — 
O then ! — if I could interpret for the pretty 
creatures (I know they have not the courage 
to confess it themselves) how gladly would 
they exchange their sea-side rambles for a 
Sunday walk on the green-sward of their 
accustomed Twickenham meadows ! 

I would ask of one of these sea-charmed 
emigrants, who think they truly love the 
sea, with its wild usages, what would their 
feelings be, if some of the unsophisticated 
aborigines of this place, encouraged by their 
courteous questionings here, should venture, 
on the faith of such assured sympathy be- 
tween them, to return the visit, and come up 
to see — London. I must imagine them with 
their fishing-tackle on their back, as we 
carry our town necessaries. What a sensa- 
tion would it cause in Lothbury ? What 
vehement laughter would it not excite 
among 

The daughters of Cheapside, and wives of Lombard-street ! 

I am sure that no town-bred or inland- 
born subjects can feel their true and natural 
nourishment at these sea-places. Nature, 
where she does not mean us for mariners 
and vagabonds, bids us stay at home. The 
salt foam seems to nourish a spleen. I am 
not half so good-natured as by the milder 
waters of my natural river. I would ex- 
change these sea-gulls for swans, and scud 
a swallow for ever about the banks of 
Thamesis. 



432 



THE CONVALESCENT. 



THE CONVALESCENT. 



A pretty severe fit of indisposition which, 
under the name of a nervous fever, has made 
a prisoner of me for some weeks past, and is 
but slowly leaving me, has reduced me to an 
incapacity of reflecting upon any topic foreign 
to itself. Expect no healthy conclusions 
from me this month, reader ; I can offer you 
only sick men's dreams. 

And truly the whole state of sickness is 
such ; for what else is it but a magnificent 
dream for a man to lie a-bed, and draw day- 
light curtains about him ; and, shutting out 
the sun, to induce a total oblivion of all the 
works which are going on under it 1 To be- 
come insensible to all the operations of 
life, except the beatings of one feeble pulse ? 

If there be a regal solitude, it is a sick 
bed. How the patient lords it there ; what 
caprices he acts without control ! how king- 
like he sways his pillow — tumbling, and toss- 
ing, and shifting, and lowering, and thumping, 
and flatting, and moulding it, to the ever- 
varying requisitions of his throbbing temples. 

He changes sides oftener than a politician. 
Now he lies full length, then half-length, 
obliquely, transversely, head and feet quite 
across the bed ; and none accuses him of ter- 
giversation. Within the four curtains he is 
absolute. They are his Mare Clausum./ 

How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a 
man's self to himself ! he is his own exclusive 
object. Supreme selfishness is inculcated 
upon him as his only duty. 'Tis the Two 
Tables of the Law to him. He has nothing 
to think of but how to get well. What 
passes out of doors, or within them, so he 
hear not the jarring of them, affects him 
not. 

A little while ago he was greatly con- 
cerned in the event of a lawsuit, which was 
to be the making or the marring of his 
dearest friend. He was to be seen trudging 
about upon this man's errand to fifty quarters 
of the town at once, jogging this witness, re- 
freshing that solicitor. The cause was to 
come on yesterday. He is absolutely as in- 
different to the decision, as if it were a 



question to be tried at Pekin. Peradventure 
from some whispering, going on about the 
house, not intended for his hearing, he picks 
up enough to make him understand, that 
things went cross-grained in the court yester- 
day, and his friend is ruined. But the 
word "friend," and the word "ruin," dis- 
turb him no more than so much jargon. 
He is not to think of anything but how to 
get better. 

What a world of foreign cares are merged 
in that absorbing consideration ! 

He has put on the strong armour of sick- 
ness, he is wrapped in the callous hide of 
suffering ; he keeps his sympathy, like some 
curious vintage, under trusty lock and key, ' 
for his own use only. 

He lies pitying himself, honing and moan- 
ing to himself; he yearneth over himself; 
his bowels are even melted within him, to 
think what he suffers ; he is not ashamed to 
weep over himself. 

He is for ever plotting how to do some 
good to himself; studying little stratagems 
and artificial alleviations. 

He makes the most of himself; dividing 
himself, by an allowable fiction, into as many 
distinct individuals, as he hath sore and 
sorrowing members. Sometimes he medi- 
tates — as of a thing apart from him — upon his 
poor aching head, and that dull pain which, 
dozing or waking, lay in it all the past night 
like a log, or palpable substance of pain, not 
to be removed without opening the very 
skull, as it seemed, to take it thence. Or he 
pities his long, clammy, attenuated fingers. 
He compassionates himself all over ; and his 
bed is a very discipline of humanity, and 
tender heart. 

He is his own sympathiser ; and in- 
stinctively feels that none can so well per- 
form that office for him. He cares for few 
spectators to his tragedy. Only that punctual 
face of the old nurse pleases him, that an- 
nounces his broths and his cordials. He 
likes it because it is so unmoved, and be- 
cause he can pour forth his feverish ejacu- 



THE CONVALESCENT. 



433 



lations before it as unreservedly as to his 
bed-post. 

To the world's business he is dead. He 
understands not what the callings and occu- 
pations of mortals are ; only he has a glim- 
mering conceit of some such thing, when the 
doctor makes his daily call : and even in the 
lines on that busy face he reads no multiplicity 
of patients, but solely conceives of himself as 
the sick man. To what other uneasy couch 
the good man is hastening, when he slips out 
of his chamber, folding up his thin douceur 
so carefully, for fear of rustling — is no specu- 
lation which he can at present entertain. He 
thinks only of the regular return of the 
same phenomenon at the same -hour to- 
morrow. 

Household rumours touch him not. Some 
faint murmur, indicative of life going on 
within the house, soothes him, while he 
knows not distinctly what it is. He is not 
to know anything, not to think of anything. 
Servants gliding up or down the distant 
staircase, treading as upon velvet, gently 
keep his ear awake, so long as he troubles 
not himself further than with some feeble 
guess at their errands. Exacter knowledge 
would be a burthen to him : he can just 
endure the pressure of conjecture. He opens 
his eye faintly at the dull stroke of the 
muffled knocker, and closes it again without 
asking " Who was it 1 " He is flattered by 
a general notion that inquiries are making- 
after him, but he cares not to know the name 
of the inquirer. In the general stillness, and 
awful hush of the house, he lies in state, and 
feels his sovereignty. 

To be sick is to enjoy monarchal prero- 
gatives. Compare the silent tread, and quiet 
ministry, almost by the eye only, with which 
he is served — with the careless demeanour, 
the unceremonious goings in and out (slap- 
ping of doors, or leaving them open) of the 
very same attendants, when he is getting a 
little better — and you will confess, that from 
the bed of sickness (throne let me rather call 
it) to the elbow-chair of convalescence, is a 
fall from dignity, amounting to a deposition. 

How convalescence shrinks a man back to 
his pristine stature ! where is now the space, 
which he occupied so lately, in his own, in 
the family's eye 1 

The scene of his regalities, his sick room, 
which was his presence chamber, where he 



lay and acted his despotic fancies — how is it 
reduced to a common bed-room ! The trim- 
ness of the very bed has something petty 
and unmeaning about it. It is made every 
day. How unlike to that wavy, many-fur- 
rowed, oceanic surface, which it presented 
so short a time since, when to make it was a 
service not to be thought of at oftener than 
three or four day revolutions, when the pa- 
tient was with pain and grief to be lifted 
for a little while out of it, to submit to the 
encroachments of unwelcome neatness, and 
decencies which his shaken frame deprecated ; 
then to be lifted into it again, for another 
three or four days' respite, to flounder it out 
of shape again, while every fresh furrow was 
an historical record of some shifting pos- 
ture, some uneasy turning, some seeking 
for a little ease ; and the shrunken skin 
scarce told a truer story than the crumpled 
coverlid. 

Hushed are those mysterious sighs — those 
groans — so much more awful, while we 
knew not from what caverns of vast hidden 
suffering they proceeded. The Lernean 
pangs are quenched. The riddle of sickness 
is solved ; and Philoctetes is become an ordi- 
nary personage. 

Perhaps some relic of the sick man's dream 
of greatness survives in the still lingering 
visitations of the medical attendant. But 
how is he, too, changed with everything else ! 
Can this be he— this man of news — of chat — 
of anecdote — of everything but physic — can 
this be he, who so lately came between the 
patient and his cruel enemy, as on some 
solemn embassy from Nature, erecting her- 
self into a high mediating party ? — Pshaw ! 
'tis some old woman. 

Farewell with him all that made sickness 
pompous — the spell that hushed the house- 
hold — the desert-like stillness, felt through- 
out its inmost chambers — the mute attend- 
ance — the inquiry by looks — the still softer 
delicacies of self-attention — the sole and 
single eye of distemper alonely fixed upon 
itself — world-thoughts excluded — the man a 
world unto himself — his own theatre — 

What a speck is lie dwindled into ! 

In this flat swamp of convalescence, left by 
the ebb of sickness, yet far enough from the 
terra firma of established health, your note, 
dear Editor, reached me, requesting — a,n 



43-i 



SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS. 



article, In Articulo Mortis, thought I ; 
but it is something hard — and the quibble, 
wretched as it was, relieved me. The sum- 
mons, unseasonable as it appeared, seemed to 
link me on again to the petty businesses of 
life, which I had lost sight of ; a gentle 
call to activity, however trivial ; a wholesome 
meaning from that preposterous dream of 
self-absorption — the puffy state of sickness — 
in which I confess to have lain so long, insen- 
sible to the magazines and monarchies, of the 



world alike ; to its laws, and to its literature. 
The hypochondriac flatus is subsiding ; the 
acres, which in imagination I had spread 
over — for the sick man swells in the sole con- 
templation of his single sufferings, till he 
becomes a Tityus to himself — are wasting to 
a span ; and for the giant of self-importance, 
which I was so lately, you have me once 
again in my natural pretensions— the lean 
and meagre figure of your insignificant 
Essayist. 



SANITY OF TKUE GENIUS. 



So far from the position holding true, that 
great wit (or genius, in our modern way of 
speaking) has a necessary alliance with 
insanity, the greatest wits, on the contrary, 
will ever be found to be the sanest writers. 
It is impossible for the mind to conceive of a 
mad Shakspeare. The greatness of wit, by 
which the poetic talent is here chiefly to be 
understood, manifests itself in the admirable 
balance of all the faculties. Madness is the 
disproportionate straining or excess of any 
one of them. " So strong a wit," says Cow- 
ley, speaking of a poetical friend, 

" ■ did Nature to him frame, 

As all things but his judgment overcame ; 

His judgment like the heavenly moon did show, 

Tempering that mighty sea below." 

The ground of the mistake is, that men, find- 
ing in the raptures of the higher poetry a 
condition of exaltation, to which they have 
no parallel in their own experience, besides 
the spurious resemblance of it in dreams and 
fevers, impute a state of dreaminess and 
fever to the poet. But the true poet dreams 
being awake. He is not possessed by his 
subject, but has dominion over it. In the 
groves of Eden he walks familiar as in his 
native paths. He ascends the empyrean 
heaven, and is not intoxicated. He treads 
the burning marl without dismay ; he wins 
his flight without self-loss through realms of 
chaos " and old night." Or if, abandoning 
himself to that severer chaos of a " human 
mind untuned," he is content awhile to be 
mad with Lear, or to hate mankind (a sort of 
madness) with Timon, neither is that mad- 



ness, nor this misanthropy, so unchecked, but 
that, — never letting the reins of reason wholly 
go, while most he seems to do so, — he has 
his better genius still whispering at his ear, 
with the good servant Kent suggesting saner 
counsels, or with the honest steward Flavius 
recommending kindlier resolutions. "Where 
he seems most to recede from humanity, he 
will be found the truest to it. From beyond 
the scope of Nature if he summon possible 
existences, he subjugates them to the law of 
her consistency. He is beautifully loyal to 
that sovereign directress, even when he 
appears most to betray and desert her. His 
ideal tribes submit to policy ; his very 
monsters are tamed to his hand, even as that 
wild sea-brood, shepherded by Proteus. He 
tames, and he clothes them with attributes 
of flesh and blood, till they wonder at them- 
selves, like Indian Islanders forced to submit 
to European vesture. Caliban, the Witches, 
are as true to the laws of their own nature 
(ours with a difference), as Othello, Hamlet, 
and Macbeth. Herein the great and the 
little wits are differenced ; that if the latter 
wander ever so little from nature or actual 
existence, they lose themselves, and their 
readers. Their phantoms are lawless ; their 
visions night-mares. They do not create, 
which implies shaping and consistency. Their 
imaginations are not active — for to be active 
is to call something into act and form — but 
passive, as men in sick dreams. For the 
super-natural, or something super-added to 
what we know of nature, they give you the 
plainly non-natural*) And if this were all, 



CAPTAIN JACKSON. 



435 



and that these mental hallucinations were 
discoverable only in the treatment of subjects 
out of nature, or transcending it, the judg- 
ment might with some plea be pardoned if 
it ran riot, and a little wantonised : but 
even in the describing of real and every-day 
life, that which is before their eyes, one of 
these lesser wits shall more deviate from 
nature — show more of that inconsequence, 
which has a natural alliance with frenzy, — 
than a great genius in his " maddest fits," as 
Withers somewhere calls them, /We appeal 
to any one that is acquainted with the com- 
mon run of Lane's novels, — as they existed 
some twenty or thirty years back, — those 
scanty intellectual viands of the whole female 
reading public, till a happier genius arose, and 
expelled for ever the innutritious phantoms, — 
whether he has not found his brain more 
" betossed," his memory more puzzled, his 
sense of when and where more confounded, 
among the improbable events, the incoherent 
incidents, the inconsistent characters, or no- 
characters, of some third-rate love-intrigue — 
where the persons shall be a Lord Glenda- 
mour and a Miss Rivers, and the scene only 
alternate between Bath and Bond-street — a 
more bewildering dreaminess induced upon 
him, than he has felt wandering over all the 
fairy-grounds of Spenser. In the productions 
we refer to, nothing but names and places is 
familiar ; the persons are neither of this 
world nor of any other conceivable one ; an 
endless stream of activities without purpose, 
of purposes destitute of motive : — we meet 
phantoms in our known walks ; fantasques 
only christened^/ In the poet we have names 
which announce fiction ; and we have abso- 
lutely no place at all, for the things and 
persons of the Fairy Queen prate not of their 
" whereabout." But in their inner nature, 
and the law of their speech and actions, we 



are at home, and upon acquainted ground. 
The one turns life into a dream ; the other 
to the wildest dreams gives the sobrieties of 
every-day occurrences. By what subtle art 
of tracing the mental processes it is effected, 
we are not philosophers enough to explain, 
but in that wonderful episode of the cave of 
Mammon, in which the Money God appears 
first in the lowest form of a miser, is then a 
worker of metals, and becomes the god of all 
the treasures of the world ; and has a 
daughter, Ambition, before whom all the 
world kneels for favours — with the Hesperian 
fruit, the waters of Tantalus, with Pilate 
washing his hands vainly, but not imperti- 
nently, in the same stream- — that we should 
be at one moment in the cave of an old 
hoarder of treasures, at the next at the forge 
of the Cyclops, in a palace and yet in hell, all 
at once, with the shifting mutations of the 
most rambling dream, and our judgment yet 
all the time awake, and neither able nor 
willing to detect the fallacy, — is a proof of 
that hidden sanity which still guides the poet 
in the wildest seeming aberrations. 

It is not enough to say that the whole 
episode is a copy of the mind's conceptions in 
sleep ; it is, in some sort — but what a copy ! 
Let the most romantic of us, that has been 
entertained all night with the spectacle of 
some wild and magnificent vision, recombine 
it in the morning, and try it by his waking 
judgment. That which appeared so shifting, 
aud yet so coherent, while that faculty was 
passive, when it comes under cool examina- 
tion shall appear so reasonless and so un- 
linked, that we are ashamed to have been so 
deluded ; and to have taken, though but in 
sleep, a monster for a god. But the transi- 
tions in this episode are every whit as violent 
as in the most extravagant dream, and yet 
the waking judgment ratifies them. / 



CAPTAIN JACKSON. 



Among the deaths in our obituary for this 
month, I observe with concern " At his cot- 
tage on the Bath road, Captain Jackson." 
The name and attribution are common 
enough ; but a feeling like reproach per- 



suades me, that this could have been no other 
in fact than my dear old friend, who some 
five-and-twenty years ago rented a tenement, 
which he was pleased to dignify with the 
appellation here used, about a mile from 



f f 2 



43G 



CAPTAIN JACKSON. 



Westbourn Green. Alack, how good men, 
and the good turns they do us, slide out of 
memory, and are recalled but by the surprise 
of some such sad memento as that which now 
lies before us ! 

He whom I mean was a retired half-pay 
officer, with a wife and two grown-up daugh- 
ters, whom he maintained with the port and 
notions of gentlewomen upon that slender 
professional allowance. Comely girls they 
were too. 

And was I in danger of forgetting this 
man 1 — his cheerful suppers— the noble tone 
of hospitality, when first you set your foot in 
the cottage — the anxious ministerings about 
you, where little or nothing (God knows) 
was to be ministered. — Althea's horn in 
a poor platter — the power of self-enchant- 
ment, by which, in his magnificent wishes 
to entertain you, he multiplied his means 
to bounties. 

You saw with your bodily eyes indeed 
what seemed a bare scrag, cold savings from 
the foregone meal — remnant hardly suffi- 
cient to send a mendicant from the door 
contented. But in the copious will — the 
revelling imagination of your host — the 
" mind, the mind, Master Shallow," whole 
beeves were spread before you — hecatombs — 
no end appeared to the profusion. 

It was the widow's cruse — the loaves and 
fishes ; carving could not lessen, nor help- 
ing diminish it — the stamina were left — the 
elemental bone still flourished, divested of 
its accidents. 

" Let us live while we can," methinks I 
hear the open-handed creature exclaim ; 
" while we have, let us not want," " here is 
plenty left ; " " want for nothing " —with 
many more such hospitable sayings, the spurs 
of appetite, and old concomitants of smoking 
boards, and feast-oppressed chargers. Then 
sliding a slender ratio of Single Gloucester 
upon his wife's plate, or the daughters', he 
would convey the remanent rind into his own, 
with a merry quirk of " the nearer the 
bone," &c, and declaring that he universally 
preferred the outside. For we had our 
table distinctions, you are to know, and some 
of us in a manner sate above the salt. None 
but his guest or guests dreamed of tasting 
flesh luxuries at night, the fragments were 
vere hoapitibus sacra. But of one thing or 
another there was always enough, and 



leavings : only he would sometimes finish the 
remainder crust, to show that he wished no 
savings. 

Wine we had none ; nor, except on very 
rare occasions, spirits ; but the sensation of 
wine was there. Some thin kind of ale I 
remember — "British beverage," he would 
say ! " Push about, my boys ; " " Drink to 
your sweethearts, girls." At every meagre 
draught a toast must ensue, or a song. All 
the forms of good liquor were there, with 
none of the effects wanting. Shut your eyes, 
and you would swear a capacious bowl of 
punch was foaming in the centre, with beams 
of generous Port or Madeira radiating to it 
from each of the table corners. You got 
flustered, without knowing whence ; tipsy 
upon words ; and reeled under the potency 
of his unperforming Bacchanalian encourage- 
ments. 

We had our songs — " Why, Soldiers, why," 
— and the " British Grenadiers " — in which 
last we were all obliged to bear chorus. 
Both the daughters sang. Their proficiency 
was a nightly theme — the masters he had 
given them — the "no-expense" which he 
spared to accomplish them in a science " so 
necessary to young women." But then — 
they could not sing "without the instru- 
ment." 

Sacred, and, by me, never-to-be-violated, 
secrets of Poverty ! Should I disclose your 
honest aims at grandeur, your makeshift 
efforts of magnificence 1 Sleep, sleep, with 
all thy broken keys, if one of the bunch be 
extant ; thrummed by a thousand ancestral 
thumbs ; dear, cracked spinnet of dearer 
Louisa ! Without mention of mine, be dumb, 
thou thin accompanier of her thinner warble ! 
A veil be spread over the dear delighted face 
of the well-deluded father, who now haply 
listening to cherubic notes, scarce feels 
sincerer pleasure than when she awakened 
thy time-shaken chords responsive to the 
twitterings of that slender image of a voice. 

We were not without our literary talk 
either. It did not extend far, but as far as 
it went, it was good. It was bottomed well ; 
had good grounds to go upon. In the cottage 
was a room, which tradition authenticated to 
have been the same in which Glover, in his 
occasional retirements, had penned the greater 
part of his Leonidas. This circumstance was 
nightly quoted, though none of the present 



CAPTAIN JACKSON. 



437 



inmates, that I could discover, appeared ever 
to have met with the poem in question. But 
that was no matter. Glover had written 
there, and the anecdote was pressed into the 
account of the family importance. It diffused 
a learned air through the apartment, the little 
side casement of which (the poet's study 
window), opening upon a superb view as far 
as the pretty spire of Harrow, over domains 
and patrimonial acres, not a rood nor square 
yard whereof our host could call his own, yet 
gave occasion to an immoderate expansion of 
— vanity shall I call it ? — in his bosom, as he 
showed them in a glowing summer evening. 
It was all his, he took it all in, and communi- 
cated rich portions of it to his guests. It 
was a part of his largess, his hospitality ; it 
was going over his grounds ; he was lord for 
the time of showing them, and you the 
implicit lookers-up to his magnificence. 

He was a juggler, who threw mists before 
your eyes — you had no time to detect his 
fallacies. He would say, "Hand me the 
silver sugar tongs ; " and before you could 
discover it was a single spoon, and that plated, 
he would disturb and captivate your imagin- 
ation by a misnomer of " the urn " for a tea- 
kettle ; or by calling a homely bench a sofa. 
Rich men direct you to their furniture, poor 
ones divert you from it ; he neither did one 
nor the other, but by simply assuming that 
everything was handsome about him, you 
were positively at a demur what you did, or 
did not see, at the cottage. With nothing to 
live on, he seemed to live on everything. He 
had a stock of wealth in his mind ; not that 
which is properly termed Content, for in 
truth he was not to be contained at all, but 
overflowed all bounds by the force of a 
magnificent self-delusion. 

Enthusiasm is catching ; and even his 
wife, a sober native of North Britain, who 
generally saw things more as they were, was 
not proof against the continual collision of 
his credulity. Her daughters were rational 
and discreet young women ; in the main, 
perhaps, not insensible to their true circum- 
stances. I have seen them assume a thought- 
ful air at times. But such was the pre- 
ponderating opulence of his fancy, that I am 



persuaded, not for any half hour together 
did they ever look their own prospects fairly 
in the face. There was no resisting the 
vortex of his temperament. His riotous 
imagination conjured up handsome settle- 
ments before their eyes, which kept them up 
in the eye of the world too, and seem .at last 
to have realised themselves ; for they both 
have married since, I am told, more than 
respectably. 

It is long since, and my memory waxes 
dim on some subjects, or I should wish to 
convey some notion of the manner in which 
the pleasant creature described the circum- 
stances of his own wedding-day. I faintly 
remember something of a chaise-and-four, in 
which he made his entry into Glasgow on 
that morning to fetch the bride home, or carry 
her thither, I forget which. It so completely 
made out the stanza of the old ballad — 

When we came down through Glasgow town, 

We were a comely sight to see ; 
My love was clad in black velvet, 

And I myself in cramasie. 

I suppose it was the only occasion upon 
which his own actual splendour at all corre- 
sponded with the world's notions on that 
subject. In homely cart, or travelling caravan, 
by what ever humble vehicle they chanced 
to be transported in less prosperous days, 
the ride through Glasgow came back upon 
his fancy, not as a humiliating contrast, but 
as a fair occasion for reverting to that 
one day's state. It seemed an " equipage 
etern " from which no power of fate or fortune, 
once mounted, had power thereafter to dis- 
lodge him. 

There is some merit in putting a handsome 
face upon indigent circumstances. To bully 
and swagger away the sense of them before 
strangers, may not be always discommendable. 
Tibbs, and Bobadil, even when detected, have 
more of our admiration than contempt. But 
for a man to put the cheat upon himself ; to 
play the Bobadil at home ; and, steeped in 
poverty up to the lips, to fancy himself all 
the while chin-deep in riches, is a strain of 
constitutional philosophy, and a mastery over 
fortune, which was reserved for my old friend 
Captain Jackson. 



438 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 



THE SUPEKANNUATED MAN. 

— ♦— 

Sera tamen respexit 
Libertas. Virgil. 

A Clerk I was in London gay. — O'Reefe. 



If peradventure, Keader, it has been thy 
lot to waste the golden years of thy life — thy 
shining youth — in the irksome confinement 
of an office ; to have thy prison days pro- 
longed through middle age down to decrepi- 
tude and silver hairs, without hope of release 
or respite ; to have lived to forget that there 
are such things as holidays, or to remember 
them but as the prerogatives of childhood ; 
then, and then only, will you be able to 
appreciate my deliverance. 

It is now six-and-thirty years since I took 
my seat at the desk in Mincing-lane. Melan- 
choly was the transition at fourteen from the 
abundant playtime, and the frequently-inter- 
vening vacations of school days, to the eight, 
nine, and sometimes ten hours' a-day attend- 
ance at the counting-house. But time 
partially reconciles us to anything. I 
gradually became content — doggedly con- 
tented, as wild animals in cages. 

It is true I had my Sundays to myself ; 
but Sundays, admirable as the institution of 
them is for purposes of worship, are for that 
very reason the very worst adapted for days 
of unbending and recreation. In particular, 
there is a gloom for me attendant upon a 
city Sunday, a weight in the air. I miss the 
cheerful cries of London, the music, and the 
ballad-singers — the buzz and stirring murmur 
of the streets. Those eternal bells depress 
me. The closed shops repel me. Prints, 
pictures, all the glittering and endless succes- 
sion of knacks and gewgaws, and ostentatiously 
displayed wares of tradesmen, which make 
a week-day saunter through the less busy 
parts of the metropolis so delightful — are 
shut out. No book-stalls deliciously to idle 
over — No busy faces to recreate the idle man 
who contemplates them ever passing by — the 
very face of business a charm by contrast to 
his temporary relaxation from it. Nothing 
to be seen but unhappy countenances — or 
half-happy at best — of emancipated 'prentices 



and little tradesfolks, with here and there a 
servant-maid that has got leave to go out, 
who, slaving all the week, with the habit has 
lost almost the capacity of enjoying a free 
hour ; and livelily expressing the hollowness 
of a day's pleasuring. The very strollers in 
the fields on that day look anything but 
comfortable. 

But besides Sundays, I had a day at 
Easter, and a day at Christmas, with a full 
week in the summer to go and air myself in 
my native fields of Hertfordshire. This last 
was a great indulgence ; and the prospect of 
its recurrence, I believe, alone kept me up 
through the year, and made my durance 
tolerable. But when the week came round, 
did the glittering phantom of the distance 
keep touch with me ? or rather was it not a 
series of seven uneasy days, spent in restless 
pursuit of pleasure, and a wearisome anxiety 
to find out how to make the most of them ? 
Where was the quiet, where the promised 
rest ? Before I had a taste of it, it was 
vanished. I was at the desk again, counting 
upon the fifty-one tedious weeks that must 
intervene before such another snatch would 
come. Still the prospect of its coming threw 
something of an illumination upon the darker 
side of my captivity. Without it, as I have 
said, I could scarcely have sustained my 
thraldom. 

Independently of the rigours of attendance, 
I have ever been haunted with a sense 
(perhaps a mere caprice) of incapacity for 
business. This, during my latter years, had 
increased to such a degree, that it was visible 
in all the lines of my countenance. My 
health and my good spirits flagged. I had 
perpetually a dread of some crisis, to which 
I should be found unequal. Besides my 
daylight servitude, I served over again all 
night in my sleep, and would awake with 
terrors of imaginary false entries, errors in 
my accounts, and the like. I was fifty years 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 



of age, and no prospect of emancipation 
presented itself. I had grown to my desk, 
as it were ; and the wood had entered into 
my soul. 

My fellows in the office would sometimes 
rally me upon the trouble legible in my counte- 
nance ; but I did not know that it had raised 
the suspicions of any of my employers, when, 
on the fifth of last month, a day ever to be 

remembered by me, L , the junior partner 

in the firm, calling me on one side, directly 
taxed me with my bad looks, and frankly 
inquired the cause of them. So taxed, I 
honestly made confession of my infirmity, 
and added that I was afraid I should even- 
tually be obliged to resign his service. He 
spoke some words of course to hearten me, 
and there the matter rested. A whole week 
I remained labouring under the impression 
that I had acted imprudently in my dis- 
closure ; that I had foolishly given a handle 
against myself, and had been anticipating 
my own dismissal. A week passed in this 
manner, the most anxious one, I verily 
believe, in my whole life, when on the evening 
of the 12th of April, just as I was about 
quitting my desk to go home (it might be 
about eight o'clock) I received an awful 
summons to attend the presence of the 
whole assembled firm in the formidable 
back parlour. I thought now my time is 
surely come, I have done for myself, I am 
going to be told that they have no longer 

occasion for me. L , I could see, smiled 

at the terror I was in, which was a little 
relief to me, — when to my utter astonishment 

B , the eldest partner, began a formal 

harangue to me on the length of my services, 
my very meritorious conduct during the 
whole of the time (the deuce, thought I, how 
did he find out that ? I protest I never had 
the confidence to think as much). He went 
on to descant on the expediency of retiring 
at a certain time of life (how my heart 
panted !), and asking me a few questions as 
to the amount of my own property, of which 
I have a little, ended with a proposal, to 
which his three partners nodded a grave 
assent, that I should accept from the house, 
which I had served so well, a pension for 
life to the amount of two-thirds of my 
accustomed salary — a magnificent offer ! I 
do not know what I answered between 
surprise and gratitude, but it was understood 



that I accepted their proposal, and I was told 
that I was free from that hour to leave their 
service. I stammered out a bow, and at just 
ten minutes after eight I went home — for 
ever. This noble benefit — gratitude forbids 
me to conceal their names — I owe to the 
kindness of the most munificent firm in the 
world — the house of Boldero, Merryweather, 
Bosanquet, and Lacy. 

Usto perpetua f 

For the first day or two I felt stunned, 
overwhelmed. I could only apprehend my 
felicity ; I was too confused to taste it sin- 
cerely. I wandered about, thinking I was 
happy, and knowing that I was not. I was 
in the condition of a prisoner in the old 
Bastile, suddenly let loose after a forty years' 
confinement. I could scarce trust myself 
with myself. It was like passing out of 
Time into Eternity — for it is a sort of Eter- 
nity for a man to have his Time all to him- 
self. It seemed to me that I had more 
time on my hands than I could ever manage. 
From a poor man, poor in Time, I was 
suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue ; I 
could see no end of my possessions ; I wanted 
some steward, or judicious bailiff, to manage 
my estates in Time for me. And here let 
me caution persons grown old in active busi- 
ness, not lightly, nor without weighing their 
own resources, to forego their customary 
employment all at once, for there may be 
danger in it. I feel it by myself, but I know 
that my resources are sufficient ; and now 
that those first giddy raptures have subsided, 
I have a quiet home-feeling of the blessed- 
ness of my condition. I am in no hurry. 
Having all holidays, I am as though I had 
none. If Time hung heavy upon me, I could 
walk it away ; but I do not walk all day 
long, as I used to do in those old transient 
holidays, thirty miles a day, to make the 
most of them. If Time were troublesome, 
I could read it away ; but I do not read in 
that violent measure, with which, having no 
Time my own but candlelight Time, I used 
to weary out my head and eyesight in by- 
gone winters. I walk, read, or scribble (as 
now), just when the fit seizes me. I no 
longer hunt after pleasure ; I let it come to 
me. I am like the man 



that's born, and has his years come to him, 



In some green desert. 



440 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN". 



" Years ! " you will say ; " what is this 
superannuated simpleton calculating upon 1 
He has already told us he is past fifty." 

I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, 
but deduct out of them the hours which 
I have lived to other people, and not to 
myself, and you will find me still a young 
fellow. For that is the only true Time, which 
a man can properly call his own, that which 
he has all to himself; the rest, though in 
some sense he may be said to live it, is other 
people's Time, not his. The remnant of my 
poor days, long or short, is at least multiplied 
for me threefold. My ten next years, if I 
stretch so far, will be as long as any preced- 
ing thirty. 'Tis a fair rule-of-three sum. 

Among the strange- fantasies which beset 
me at the commencement of my freedom, 
and of which all traces are not yet gone, one 
was, that a vast tract of time had intervened 
since I quitted the Counting House. I could 
not conceive of it as an affair of yesterday. 
The partners, and the clerks with whom 
I had for so many years, and for so many 
hours in each day of the year, been closely 
associated — being suddenly removed from 
them — they seemed as dead to me. There 
is a fine passage, which may serve to illus- 
trate this fancy, in a Tragedy by Sir Robert 
Howard, speaking of a friend's death : — 

'Twas but just now he went away ; 



I have not since had time to shed a tear ; 
And yet the distance does the same appear 
As if he had been a thousand years from me. 
Time takes no measure in Eternity. 

To dissipate this awkward feeling, I have 
been fain to go among them once or twice 
since ; to visit my old desk-fellows — my co- 
brethren of the quill — that I had left below 
in the state militant. Not all the kindness 
with which they received me could quite 
restore to me that jxleasant familiarity, which 
I had heretofore enjoyed among them. We 
cracked some of our old jokes, but methought 
they went off but faintly. My old desk; 
the peg where I hung my hat, were appro- 
priated to another. I knew it must be, but 

I could not take it kindly. D 1 take me, 

if I did not feel some remorse — beast, if 
I had not — at quitting my old compeers, the 
faithful partners of my toils for six-and- 
thirty years, that smoothed for me with their 
jokes and conundrums the ruggedness of my 
professional road. Had it been so rugged 



then, after all ? or was I a coward simply 1 
"Well, it is too late to repent ; and I also 
know that these suggestions are a common 
fallacy of the mind on such occasions. But 
my heart smote me. I had violently broken 
the bands betwixt us. It was at least not 
courteous. I shall be some time before I get 
quite reconciled to the separation. Farewell, 
old cronies, yet not for long, for again and 
again I will come among ye, if I shall have 

your leave. Farewell, Ch , dry, sarcastic, 

and friendly ! Do , mild, slow to move, 

and gentlemanly ! PI , officious to do, 

and to volunteer, good services ! — and thou, 
thou dreary pile, fit mansion for a Gresham 
or a Whittington of old, stately house of 
Merchants ; with thy labyrinthine passages, 
and light-excluding, pent-up offices, where 
candles for one-half the year supplied the 
place of the sun's light ; unhealthy contri- 
butor to my weal, stern fosterer of my living, 
farewell ! .In thee remain, and not in the 
obscure collection of some wandering book- 
seller, my " works ! " There let them rest, 
as I do from my labours, piled on thy massy 
shelves, more MSS.in folio than ever Aquinas 
left, and full as useful ! My mantle I be- 
queath among ye. 

/A fortnight has passed since the date of 
my first communication. At that period 
I was approaching to tranquillity, but had 
not reached it. I boasted of a calm indeed, 
but it was comparative only. Something of 
the first flutter was left ; an unsettling sense 
of novelty ; the dazzle to weak eyes of un- 
accustomed light. I missed my old chains, 
forsooth, as if they had been some necessary 
part of my apparel. I was a poor Carthu- 
sian, from strict cellular discipline suddenly 
by some revolution returned upon the world. 
I am now as if I had never been other than 
my own master. It is natural to me to go 
where I please, to do what I please. I find 
myself at eleven o'clock in the day in Bond- 
street, and it seems to me that I have been 
sauntering there at that very hour for years 
past. I digress into Soho, to explore a book- 
stall. Methinks I have been thirty years 
a collector. There is nothing strange nor 
new in it. I find myself before a fine 
picture in the morning. Was it ever other- 
wise ? What is become of Fish-street Hill ? 
Where is Fenchurch-street ? Stones of old 
Mincing-lane, which I have worn with my 



THE GENTEEL STYLE IN" WRITING. 



441 



daily pilgrimage for six-and-thirty years, to 
the footsteps of what toil-worn clerk are 
your everlasting flints now vocal 1 I indent 
the gayer flags of Pall Mall. It is 'Change 
time, and I am strangely among the Elgin 
marbles. It was no hyperbole when I ven- 
tured to compare the change in my condition 
to a passing into another world. Time stands 
still in a manner to me. I have lost all dis- 
tinction of season. I do not know the day 
of the week or of the month. Each day 
used to be individually felt by me in its refer- 
ence to the foreign post days ; in its distance 
from, or propinquity to, the next Sunday. 
I had my Wednesday feelings, my Saturday 
nights' sensations. The genius of each day 
was upon me distinctly during the whole of 
it, affecting my appetite, spirits, &c. The 
phantom of the next day, with the dreary 
five to follow, sate as a load upon my 
poor Sabbath recreations. What charm has 
washed that Ethiop white 1 What is gone 
of Black Monday 1 All days are the same. 
Sunday itself — that unfortunate failure of a 
holiday, as it too often proved, what with my 
sense of its fugitiveness, and over-care to get 
the greatest quantity of pleasure out of it — 
is melted down into a week day. I can spare 
to go to church now, without grudging the 
huge cantle which it used to seem to cut 
out of the holiday. I have Time for every- 
thing. I can visit a sick friend. I can 
interrupt the man of much occupation when 
he is busiest. I can insult over him with an 



invitation to take a day's pleasure with me 
to Windsor this fine May-morning. It is 
Lucretian pleasure to behold the poor drudges, 
whom I have left behind in the world, cark- 
ing and caring ; like horses in a mill, drudg- 
ing on in the same eternal round — and what 
is it all for 1 A man can never have too 
much Time to himself, nor too little to do. 
Had I a little son, I would christen him 
Nothing-to-do ; he should do nothing. Man, 
I verily believe, is out of his element as long 
as he is operative. I am altogether for the 
life contemplative. Will no kindly earth- 
quake come and swallow up those accursed 
cotton mills ? Take me that lumber of a 
desk there, and bowl it down 

As low as to the fiends. 

I am no longer ****** c i er k to the 
Firm of, &c. I am Eetired Leisure. I am 
to be met with in trim gardens. I am already 
come to be known by my vacant face and 
careless gesture, perambulating at no fixed 
pace, nor with any settled purpose. I walk 
about ; not to and from. They tell me, a 
certain cum dignitate air, that has been 
buried so long with my other good parts, 
has begun to shoot forth in my person. I 
grow into gentility perceptibly. When I 
take up a newspaper, it is to read the state 
of the opera. Opus operatum est. I have 
done all that I came into this world to do. 
I have worked task-work, and have the rest 
of the day to myself. / 



THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WEITING. 



It is an ordinary criticism, that my Lord 
Shaftesbury, and Sir William Temple, are 
models of the genteel style in writing. We 
should prefer saying — of the lordly, and the 
gentlemanly. Nothing can be more unlike, 
than the inflated finical rhapsodies of Shaf- 
tesbury and the plain natural chit-chat of 
Temple. The man of rank is discernible in 
both writers ; but in the one it is only in- 
sinuated gracefully, in the other it stands 
out offensively. The peer seems to have 
written with his coronet on, and his Earl's 
mantle before him : the commoner in his 



elbow-chair and undress. — What can be 
more pleasant than the way in which the 
retired statesman peeps out in his essays, 
penned by the latter in his delightful retreat 
at Shene ? They scent of Nimeguen and the 
Hague. Scarce an authority is quoted under 
an ambassador. Don Francisco de Melo, a 
" Portugal Envoy in England," tells him it 
was frequent in his country for men, spent 
with age and other decays, so as they could 
not hope for above a year or two of life, to 
ship themselves away in a Brazil fleet, and 
after their arrival there to go on a great 



442 



THE GENTEEL STYLE IN" WRITING. 



length, sometimes of twenty or thirty years, 
or more, by the force of that vigour they 
recovered with that remove. "Whether 
such an effect (Temple beautifully acids) 
might grow from the air, or the fruits of 
that climate, or by approaching nearer the 
sun, which is the fountain of light and heat, 
when their natural heat was so far decayed : 
or whether the piecing out of an old man's 
life were worth the pains ; I cannot tell : 
perhaps the play is not worth the candle." 
Monsieur Pompone, "French Ambassador 
in his (Sir William's) time at the Hague," 
certifies him, that in his life he had never 
heard of any man in France that arrived at 
a hundred years of age ; a limitation of life 
which the old gentleman imputes to the ex- 
cellence of their climate, giving them such a 
liveliness of temper and humour, as disposes 
them to more pleasures of all kinds than in 
other countries ; and moralises upon the 
matter very sensibly. The "late Eobert 
Earl of Leicester" furnishes him with a 
story of a Countess of Desmond, married 
out of England in Edward the Fourth's 
time, and who lived far in King James's 
reign. The " same noble person " gives him 
an account, how such a year, in the same 
reign, there went about the country a set of 
morrice-dancers, composed of ten men who 
danced, a Maid Marian, and a tabor and 
pipe ; and how these twelve, one with ano- 
ther, made up twelve hundred years. "It 
was not so much (says Temple) that so many 
in one small county (Hertfordshire) should 
live to that age, as that they should be in 
vigour and in humour to travel and to dance." 
Monsieur Zulichem, one of his " colleagues 
at the Hague," informs him of a cure for 
the gout ; which is confirmed by another 
"Envoy," Monsieur Serinchamps, in that 
town, who had tried it. — Old Prince Mau- 
rice of Nassau recommends to him the use 
of hammocks in that complaint ; having 
been allured to sleep, while suffering under it 
himself, by the " constant motion or swing- 
ing of those airy beds." Count Egmont, and 
the Rhinegrave who " was killed last sum- 
mer before Maestricht," impart to him their 
experiences. 

But the rank of the writer is never more in- 
nocently disclosed, than where he takes for 
granted the compliments paid by foreigners 
to his fruit-trees. For the taste and perfec- 



tion of what we esteem the best, he can truly 
say, that the French, who have eaten his 
peaches and grapes at Shene in no very ill 
year, have generally concluded that the last 
are as good as any they have eaten in France 
on this side Fontainebleau ; and the first as 
good as any they have eat in Gascony. 
Italians have agreed his white figs to be as 
good as any of that sort in Italy, which is 
the earlier kind of white fig there ; for in 
the later kind and the blue, we cannot come 
near the warm climates, no more than in the 
Frontignac or Muscat grape. His orange- 
trees, too, are as large as any he saw when 
he was young in France, except those of 
Fontainebleau ; or what he has seen since in 
the Low Countries, except some very old 
ones of the Prince of Orange's. Of grapes 
he had the honour of bringing over four 
sorts into England, which he enumerates, 
and supposes that they are all by this time 
pretty common among some gardeners in 
his neighbourhood, as well as several per- 
sons of quality ; for he ever thought all 
things of this kind " the commoner they are 
made the better." The garden pedantry 
with which he asserts that 'tis to little pur- 
pose to plant any of the best fruits, as 
peaches or grapes, hardly, he doubts, beyond 
Northamptonshire at the furthest north- 
wards ; and praises the " Bishop of Mini- 
ster at Cosevelt," for attempting nothing 
beyond cherries in that cold climate ; is 
equally pleasant and in character. " I may 
perhaps " (he thus ends his sweet Garden 
Essay with a passage worthy of Cowley) " be 
allowed to know something of this trade, 
since I have so long allowed myself to be 
good for nothing else, which few men will 
do, or enjoy their gardens, without often 
looking abroad to see how other matters 
play, what motions in the state, and what 
invitations they may hope for into other 
scenes. For my own part, as the country 
life, and this part of it more particularly, 
were the inclination of my youth itself, so 
they are the pleasure of my age ; and I can 
truly say that, among many great employ- 
ments that have fallen to my share, I have 
never asked or sought for any of them, but 
have often endeavoured to escape from them, 
into the ease and freedom of a private scene, 
where a man may go his own way and his 
own pace, in the common paths and circles 



THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING. 



443 



of life. The measure of choosing well is 
whether a man likes what he has chosen, 
which, I thank God, has befallen me ; and 
though among the follies of my life, building 
and planting have not been the least, and 
have cost me more than I have the confi- 
dence to own ; yet they have been fully re- 
compensed by the sweetness and satisfaction 
of this retreat, where, since my resolution 1 
taken of never entering again into any piiblic 
employments, I have passed five years with- 
out ever once going to town, though I am 
almost in sight of it, and have a house there 
always ready to receive me. Nor has this 
been any sort of affectation, as some have 
thought it, but a mere want of desire or 
humour to make so small a remove ; for 
when I am in this corner, I can truly say 
with Horace, Me quoties reficit, &c. 

" Me, -when the cold Digentian stream revives, 
What does my friend believe I think or ask ? 
Let me yet less possess, so I may live, 
Whate'er of life remains, unto myself. 
May I have books enough ; and one year's store, 
Not to depend upon each doubtful hour : 
This is enough of mighty Jove to pray, 
Who, as he pleases, gives and takes away." 

The writings of Temple are, in general, 
after this easy copy. On one occasion, 
indeed, his wit, which was mostly subordi- 
nate to nature and tenderness, has seduced 
him into a string of felicitous antitheses ; 
which, it is obvious to remark, have been 
a model to Addison and succeeding essay- 
ists. " Who would not be covetous, and 
with reason," he says, " if health could be 
purchased with gold ? who not ambitious, if 
it were at the command of power, or restored 
by honour ? but, alas ! a white staff will not 
help gouty feet to walk better than a common 
cane ; nor a blue riband bind up a wound 
so well as a fillet. The glitter of gold, or of 
diamonds, will but hurt sore eyes instead of 
curing them ; and an aching head will be no 
more eased by wearing a crown than a 
common nightcap." In a far better style, 
and more accordant with his own humour of 
plainness, are the concluding sentences of 
his " Discourse upon Poetry." Temple took 
a part in the controversy about the ancient 
and the modern learning ; and, with that 
partiality so natural and so graceful in an 
old man, whose state engagements had left 



him little leisure to look into modem pro- 
ductions, while his retirement gave him 
occasion to look back upon the classic studies 
of his youth — decided in favour of the latter. 
" Certain it is," he says, " that, whether the 
fierceness of the Gothic humours, or noise of 
their perpetual wars, frighted it away, or 
that the unequal mixture of the modern 
languages would not bear it — the great 
heights and excellency both of poetry and 
music fell with the Eoman learning and 
empire, and have never since recovered 
the admiration and applauses that before 
attended them. Yet, such as they are 
amongst us, they must be confessed to be the 
softest and the sweetest, the most general and 
most innocent amusements of common time 
and life. They still find room in the courts 
of princes, and the cottages of shepherds. 
They serve to revive and animate the dead 
calm of poor and idle lives, and to allay or 
divert the violent passions and perturbations 
of the greatest and the busiest men. And 
both these effects are of equal use to human 
life ; for the mind of man is like the sea, 
which is neither agreeable to the beholder 
nor the voyager, in a calm or in a storm, but 
is so to both when a little agitated by gentle 
gales ; and so the mind, when moved by soft 
and easy passions or affections. I know very 
well that many who pretend to be wise by 
the forms of being grave, are apt to despise 
both poetry and music, as toys and trifles too 
light for the use or entertainment of serious 
men. But whoever find themselves wholly 
insensible to their charms, would, I think, 
do well to keep their own counsel, for fear 
of reproaching their own temper, and bring- 
ing the goodness of their natures, if not of 
their understandings, into question. While 
this world lasts, I doubt not but the pleasure 
and request of these two entertainments will 
do so too ; and happy those that content 
themselves with these, or any other so easy 
and so innocent, and do not trouble the 
world or other men, because they cannot 
be quiet themselves, though nobody hurts 
them." " When all is done (he concludes), 
human life is at the greatest and the best 
but like a fro ward child, that must be played 
with, and humoured a little, to keep it quiet, 
till it falls asleep, and then the care is over." 



444 



BARBARA S- 



BAEBAEA S- 

— ♦ — 



On the noon of the 14th of November, 
1743 or 4, 1 forget which it was, just as the 

clock had struck one, Barbara S , with 

her accustomed punctuality, ascended the 
long rambling staircase, with awkward inter- 
posed landing-places, which led to the office, 
or rather a sort of box with a desk in it, 
whereat sat the then Treasurer of (what few 
of our readers may remember) the Old Bath 
Theatre. All over the island it was the 
custom, and remains so I believe to this day, 
for the players to receive their weekly stipend 
on the Saturday. It was not much that 
Barbara had to claim. 

This little maid had just entered her 
eleventh year ; but her important station at 
the theatre, as it seemed to her, with the 
benefits which she felt to accrue from her 
pious application of her small earnings, had 
given an air of womanhood to her steps and 
to her behaviour. You would have taken 
her to have been at least five years older. 

Till latterly she had merely been employed 
in choruses, or where children were wanted 
to fill up the scene. But the manager, 
observing a diligence and adroitness in her 
above her age, had for some few months past 
intrusted to her the performance of whole 
parts. You may guess the self-consequence 
of the promoted Barbara. She had already 
drawn tears in young Arthur ; had rallied 
Eichard with infantine petulance in the 
Duke of York ; and in her turn had rebuked 
that petulance when she was Prince of 
Wales. She would have done the elder child 
in Morton's pathetic afterpiece to the life ; 
but as yet the " Children in the Wood " was 
not. 

Long after this little girl was grown an 
aged woman, I have seen some of these 
small parts, each making two or three pages 
at most, copied out in the rudest hand of the 
then prompter, who doubtless transcribed 
a little more carefully and fairly for the 
grown-up tragedy ladies of the establish- 
ment. But such as they were, blotted and 
scrawled, as for a child's use, she kept them 



all ; and in the zenith of her after reputation 
it was a delightful sight to behold them 
bound up in costliest morocco, each single — 
each small part making a book — with fine 
clasps, gilt- splashed, &c. She had conscien- 
tiously kept them as they had been delivered 
to her ; not a blot had been effaced or 
tampered with. They were precious to her 
for their affecting remembrancings. They 
were her principia, her rudiments ; the 
elementary atoms ; the little steps by which 
she pressed forward to perfection. " What," 
she would say, "could India-rubber, or a 
pumice-stone, have done for these darlings ?" 

I am in no hurry to begin my story — 
indeed I have little or none to tell — so I will 
just mention an observation of hers con- 
nected with that interesting time. 

Not long before she died I had been dis- 
coursing with her on the quantity of real 
present emotion which a great tragic per- 
former experiences during acting. I ventured 
to think, that though in the first instance 
such players must have possessed the feel- 
ings which they so powerfully called up in 
others, yet by frequent repetition those feel- 
ings must become deadened in great measure, 
and the performer trust to the memory of 
past emotion, rather than express a present 
one. She indignantly repelled the notion, 
that with a truly great tragedian the opera- 
tion, by which such effects were produced 
upon an audience, could ever degrade itself 
into what was purely mechanical. With 
much delicacy, avoiding to instance in her 
se£/-experience, she told me, that so long ago 
as when she used to play the part of the 
Little Son to Mrs. Porter's Isabella, ( I think 
it was,) when that impressive actress has 
been bending over her in some heart-rending 
colloquy, she has felt real hot tears come 
trickling from her, which (to use her power- 
ful expression) have perfectly scalded her 
back. 

I am not quite so sure that it was 
Mrs. Porter ; but it was some great actress 
of that day. The name is indifferent ; but 



BARBARA S- 



445 



the fact of the scalding tears I most dis- 
tinctly remember. 

I was always fond of the society of players, 
and am not sure that an impediment in my 
speech (which certainly kept me out of the 
pulpit) even more than certain personal dis- 
qualifications, which are often got over in 
that profession, did not prevent me at one 
time of life from adopting it. I have had 
the honour (I must ever call it) once to 
have been admitted to the tea-table of 
Miss Kelly. I have played at serious whist 
with Mr. Liston. I have chattered with 
ever good-humoured Mrs. Charles Kemble. 
I have conversed as friend to friend with 
her accomplished husband. I have been 
indulged with a classical conference with 
Macready ; and with a sight of the Player- 
picture gallery, at Mr. Mathews's, when the 
kind owner, to remunerate me for my love 
of the old actors (whom he loves so much), 
went over it with me, supplying to his capital 
collection, what alone the artist could not 
give them — voice ; and their living motion. 
Old tones, half faded, of Dodd, and Parsons, 
and Baddeley, have lived again for me at 
his bidding. Only Edwin he could not restore 

to me. I have supped with ; but I am 

growing a coxcomb. 

As I was about to say — at the desk of the 
then treasurer of the old Bath theatres — 
not Diamond's — presented herself the little 
Barbara S . 

The parents of Barbara had been in repu- 
table circumstances. The father had prac- 
tised, I believe, as an apothecary in the 
town. But his practice, from causes which 
I feel my own infirmity too sensibly that 
way to arraign — or perhaps from that pure 
infelicity which accompanies some people in 
their walk through life, and which it is 
impossible to lay at the door of imprudence 
— was now reduced to nothing. They were 
in fact in the very teeth of starvation, when 
the manager, who knew and respected them 
in better days, took the little Barbara into 
his company. 

At the period I commenced with, her 
slender earnings were the sole support of 
the family, including two younger sisters. 
I must throw a veil over some mortifying 
circumstances. Enough to say, that her 
Saturday's pittance was the only chance of a 
Sunday's (generally their only) meal of meat. 



One thing I will only mention, that in 
some child's part, where in her theatrical 
character she was to sup off a roast fowl 
(O joy to Barbara !) some comic actor, who 
was for the night caterer for this dainty — in 
the misguided humour of his part, threw 
over the dish such a quantity of salt (0 grief 
and pain of heart to Barbara !) that when 
she crammed a portion of it into her mouth, 
she was obliged sputteringly to reject it ; 
and what with shame of her ill-acted part, 
and pain of real appetite at missing such 
a dainty, her little heart sobbed almost to 
breaking, till a flood of tears, which the well- 
fed spectators were totally unable to com- 
prehend, mercifully relieved her. 

This was the little starved, meritorious 
maid, who stood before old Bavenscroft, the 
treasurer, for her Saturday's payment. 

Bavenscroft was a man, I have heard many 
old theatrical people besides herself say, of 
all men least calculated for a treasurer. He 
had no head for accounts, paid away at 
random, kept scarce any books, and summing 
up at the week's end, if he found himself 
a pound or so deficient, blest himself that it 
was no worse. 

Now Barbara's weekly stipend was a bare 
half guinea. — By mistake he popped into 
her hand — a whole one. 

Barbara tripped away. 

She was entirely unconscious at first of 
the mistake : God knows, Bavenscroft would 
never have discovered it. 

But when she had got down to the first of 
those uncouth landing-places, she became 
sensible of an unusual weight of metal press- 
ing her little hand. 

Now mark the dilemma. 

She was by nature a good child. From 
her parents and those about her she had 
imbibed no contrary influence. But then 
they had taught her nothing. Poor men's 
smoky cabins are not always porticoes of 
moral philosophy. This little maid had no 
instinct to evil, but then she might be said 
to have no fixed principle. She had heard 
honesty commended, but never dreamed of 
its application to herself. She thought of it 
as something which concerned grown-up 
people, men and women. She had never 
known temptation, or thought of preparing 
resistance against it. 

Her first impulse was to go back to the 



446 



THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY. 



old treasurer, and explain to him his blunder. 
He was already so confused with age, besides 
a natural want of punctuality, that she 
would have had some difficulty in making 
him understand it. She saw that in an 
instant. And then it was such a bit of 
money ! and then the image of a larger 
allowance of butcher's-meat on their table 
next day came across her, till her little eyes 
glistened, and her mouth moistened. But 
then Mr. Eavenscroft had always been so 
good-natured, had stood her friend behind 
the scenes, and even recommended her pro- 
motion to some of her little parts. But 
again the old man was reputed to be worth 
a world of money. He was supposed to have 
fifty pounds a-year clear of the theatre. And 
then came staring upon her the figures of 
her little stoekingless and shoeless sisters. 
And when she looked at her own neat white 
cotton stockings, which her situation at the 
theatre had made it indispensable for her 
mother to provide for her, with hard 
straining and pinching from the family 
stock, and thought how glad she should be 
to cover their poor feet with the same — and 
how then they could accompany her to 
rehearsals, which they had hitherto been 
precluded from doing, by reason of their 
unfashionable attire, — in these thoughts she 
reached the second landing-place — the second, 
I mean, from the top — for there was still 
another left to traverse. 

Now virtue support Barbara ! 

And that never-failing friend did step in 
— for at that moment a strength not her 
own, T have heard her say, was revealed to 
her — a reason above reasoning — and without 



her own agency, as it seemed (for she never 
felt her feet to move), she found herself 
transported back to the individual desk she 
had just quitted, and her hand in the old 
hand of Ravenscroft, who in silence took 
back the refunded treasure, and who had 
been sitting (good man) insensible to the 
lapse of minutes, which to her were anxious 
ages, and from that moment a deep peace 
fell upon her heart, and she knew the quality 
of honesty. 

A year or two's unrepining application to 
her profession brightened up the feet, and the 
prospects, of her little sisters, set the whole 
family upon their legs again, and released 
her from the difficulty of discussing moral 
dogmas upon a landing-place. 

I have heard her say that it was a surprise, 
not much short of mortification to her, to 
see the coolness with which the old man 
pocketed the difference, which had caused 
her such mortal throes. 

This anecdote of herself I had in the year 
1800, from the mouth of the late Mrs. 
Crawford,* then sixty-seven years of age 
(she died soon after) ; and to her struggles 
upon this childish occasion I have sometimes 
ventured to think her indebted for that 
power of rending the heart in the repre- 
sentation of conflicting emotions, for which 
in after years she was considered as little 
inferior (if at all so in the part of Lady 
Bandolph) even to Mrs. Siddons. 

* The maiden name of this lady was Street, which 
she changed by successive marriages, for those of Dancer, 
Barry, and Crawford. She was Mrs. Crawford, a third 
time a widow, when I knew her. 



THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY. 



IN A LETTER TO R- 



Though in some points of doctrine, and 
perhaps of discipline, I am diffident of 
lending a perfect assent to that church 
which you have so worthily historified, yet 
may the ill time never come to me, when 
with a chilled heart or a portion of irreverent 
sentiment, I shall enter her beautiful and 
time-hallowed Edifices. Judge, then, of my 



, Esa. 

mortification when, after attending the 
choral anthems of last Wednesday at West- 
minster, and being desirous of renewing my 
acquaintance, after lapsed years, with the 
tombs and antiquities there, I found myself 
excluded; turned out, like a dog, or some 
profane person, into the common street, with 
feelings not very congenial to the place, or 



THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY. 



447 



to the solemn service which I had been 
listening to. It was a jar after that music. 

You had your education at Westminster ; 
and doubtless among those dim aisles and 
cloisters, you must have gathered much of 
that devotional feeling in those young years, 
on which your purest mind feeds still — and 
may it feed ! The antiquarian spirit, strong 
in you, and gracefully blending ever with 
the religious, may have been sown in you 
among those wrecks of splendid mortality. 
You owe it to the place of your education ; 
you owe it to your learned fondness for the 
architecture of your ancestors ; you owe it 
to the venerableness of your ecclesiastical 
establishment, which is daily lessened and 
called in question through these practices — 
to speak aloud your sense of them ; never to 
desist raising your voice against them, till 
they be totally done away with and abolished ; 
till the doors of Westminster Abbey be no 
longer closed against the decent, though 
low-in-purse, enthusiast, or blameless devotee, 
who must commit an injury against his 
family economy, if he would be indulged 
with a bare admission within its walls. You 
owe it to the decencies, which you wish to 
see maintained, in its impressive services, 
that our Cathedral be no longer an object of 
inspection to the poor at those times only, in 
which they must rob from their attendance 
on the worship every minute which they can 
bestow upon the fabric. In vain the public 
prints have taken up this subject, — in vain 
such poor, nameless writers as myself express 
their indignation. A word from you, sir, — a 
hint in your Journal — would be sufficient to 
fling open the doors of the Beautiful Temple 
again, as we can remember them when we 
were boys. At that time of life, what would 
the imaginative faculty (such as it is) in 
both of us, have suffered, if the entrance to 
so much reflection had been obstructed by 
the demand of so much silver ! — If we had 
scraped it up to gain an occasional admission 
(as we certainly should have done) would 
the sight of those old tombs have been as 
impressive to us (while we have been 
weighing anxiously prudence against senti- 
ment) as when the gates stood open as those 
of the adjacent Park ; when we could walk 
in at any time, as the mood brought us, for a 
shorter or longer time, as that lasted ? Is 
the being shown over a place the same as 



silently for ourselves detecting the genius of 
it 1 In no part of our beloved Abbey now 
can a person find entrance (out of service 
time) under the sum of two shillings. The 
rich and the great will smile at the anti- 
climax, presumed to lie in these two short 
words. But you can tell them, sir, how 
much quiet worth, how much capacity for 
enlarged feeling, how much taste and genius, 
may coexist, especially in youth, with a 
purse incompetent to this demand. A 
respected friend of ours, during his late visit 
to the metropolis, presented himself for 
admission to St. Paul's. At the same time a 
decently clothed man, with as decent a wife 
and child, were bargaining for the same 
indulgence. The price was only two-pence 
each person. The poor but decent man 
hesitated, desirous to go in ; but there were 
three of them, and he turned away reluc- 
tantly. Perhaps he wished to have seen the 
tomb of Nelson. Perhaps the Interior of 
the Cathedral was his object. But in the 
state of his finances, even sixpence might 
reasonably seem too much. Tell the Aris- 
tocracy of the country (no man can do it 
more impressively) ; instruct them of what 
value these insignificant pieces of money, 
these minims to their sight, may be to their 
humbler brethren. Shame these Sellers out 
of the Temple. Stifle not the suggestions of 
your better nature with the pretext, that an 
indiscriminate admission would expose the 
Tombs to violation. Eemember your boy- 
days. Did you ever see, or hear, of a mob 
in the Abbey, while it was free to all ? Do 
the rabble come there, or trouble their heads 
about such speculations ? It is all that you 
can do to drive them into your churches ; 
they do not voluntarily offer themselves. 
They have, alas ! no passion for antiquities ; 
for tomb of king or prelate, sage or poet. 
If they had, they would be no longer the 
rabble. 

For forty years that I have known the 
Fabric, the only well-attested charge of 
violation adduced, has been — a ridiculous 
dismemberment committed upon the e&igy 
of that amiable spy, Major Andre. And is 
it for this — the wanton mischief of some 
school-boy, fired perhaps with raw notions 
of Transatlantic Freedom — or the remote 
possibility of such a mischief occurring again, 
so easily to be prevented by stationing a 



448 



AMICUS R EDI VITUS. 



constable within the walls, if the vergers are 
incompetent to the duty — is it upon such 
wretched pretences that the people of 
England are made to pay a new Peter's 
Pence, so long abrogated ; or must content 



themselves with contemplating the ragged 
Exterior of their Cathedral ? The mischief 
was done about the time that you were a 
scholar there. Do you know anything about 
the unfortunate relic ? — 



AMICUS BEDIVIVUS. 



Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep 
Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas ? 



I do not know when I have experienced a 
stranger sensation, than on seeing my old 
friend, G. D., who had been paying me a 
morning visit, a few Sundays back, at my 
cottage at Islington, upon taking leave, 
instead of turning down the right-hand path 
by which he had entered — with staff in 
hand, and at noonday, deliberately march 
right forwards into the midst of the stream 
that runs by us, and totally disappear. 

A spectacle like this at dusk would have 
been appalling enough ; but in the broad, 
open daylight, to witness such an unreserved 
motion towards self-destruction in a valued 
friend, took from me all power of speculation. 

How I found my feet I know not. Con- 
sciousness was quite gone. Some spirit, not 
my own, whirled me to the spot. I remember 
nothing but the silvery apparition of a good 
white head emerging ; nigh which a staff 
(the hand unseen that wielded it) pointed 
upwards, as feeling for the skies. In a 
moment (if time was in that time) he was 
on my shoulders ; and I — freighted with a 
load more precious than his who bore 
Anchises. 

And here I cannot but do justice to the 
officious zeal of sundry passers by, who, 
albeit arriving a little too late to participate 
in the honours of the rescue, in philanthropic 
shoals came thronging to communicate their 
advice as to the recovery ; prescribing 
variously the application, or non-application, 
of salt, &c, to the person of the patient. 
Life, meantime, was ebbing fast away, 
amidst the stifle of conflicting judgments, 
when one, more sagacious than the rest, by 
a bright thought, proposed sending for the 
Doctor. Trite as the counsel was, and 
impossible, as one should think, to be missed 



on, — shall I confess 1 — in this emergency it 
was to me as if an Angel had spoken. 
Great previous exertions — and mine had not 
been inconsiderable — are commonly followed 
by a debility of purpose. This was a moment 
of irresolution. 

Monoculus — for so, in default of catching 
his true name, I choose to designate the 
medical gentleman who now appeared — is a 
grave, middle-aged person, who, without 
having studied at the college, or truckled to 
the pedantry of a diploma, hath employed a 
great portion of his valuable time in experi- 
mental processes upon the bodies of unfor- 
tunate fellow-creatures, in whom the vital 
spark, to mere vulgar thinking, would seem 
extinct and lost for ever. He omitteth no 
occasion of obtruding his services, from a 
case of common surfeit suffocation to the 
ignobler obstructions, sometimes induced by 
a too- wilful application of the plant cannabis 
outwardly. But though he declineth not 
altogether these drier extinctions, his occu- 
pation tendeth, for the most part, to water- 
practice ; for the convenience of which, he 
hath judiciously fixed his quarters near the 
grand repository of the stream mentioned, 
where day and night, from his little watch- 
tower, at the Middleton's Head, he listeneth 
to detect the wrecks of drowned mortality — 
partly, as he saith, to be upon the spot — and 
partly, because the liquids which he useth to 
prescribe to himself and his patients, on 
these distressing occasions, are ordinarily 
more conveniently to be found at these com- 
mon hostelries than in the shops and phials 
of the apothecaries. His ear hath arrived 
to such finesse by practice, that it is reported 
he can distinguish a plunge, at half a furlong 
distance ; and can tell if it be casual or 



AMICUS REDIVIVUS. 



449 



deliberate. He weareth a medal, suspended 
over a suit, originally of a sad brown, but 
which, by time and frequency of nightly 
divings, has been dinged into a true profes- 
sional sable. He passeth by the name of Doc- 
tor, and is remarkable for wanting his left eye. 
His remedy — after a sufficient application of 
warm blankets, friction, &c, is a simple 
tumbler or more, of the purest Cognac, 
with water, made as hot as the convalescent 
can bear it. "Where he findeth, as in the 
case of my friend, a squeamish subject, he 
condescendeth to be the taster ; and showeth, 
by his own example, the innocuous nature of 
the prescription. Nothing can be more kind 
or encouraging than this procedure. It 
addeth confidence to the patient, to see his 
medical adviser go hand in hand with him- 
self in the remedy. When the doctor 
swalloweth his own draught, what peevish 
invalid can refuse to pledge him in the 
potion ? In fine, Monoculus is a humane, 
sensible man, who, for a slender pittance, 
scarce enough to sustain life, is content to 
wear it out in the endeavour to save the lives 
of others — his pretensions so moderate that 
with difficulty I could press a crown upon 
him, for the price of restoring the existence 
of such an invaluable creature to society 
as G. D. 

It was pleasant to observe the effect of the 
subsiding alarm upon the nerves of the dear 
absentee. It seemed to have given a shake 
to memory, calling up notice after notice, of 
all the providential deliverances he had ex- 
perienced in the course of his long and inno- 
cent life. Sitting up in my couch — my couch 
which, naked and void of furniture hitherto, 
for the salutary repose which it administered, 
shall be honoured with costly valance, at 
some price, and henceforth be a state-bed at 
Colebrook, — he discoursed of marvellous 
escapes — by carelessness of nurses — by pails 
of gelid, and kettles of the boiling element, 
in infancy — by orchard pranks, and snapping 
twigs, in schoolboy frolics — by descent of 
tiles at Trumpington, and of heavier tomes 
at Pembroke — by studious watchings, in- 
ducing frightful vigilance — by want, and the 
fear of want, and all the sore throbbings of 
the learned head. — Anon, he would burst out 
into little fragments of chanting — of songs 
long ago — ends of deliverance hymns, not 
remembered before since childhood, but 



coming up now, when his heart was made 
tender as a child's — for the tremor cordis, in 
the retrospect of a recent deliverance, as in 
a case of impending danger, acting upon an 
innocent heart, will produce a self-tender- 
ness, which we should do ill to christen 
cowardice ; and Shakspeare, in the latter 
crisis, has made his good Sir Hugh to remem- 
ber the sitting by Babylon, and to mutter of 
shallow rivers. 

Waters of Sir Hugh Middleton — what a 
spark you were like to have extinguished for 
ever ! Your salubrious streams to this City, 
for now near two centuries, would hardly 
have atoned for what you were in a moment 
washing away. Mockery of a river — liquid 
artifice — wretched conduit ! henceforth rank 
with canals and sluggish aqueducts. Was it 
for this that, smit in boyhood with the explo- 
rations of that Abyssinian traveller, I paced 
the vales of Amwell to explore your tribu- 
tary springs, to trace your salutary waters 
sparkling through green Hertfordshire, and 
cultured Enfield parks 1 — Ye have no swans 
— no Naiads — no river God — or did the 
benevolent hoary aspect of my friend tempt 
ye to suck him in, that ye also might have 
the tutelary genius of your waters 1 

Had he been drowned in Cam, there would 
have been some consonancy in it ; but what 
willows had ye to wave and rustle over his 
moist sepulture 1 — or, having no name, 
besides that unmeaning assumption of eternal 
novity, did ye think to get one by the noble 
prize, and henceforth to be termed the 
Stream Dyerian ? 

And could such spacious virtue find a grave 
Beneath the imposthumed bubble of a wave ? 

I protest, George, you shall not venture 
out again — no, not by daylight — without a 
sufficient pair of spectacles — in your musing 
moods especially. Your absence of mind we 
have borne, till your presence of body came 
to be called in question by it. You shall not 
go wandering into Euripus with Aristotle, if 
we can help it. Fie, man, to turn dipper at 
your years, after your many tracts in favour 
of sprinkling only ! 

I have nothing but water in my head 
o'nights since this frightful accident. Some- 
times I am with Clarence in his dream. At 
others, I behold Christian beginning to sink, 
and crying out to his good brother Hopeful 



450 



SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY. 



(that is, to me), " I sink in deep waters ; the 
billows go over my head, all the waves go 
over me. Selah." Then I have before me 
Palinurus, just letting go the steerage. I 
cry out too late to save. Next follow — a 
mournful procession — suicidal faces, saved 
against their will from drowning ; dolefully 
trailing a length of reluctant gratefulness, 
with ropy weeds pendent from locks of 
watch et hue — constrained Lazari — Pluto's 
half-subjects — stolen fees from the grave — 
bilking Charon of his fare. At their head 
Arion — or is it G. D. ? — in his singing gar- 
ments marcheth singly, with harp in hand, 
and votive garland, which Machaon (or 
Dr. Hawes) snatcheth straight, intending to 
suspend it to the stern God of Sea. Then 
follow dismal streams of Lethe, in which the 
half-drenched on earth are constrained to 
drown downright, by wharfs where Ophelia 
twice acts her muddy death. 

And, doubtless, there is some notice in that 
invisible world when one of us approacheth 
(as my friend did so lately) to their inexorable 
precincts. When a soul knocks once, twice, 
at Death's door, the sensation aroused within 



the palace must be considerable ; and the 
grim Feature, by modern science so often 
dispossessed of his prey, must have learned 
by this time to pity Tantalus. 

A pulse assuredly was felt along the line 
of the Elysian shades, when the near arrival 
of G. D. was announced by no equivocal 
indications. From their seats of Asphodel 
arose the gentler and the graver ghosts — 
poet, or historian — of Grecian or of Roman 
lore — to crown with unfading chaplets 
the half-finished love-labours of their un- 
wearied scholiast. Him Markland ex- 
pected — him Tyrwhitt hoped to encounter 
— him the sweet lyrist of Peter House, whom 
he had barely seen upon earth,* with newest 

airs prepared to greet ; and patron of 

the gentle Christ's boy, — who should have 
been his patron through life — the mild 
Askew, with longing aspirations leaned fore- 
most from his venerable ^Esculapian chair, 
to welcome into that happy company the 
matured virtues of the man, whose tender 
scions in the boy he himself upon earth had 
so prophetically fed and watered. 

* Graiitm tantum vidit. 



SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY. 



Sydney's Sonnets — I speak of the best of 
them — are among the very best of their sort. 
They fall below the plain moral dignity, the 
sanctity, and high yet modest spirit of self- 
approval, of Milton, in his compositions of a 
similar structure. They are in truth what 
Milton, censuring the Arcadia, says of that 
work (to which they are a sort of after-tune 
or application), " vain and amatorious " 
enough, yet the things in their kind (as he 
confesses to be true of the romance) may be 
" full of worth and wit." They savour of the 
Courtier, it must be allowed, and not of the 
Commonwealthsman. But Milton was a 
Courtier when he wrote the Masque at Lud- 
low Castle, and still more a Courtier when 
he composed the Arcades. When the 
national struggle was to begin, he becomingly 
cast these vanities behind him ; and if the 
order of time had thrown Sir Philip upon the 
crisis which preceded the revolution, there is 



no reason why he should not have acted the 
same part in that emergency, which has 
glorified the name of a later Sydney. He did 
not want for plainness or boldness of spirit. 
His letter on the French match may testify 
he could speak his mind freely to Princes. 
The times did not call him to the scaffold. 

The Sonnets which we oftenest call to 
mind of Milton were the compositions of his 
maturest years. Those of Sydney, which I 
am about to produce, were written in the 
very heyday of his blood. They are stuck 
full of amorous fancies — far-fetched conceits, 
befitting his occupation ; for True Love 
thinks no labour to send out Thoughts upon 
the vast and more than Indian voyages, to 
bring home rich pearls, outlandish wealth, 
gums, jewels, spicery, to sacrifice in self- 
depreciating similitudes, as shadows of true 
amiabilities in the Beloved. We must be 
Lovers — or at least the cooling touch of time, 



SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY. 



451 



the circum prcecordia frigus must not have 
so damped our faculties, as to take away our 
recollection that we were once so — before we 
can duly appreciate the glorious vanities, and 
graceful hyperboles, of the passion. The 
images which lie before our feet (though by 
some accounted the only natural) are least 
natural for the high Sydnean love to express 
its fancies by. They may serve for the loves 
of Tibullus, or the dear Author of the School- 
mistress ; for passions that creep and whine 
in Elegies and Pastoral Ballads. I am sure 
Milton never loved at this rate. I am afraid 
some of his addresses {ad Leonoram I mean) 
have rather erred on the farther side ; and 
that the poet came not much short of a 
religious indecorum, when he could thus 
apostrophise a singing-girl : — 

Angelus unicuique suus (sic credite gentes) 

Obtigit sethereis ales ab ordinibus. 
Quid mirum, Leonora, tibi si gloria major, 

Nam tua prsesentem vox sonat ipsa Deum 1 
Aut Deus, aut vacui certe mens tertia cceli, 

Per tua secreto guttura serpit agens ; 
Serpit agens, facilisque docet mortalia corda 

Sensim immortali assuescere posse sono. 
Quod si cuncta quidem Deus est, pee. cunctaque 

FUSUS, 
IN TE UNA LOaUITUR, CiETERA mutus habet. 

This is loving in a strange fashion ; and it 
requires some candour of construction 
(besides the slight darkening of a dead 
language) to cast a veil over the ugly appear- 
ance of something very like blasphemy in 
the last two verses. I think the Lover 
would have been staggered if he had gone 
about to express the same thought in English. 
I am sure Sydney has no nights like this. 
His extravaganzas do not strike at the sky, 
though he takes leave to adopt the pale Dian 
into a fellowship with his mortal passions. 



Witb bow sad steps, O Moon, tbou climb'st tbe skies ; 

How silently ; and witb bow wan a face ! 

Wbat ! may it be, tbat even in beavenly place 

Tbat busy Arcber bis sharp arrow tries ? 

Sure, if tbat long-witb-love-acquainted eyes 

Can judge of love, tbou feel'st a lover's case ; 

I read it in tby looks ; tby languisbt grace 

To me, tbat feel tbe like, tby state descries. 

Tben, even of fellowship, O Moon, tell me, 

Is constant love deem'd there but want of wit 1 

Are beauties there as proud as here they be ? 

Do they above love to be loved, and yet 

Those lovers scorn, whom that love doth possess ? 

Do they call virtue there — ungratefulness ! 

The last line of this poem is a little 
obscured by transposition. He means, Do 
they call ungratefulness there a virtue ? 



Come, Sleep, O Sleep, tbe certain knot of peace, 
The baiting place of wit, tbe balm of woe, 
The poor man's wealth, tbe prisoner's release, 
The indifferent judge between the high and low ; 
With shield of proof shield me from out the prease 
Of those fierce darts despair at me doth throw ; 

make in me those civil wars to cease : 

1 will good tribute pay if thou do so. 

Take thou of me sweet pillows, sweetest bed ; 
A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light ; 
A rosy garland, and a weary head. 
And if these things, as being thine by right, 
Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me, 
Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see. 



The curious wits, seeing dull pensiveness 
Bewray itself in my long-settled eyes, 
Whence those same fumes of melancholy rise, 
With idle pains, and missing aim, do guess. 
Some, that know how my spring I did address, 
Deem that my Muse some fruit of knowledge plies ; 
Others, because tbe Prince my service tries, 
Think, that I think state errors to redress ; 
But harder judges judge, ambition's rage, 
Scourge of itself, still climbing slippery place, 
Holds my youhg brain captived in golden cage. 
O fools, or over- wise ! alas, the race 
Of all my thoughts hath neither stop nor start, 
But only Stella's eyes, and Stella's heart. 



Because I oft in dark abstracted guise 
Seem most alone in greatest company, 
With dearth of words, or answers quite awry, 
To them that would make speech of speech arise ; 
They deem, and of their doom the rumour flies, 
That poison foul of bubbling Pride doth lie 
So in my swelling breast, that only I 
Fawn on myself, and others do despise ; 
Yet Pride, I think, doth not my soul possess, 
Which looks too oft in his unflattering glass ; 
But one worse fault — Ambition — I confess, 
Tbat makes me oft my best friends overpass, 
Unseen, unheard — while Thought to highest place 
Bends all his powers, even unto Stella's grace. 



Having this day, my horse, my hand, my lance, 
Guided so well that I obtained the prize, 
Both by the judgment of the English eyes, 
And of some sent from that sweet enemy, — France ; 
Horsemen my skill in horsemanship advance ; 
Townsfolk my strength ; a daintier judge applies 
His praise to sleight, which from good use doth rise 
Some lucky wits impute it but to chance ; 
Others, because of both sides I do take 
My blood from them, who did excel in this, 
Think Nature me a man of arms did make. 
How far they shot awry ! the true cause is, 
Stella looked on, and from her heavenly face 
Sent forth the beams which made so fair my race. 



In martial sports I had my cunning tried, 
And yet to break more staves did me address, 
While with the people's shouts (I must confess) 
Youth, luck, and praise, even fill'd my veins with 

pride — 
When Cupid having me (his slave) descried 



G G 2 



452 



SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY. 



In Mars's livery, prancing in the press, 

" "What now, Sir Fool ! " said he : "I would no less 

Look here, I say." I look'd, and Stella spied, 

Who hard by made a window send forth light. 

My heart then quaked, then dazzled were mine eyes ; 

One hand forgot to rule, th' other to fight ; 

Nor trumpet's sound I heard, nor friendly cries. 

My foe came on, and beat the air for me — 

Till that her blush made me my shame to see. 



No more, my dear, no more these counsels try ; 

give my passions leave to run their race ; 
Let Fortune lay on me her worst disgrace ; 
Let folk o'ercharged with brain against me cry 
Let clouds bedim my face, break in mine eye ; 
Let me no steps, but of lost labour, trace ; 

Let all the earth with scorn recount my case — 
But do not will me from my love to fly. 

1 do not envy Aristotle's wit, 

Nor do aspire to Caesar's bleeding fame ; 
Nor aught do care, though some above me sit ; 
Nor hope/nor wish, another course to frame, 
But that which once may win thy cruel heart : 
Thou art my wit, and thou my virtue art. 



Love still a boy, and oft a wanton, is, 
School'd only by his mother's tender eye ; 
"What wonder then, if he his lesson miss, 
When for so soft a rod dear play he try ? 
And yet my Star, because a sugar'd kiss 
In sport I suck'd, while she asleep did lie, 
Doth lour, nay chide, nay threat, for only this. 
Sweet, it was saucy Love, not humble I. 
But no 'scuse serves ; she makes her wrath appear 
In beauty's throne — see now who dares come near 
Those scarlet judges, threat'ning bloody pain ? 
O heav'nly Fool, thy most kiss-worthy face 
Anger invests with such a lovely grace, 
That anger's self I needs must kiss again. 



I never drank of Aganippe well, 

Nor ever did in shade of Tempe sit, 

And Muses scorn with vulgar brains to dwell ; 

Poor lay-man I, for sacred rites unfit. 

Some do I hear of Poet's fury tell, 

But (God wot) wot not what they mean by it ; 

And this I swear by blackest brook of hell, 

I am no pick-purse of another's wit. 

How falls it then, that with so smooth an ease 

My thoughts I speak, and what I speak doth flow 

In verse, and that my verse best wits doth please ? 

Guess me the cause — what is it thus 1 — fye, no. 

Or so I — much less. How then ? sure thus it is, 

My lips are sweet, inspired with Stella's kiss. 



Of all the kings that ever here did reign, 
Edward, named Fourth, as first in praise I name, 
Not for his fair outside, nor well-lined brain — 
Although less gifts imp feathers oft on Fame. 
Nor that he could, young-wise, wise-valiant, frame 
His sire's revenge, join'd with a kingdom's gain ; 
And, gain'd by Mars could yet mad Mars so tame, 
That Balance weigh'd what Sword did late obtain. 
Nor that he made the Floure-de-luce so 'fraid, 
Though strongly hedged of bloody Lions' paws, 
That witty Lewis to him a tribute paid. 
Nor this, nor that, nor any such small cause — 
But only, for this worthy knight durst prove 
To lose his crown rather than fail his love. 



happy Thames, that didst my Stella bear, 

1 saw thyself, with many a smiling line 
Upon thy cheerful face, Joy's livery wear, 
While those fair planets on thy streams did shine ; 
The boat for joy could not to dance forbear, 
While wanton winds, with beauty so divine 
Bavish'd, stay'd not, till in her golden hair 
They did themselves (0 sweetest prison) twine. 
And fain those iEol's youth there would their stay 
Have made ; but, forced by nature still to fly, 
First did with puffing kiss those locks display. 
She, so dishevell'd, blush'd ; from window I 
With sight thereof cried out, O fair disgrace, 

Let honour's self to thee grant highest place ! 



Highway, since you my chief Parnassus be ; 
And that my Muse, to some ears not unsweet, 
Tempers her words to trampling horses' feet, 
More soft than to a chamber melody ; 
Now blessed You bear onward blessed Me 
To Her, where I my heart safe left shall meet, 
My Muse and I must you of duty greet 
With thanks and wishes, wishing thankfully, 
Be you still fair, honour'd by public heed, 
By no encroachment wrong'd, nor time forgot ; 
Nor blamed for blood, nor shamed for sinful deed. 
And that you know, I envy you no lot 
Of highest wish, I wish you so much bliss, 
Hundreds of years you Stella's feet may kiss. 

Of the foregoing, the first, the second, and 
the last sonnet, are my favourites. But the 
general beauty of them all is, that they are 
so perfectly characteristical. The spirit of 
" learning and of chivalry," — of which union, 
Spenser has entitled Sydney to have been 
the "president," — shines through them. I 
confess I can see nothing of the "jejune " or 
" frigid " in them ; much less of the " stiff " 
and " cumbrous " — which I have sometimes 
heard objected to the Arcadia. The verse 
runs off swiftly and gallantly. It might have 
been tuned to the trumpet ; or tempered (as 
himself expresses it) to " trampling horses' 
feet." They abound in felicitous phrases — 



O heav'nly Fool, thy most kiss-worthy face — 

8th Sonnet. 

• Sweet pillows, sweetest bed ; 



A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light ; 
A rosy garland, and a weary head. 

2nd Sonnet. 



That sweet enemy, — France — 



5 th Sonnet. 

But they are not rich in words only in 
vague and unlocalised feelings — the failing 
too much of some poetry of the present day 
— they are full, material, and circumstan- 
tiated. Time and place appropriates every 
one of them. It is not a fever of passion 
wasting itself upon a thin diet of dainty 



NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 



453 



words, but a transcendent passion pervading 
and illuminating action, pursuits, studies, 
feats of arms, the opinions of contemporaries 
and his judgment of them. An historical 
thread runs through them, which almost 
affixes a date to them ; marks the when and 
where they were written. 

I have dwelt the longer upon what I con- 
ceive the merit of these poems, because I 
have been hurt by the wantonness (I wish I 
could treat it by a gentler name) with which 
W. H. takes every occasion of insulting the 
memory of Sir Philip Sydney. But the de- 
cisions of the Author of Table Talk, &c. 
(most profound and subtle where they are, 
as for the most part, just) are more safely to 
be relied upon, on subjects and authors he 
has a partiality for, than on such as he has 
conceived an accidental prejudice against. 
Milton wrote sonnets, and was a king-hater ; 
and it was congenial perhaps to sacrifice a 
courtier to a patriot. But I was unwilling 
to lose &fine idea from my mind. The noble 
images, passions, sentiments, and poetical 
delicacies of character, scattered all over the 
Arcadia (spite of some stiffness and encum- 
berment), justify to me the character which 
his contemporaries have left us of the writer. 
I cannot think with the " Critic," that Sir 
Philip Sydney was that opprobrious thing 
which a foolish nobleman in his insolent 
hostility chose to term him. I call to mind 
the epitaph made on him, to guide me to 
juster thoughts of him ; and I repose upon 
the beautiful lines in the " Friend's Passion 
for his Astrophel," printed with the Elegies 
of Spenser and others. 

You knew — who knew not Astrophel ? 
(That I should live to say I knew, 



And have not in possession still !) — 
Things known permit me to renew — 
Of him you know his merit such, 
I cannot say — you hear — too much. 

Within these woods of Arcady 

He chief delight and pleasure took ; 

And on the mountain Partheny, 

Upon the crystal liquid hrook, 
The Muses met him every day, 
That taught him sing, to write, and say. 

When he descended down the mount, 
His personage seemed most divine : 
A thousand graces one might count 
Upon his lovely cheerful eyne. 

To hear him speak, and sweetly smile, 
You were in Paradise the while. 

A sweet attractive kind of grace ; 

A full assurance given by looks ; 

Continual comfort in a face, 

The lineaments of Gospel books — 
I trow that count'nance cannot lye, 
Whose thoughts are legible in the eye. 



Above all others this is he, 
Which erst approved in his song, 
That love and honour might agree, 
And that pure love will do no wrong. 

Sweet saints, it is no sin or blame 

To love a man of virtuous name. 

Did never love so sweetly breathe 

In any mortal breast before : 

Did never Muse inspire beneath 

A Poet's brain with finer store. 

He wrote of Love with high conceit, 
And Beauty rear'd above her height. 

Or let any one read the deeper sorrows (grief 
running into rage) in the Poem, — the last in 
the collection accompanying the above, — 
which from internal testimony I believe to 
be Lord Brooke's — beginning with " Silence 
augmenteth grief," and then seriously ask 
himself, whether the subject of such absorb- 
ing and confounding regrets could have been 
that thing which Lord Oxford termed him. 



NEWSPAPEES THIETY-FIVE YEAES AGO. 

— ♦ — 



Dan Stuart once told us, that he did not 
remember that he ever deliberately walked 
into the Exhibition at Somerset House in his 
life. He might occasionally have escorted a 
party of ladies across the way that were 
going in ; but he never went in of his 
own head. Yet the office of the " Morning 
Post" newspaper stood then just where it 



does now — we are carrying you back, Eeader, 
some thirty years or more — with its gilt- 
globe-topt front facing that emporium of our 
artists' grand Annual Exposure. We some- 
times wish that we had observed the same 
abstinence with Daniel. 

A word or two of D. S. He ever appeared 
to us one of the finest-tempered of Editors. 



454 



NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 



Perry, of the Morning Chronicle, was equally 
pleasant, with a dash, no slight one either, of 
the courtier. S. was frank, plain, and English 
all over. We have worked for both these 
gentlemen. 

It is soothing to contemplate the head of 
the Ganges ; to trace the first little bubblings 
of a mighty river, 

With holy reverence to approach the rocks, 
Whence glide the streams renowned in ancient song. 

Fired with a perusal of the Abyssinian 
Pilgrim's exploratory ramblings after the 
cradle of the infant Nilus, we well remember 
on one fine summer holyday (a " whole day's 
leave " we called it at Christ's hospital) sal- 
lying forth at rise of sun, not very well pro- 
visioned either for such an undertaking, to 
trace the current of the New Eiver — Middle- 
tonian stream ! — to its scaturient source, as we 
had read, in meadows by fair Amwell. 
Gallantly did we commence our solitary 
quest — for it was essential to the dignity of 
a Discovery, that no eye of schoolboy, save 
our own, should beam on the detection. By 
flowery spots, and verdant lanes skirting 
Hornsey, Hope trained us on in many a 
baffling turn ; endless, hopeless meanders, as 
it seemed ; or as if the jealous waters had 
dodged us, reluctant to have the humble spot 
of their nativity revealed; till spent, and 
nigh famished, before set of the same sun, we 
sate down somewhere by Bowes Farm near 
Tottenham, with a tithe of our proposed 
labours only yet accomplished ; sorely con- 
vinced in spirit, that that Brucian enterprise 
was as yet too arduous for our young 
shoulders. 

Not more refreshing to the thirsty curio- 
sity of the traveller is the tracing of some 
mighty waters up to their shallow fontlet, 
than it is to a pleased and candid reader to 
go back to the inexperienced essays, the first 
callow flights in authorship, of some esta- 
blished name in literature ; from the Gnat 
which preluded to the iEneid, to the Duck 
which Samuel Johnson trod on. 

In those days every Morning Paper, as an 
essential retainer to its establishment, kept 
an author, who was bound to furnish daily a 
quantum of witty paragraphs. Sixpence a 
joke — and it was thought pretty high too — 
was Dan Stuart's settled remuneration in 
these cases. The chat of the day, scandal, 



but, above all, dress, furnished the material. 
The length of no paragraph was to exceed 
seven lines. Shorter they might be, but they 
must be poignant. 

A fashion of flesh, or rather ^nVi^-coloured 
hose for the ladies, luckily coming up at the 
juncture when we were on our probation for 
the place of Chief Jester to S.'s Paper, esta- 
blished our reputation in that line. We 
were pronounced a " capital hand." O the 
conceits which we varied upon red in all its 
prismatic differences ! from the trite and 
obvious flower of Cytherea, to the flaming 
costume of the lady that has her sitting 
upon " many waters." Then there was the 
collateral topic of ankles. What an occasion 
to a truly chaste writer, like ourself, of 
touching that nice brink, and yet never 
tumbling over it, of a seemingly ever approxi- 
mating something " not quite proper ; " while, 
like a skilful posture-master, balancing be- 
twixt decorums and their opposites, he keeps 
the line, from which a hair's-breadth devia- 
tion is destruction ; hovering in the confines 
of light and darkness, or where " both seem 
either;" a hazy uncertain delicacy; Auto- 
lycus-like in the Play, still putting off his 
expectant auditory with " Whoop, do me no 
harm, good man ! " But, above all, that 
conceit arrided us most at that time, 
and still tickles our midriff to remember, 
where, allusively to the flight of Astrsea 
— ultima Ccelestum terras reliquit — we pro- 
nounced — in reference to the stockings still 
— that Modesty, taking her final leave 

OF MORTALS, HER LAST BLUSH WAS VISIBLE 
IN HER ASCENT TO THE HEAVENS BY THE 
TRACT OF THE GLOWING INSTEP. This 

might be called the crowning conceit: and 
was esteemed tolerable writing in those 
days. 

But the fashion of jokes, with all other 
things, passes away ; as did the transient 
mode which had so favoured us. The ankles 
of our fair friends in a few weeks began to 
reassume their whiteness, and left us scarce 
a leg to stand upon. Other female whims 
followed, but none methought so pregnant, 
so invitatory of shrewd conceits, and more 
than single meanings. 

Somebody has said, that to swallow six 
cross-buns daily, coDsecutively for a fortnight, 
would surfeit the stoutest digestion. But to 
have to furnish as many jokes daily, and 



NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 



455 



that not for a fortnight, but for a long 
twelvemonth, as we were constrained to do, 
was a little harder exaction. " Man goeth 
forth to his work until the evening " — from 
a reasonable hour in the morning, we pre- 
sume it was meant. Now, as our main 
occupation took us up from eight till five 
every day in the City ; and as our evening 
hours, at that time of life, had generally to 
do with anything rather than business, it 
follows, that the only time we could spare 
for this manufactory of jokes — our supple- 
mentary livelihood, that supplied us in every 
want beyond mere bread and cheese — was 
exactly that part of the day which (as we 
have heard of No Man's Land) may be fitly 
denominated No Man's Time; that is, no 
time in which a man ought to be up, and 
awake, in. To speak more plainly, it is that 
time of an hour, or an hour and a half's 
duration, in which a man, whose occasions 
call him up so preposterously, has to wait for 
his breakfast. 

O those head-aches at dawn of day, when 
at five, or half-past five in summer, and 
not much later in the dark seasons, we were 
compelled to rise, having been perhaps not 
above four hours in bed — (for we were no 
go-to-beds with the lamb, though we 
anticipated the lark ofttimes in her rising — 
we like a parting cup at midnight, as all 
young men did before these effeminate times, 
and to have our friends about us — we were 
not constellated under Aquarius, that watery 
sign, and therefore incapable of Bacchus, 
cold, washy, bloodless — we were none of 
your Basilian water-sponges, nor had taken 
our degrees at Mount Ague — we were right 
toping Capulets, jolly companions, we and 
they) — but to have to get up, as we said 
before, curtailed of half our fair sleep, fasting, 
with only a dim vista of refreshing bohea, 
in the distance — to be necessitated to rouse 
ourselves at the detestable rap of an old hag 
of a domestic, who seemed to take a diabolical 
pleasure in her announcement that it was 
" time to rise ;" and whose chappy knuckles 
we have often yearned to amputate, and 
string them up at our chamber door, to be a 
terror to all such unseasonable rest-breakers 
in future 

"Facil" and sweet, as Virgil sings, had 
been the "descending" of the over-night, 
balmy the first sinking of the heavy head 



upon the pillow 
on to say, 



but to get up, as he goes 



— revocare gradus, superasque evadere ad auras — 

and to get up moreover to make jokes with 
malice prepended — there was the " labour," 
there the " work." 

No Egyptian taskmaster ever devised a 
slavery like to that, our slavery. No fractious 
operants ever turned out for half the tyranny 
which this necessity exercised upon us. 
Half a dozen jests in a day, (bating Sundays 
too,) why, it seems nothing ! "We make 
twice the number every day in our lives as 
a matter of course, and claim no Sabbatical 
exemptions. But then they come into our 
head. But when the head has to go out to 
them — when the mountain must go to 
Mahomet — 

Reader, try it for once, only for one short 
twelvemonth. 

It was not every week that a fashion of 
pink stockings came up ; but mostly, instead 
of it, some rugged untractable subj ect ; some 
topic impossible to be contorted into the 
risible ; some feature, upon which no smile 
could play ; some flint, from which no process 
of ingenuity could procure a scintillation. 
There they lay ; there your appointed tale 
of brick-making was set before you, which 
you must finish, with or without straw, as 
it happened. The craving Dragon — the Public 
— like him in Bel's temple — must be fed ; it 
expected its daily rations ; and Daniel, and 
ourselves, to do us justice, did the best we 
could on this side bursting him. 

While we were wringing out coy spright- 
linesses for the Post, and writhing under the 
toil of what is called " easy writing," Bob 
Allen, our quondam schoolfellow, was tapping 
his impracticable brains in a like service for 
the "Oracle." Not that Bobert troubled 
himself much about wit. If his paragraphs 
had a sprightly air about them, it was 
sufficient. He carried this nonchalance so 
far at last, that a matter of intelligence, and 
that no very important one, was not seldom 
palmed upon his employers for a good jest ; 
for example sake — " Walking yesterday morn- 
ing casually down Snow Hill, who should we 
meet but Mr. Deputy Humphreys! we rejoice 
to add, that the worthy Deputy appeared to 
enjoy a good state of health. We do not ever 
remember to have seen him look better." This 



456 



NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 



gentleman so surprisingly met upon Snow 
Hill, from some peculiarities in gait or 
gesture, was a constant butt for mirth to the 
small paragraph-mongers of the day; and 
our friend thought that he might have his 
fling at him with the rest. We met A. in 
Holborn shortly after this extraordinary 
rencounter, which he told with tears of 
satisfaction in his eyes, and chuckling at the 
anticipated effects of its announcement next 
day in the paper. We did not quite com- 
prehend where the wit of it lay at the time ; 
nor was it easy to be detected, when the 
thing came out advantaged by type and 
letter-press. He had better have met any- 
thing that morning than a Common Council 
Man. His services were shortly after 
dispensed with, on the plea that his para- 
graphs of late had been deficient in point. 
The one in question, it must be owned, had 
an air, in the opening especially, proper to 
awaken curiosity ; and the sentiment, or 
moral, wears the aspect of humanity and 
good neighbourly feeling. But somehow the 
conclusion was not judged altogether to 
answer to the magnificent promise of the 
premises. We traced our friend's pen after- 
wards in the " True Briton," the " Star," the 
"Traveller," — from all which he was suc- 
cessively dismissed, the Proprietors having 
" no further occasion for his services." 
Nothing was easier than to detect him. 
When wit failed, or topics ran low, there 
constantly appeared the following — "It is 
not generally known that the three Blue Balls 
at the Pawnbrokers' shops are the ancient arms 
of Lombardy. The Lombards were the first 
money-brokers in Europe." Bob has done 
more to set the public right on this important 
point of blazonry, than the whole College of 
Heralds. 

The appointment of a regular wit has 
long ceased to be a part of the economy of a 
Morning Paper. Editors find their own 
jokes, or do as well without them. Parson 
Este, and Topham, brought up the set 
custom of " witty paragraphs " first in the 
"World." Boaden was a reigning para- 
graphist in his day, and succeeded poor 
Allen in the " Oracle." But, as we said, the 
fashion of jokes passes away ; and it would 
be difficult to discover in the biographer of 
Mrs. Siddons, any traces of that vivacity and 
fancy which charmed the whole town at the 



commencement of the present century. Even 
the prelusive delicacies of the present writer 
— the curt "Astrsean allusion" — would be 
thought pedantic and out of date, in these 
days. 

From the office of the Morning Post (for 
we may as well exhaust our Newspaper 
Reminiscences at once) by change of property 
in the paper, we were transferred, mortifying 
exchange ! to the office of the Albion 
Newspaper, late Eackstrow's Museum, in 
Fleet- street. What a transition — from a 
handsome apartment, from rose-wood desks, 
and silver inkstands, to an office — no office, 
but a den rather, but just redeemed from 
the occupation of dead monsters, of which it 
seemed redolent — from the centre of loyalty 
and fashion, to a focus of vulgarity and 
sedition ! Here in murky closet, inadequate 
from its square contents to the receipt of 
the two bodies of Editor, and humble 
paragraph-maker, together at one time, sat 
in the discharge of his new editorial functions 
(the"Bigod" ofElia) the redoubted John 
Fenwick. 

F., without a guinea in his pocket, and 
having left not many in the pockets of his 
friends whom he might command, had 
purchased (on tick doubtless) the whole and 
sole Editorship, Proprietorship, with all the 
rights and titles (such as they were worth) 
of the Albion from one Lovell ; of Whom we 
know nothing, save that he had stood in the 
pillory for a libel on the Prince of Wales. 
With this hopeless concern — for it had been 
sinking ever since its commencement, and 
could now reckon upon not more than a 
hundred subscribers — F. resolutely deter- 
mined upon pulling down the Government 
in the first instance, and making both our 
fortunes by way of corollary. For seven 
weeks and more did this infatuated democrat- 
go about borrowing seven-shilling pieces, 
and lesser coin, to meet the daily demands 
of the Stamp office, which allowed no credit 
to publications of that side in politics. An 
outcast from politer bread, we attached our 
small talents to the forlorn fortunes of our 
friend. Our occupation now was to write 
treason. 

Recollections of feelings — which were all 
that now remained from our first boyish 
heats kindled by the French Revolution, 
when, if we were misled, we erred in the 



ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN AET. 



457 



company of some who are accounted very 
good men now — rather than any tendency 
at this time to Republican doctrines — assisted 
us in assuming a style of writing, while the 
paper lasted, consonant in no very under 
tone — to the right earnest fanaticism of F. 
Our cue was now to insinuate, rather than 
recommend, possible abdications. Blocks, 
axes, Whitehall tribunals, were covered with 
flowers of so cunning a periphrasis — as 
Mr. Bayes says, never naming the thing 
directly — that the keen eye of an Attorney 
General was insufficient to detect the lurking 
snake among them. There were times, 
indeed, when we sighed for our more gentle- 
man-like occupation under Stuart. But 
with change of masters it is ever change 
of service. Already one paragraph, and 
another, as we learned afterwards from a 
gentleman at the Treasury, had begun to 



be marked at that office, with a view of its 
being submitted at least to the attention of 
the proper Law Officers — when an unlucky, 
or rather lucky epigram from our pen, aimed 

at Sir J s M h, who was on the eve 

of departing for India to reap the fruits of 
his apostacy, as F. pronounced it, (it is hardly 
worth particularising,) happening to offend 
the nice sense of Lord, or, as he then 
delighted to be called, Citizen Stanhope, 
deprived F. at once of the last hopes of a 
guinea from the last patron that had stuck 
by us ; and breaking up our establishment, 
left us to the safe, but somewhat mortifying, 
neglect of the Crown Lawyers. It was about 
this time, or a little earlier, that Dan Stuart 
made that curious confession to us, that he 
had " never deliberately walked into an 
Exhibition at Somerset House in his life." 



BARRENNESS OF THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY IN THE PRODUCTIONS 

OF MODERN ART. 



Hogarth excepted, can we produce any 
one painter within the last fifty years, or 
since the humour of exhibiting began, that 
has treated a story imaginatively ? By this 
we mean, upon whom his subject has so 
acted, that it has seemed to direct him — not 
to be arranged by him 1 Any upon whom 
its leading or collateral points have impressed 
themselves so tyrannically, that he dared not 
treat it otherwise, lest he should falsify a 
revelation 1 Any that has imparted to his 
compositions, not merely so much truth as is 
enough to convey a story with clearness, but 
that individualising property, which should 
keep the subject so treated distinct in 
feature from every other subject, however 
similar, and to common apprehensions almost 
identical ; so as that we might say, this and 
this part could have found an appropriate 
place in no other picture in the world but 
this 1 Is there anything in modern art — we 
will not demand that it should be equal — 
but in any way analogous to what Titian has 
effected, in that wonderful bringing together 
of two times in the "Ariadne," in the 
National Gallery 1 Precipitous, with his 



reeling satyr rout about him, re-peopling and 
re-illuming suddenly the waste places, drunk 
with a new fury beyond the grape, Bacchus, 
born in fire, fire-like flings himself at the 
Cretan. This is the time present. With 
this telling of the story — an artist, and no 
ordinary one, might remain richly proud. 
Guido, in his harmonious version of it, saw 
no further. But from the depths of the 
imaginative spirit Titian has recalled past 
time, and laid it contributory with the present 
to one simultaneous effect. With the desert 
all ringing with the mad cymbals of his 
followers, made lucid with the presence and 
new offers of a god, — as if unconscious of 
Bacchus, or but idly casting her eyes as upon 
some unconcerning pageant — her soul undis- 
tracted from Theseus — Ariadne is still pacing 
the solitary shore in as much heart-silence, 
and in almost the same local solitude, with 
which she awoke at day-break to catch the 
forlorn last glances of the sail that bore away 
the Athenian. 

Here are two points miraculously co- 
uniting ; fierce society, with the feeling of 
solitude still absolute ; noon-day revelations, 



458 



ON THE PRODUCTION'S OF MODERN ART. 



with the accidents of the dull grey dawn 
unquenched and lingering ; the present 
Bacchus, with the past Ariadne ; two stories, 
with double Time ; separate, and harmonising. 
Had the artist made the woman one shade 
less indifferent to the God ; still more, had 
she expressed a rapture at his advent, where 
would have been the story of the mighty 
desolation of the heart previous ? merged in 
the insipid accident of a nattering offer met 
with a welcome acceptance. The broken 
heart for Theseus was not lightly to be 
pieced up by a God. 

We have before us a fine rough print, 
from a picture by Raphael in the Vatican. 
It is the Presentation of the new-born Eve 
to Adam by the Almighty. A fairer mother 
of mankind we might imagine, and a goodlier 
sire perhaps of men since born. But these 
are matters subordinate to the conception of 
the situation, displayed in this extraordinary 
production. A tolerably modern artist 
would have been satisfied with tempering 
certain raptures of connubial anticipation, 
with a suitable acknowledgment to the 
Giver of the blessing, in the countenance of 
the first bridegroom ; something like the 
divided attention of the child (Adam was 
here a child-man) between the given toy, 
and the mother who had just blest it with 
the bauble. This is the obvious, the first- 
sight view, the superficial. An artist of a 
higher grade, considering the awful presence 
they were in, would have taken care to 
subtract something from the expression of 
the more human passion, and to heighten the 
more spiritual one. This would be as much 
as an exhibition-goer, from the opening of 
Somerset House to last year's show, has been 
encouraged to look for. It is obvious to hint 
at a lower expression yet, in a picture that, 
for respects of drawing and colouring, might 
be deemed not wholly inadmissible within 
these art-fostering walls, in which the 
raptures should be as ninety-nine, the grati- 
tude as one, or perhaps zero ! By neither 
the one passion nor the other has Eaphael 
expounded the situation of Adam. Singly 
upon his brow sits the absorbing sense of 
wonder at the created miracle. The moment 
is seized by the intuitive artist, perhaps not 
self-conscious of his art, in which neither of 
the conflicting emotions — a moment how 
abstracted ! — have had time to spring up, or 



to battle for indecorous mastery. — We have 
seen a landscape of a justly admired neoteric, 
in which he aimed at delineating a fiction, 
one of the most severely beautiful in antiquity 
— the gardens of the Hesperides. To do 

Mr. justice, he had painted a laudable 

orchard, with fitting seclusion, and a veritable 
dragon (of which a Polypheme, by Poussin, 
is somehow a fac-simile for the situation), 
looking over into the world shut out back- 
wards, so that none but a "still-climbing 
Hercules " could hope to catch a peep at the 
admired Ternary of Recluses. No conven- 
tual porter could keep his eyes better than 
this custos with the " lidless eyes." He not 
only sees that none do intrude into that 
privacy, but, as clear as daylight, that none 
but Hercules aut Diabolus by any manner of 
means can. So far all is well. We have 
absolute solitude here or nowhere. Ab extra 
the damsels are snug enough. But here the 
artist's courage seems to have failed him. 
He began to pity his pretty charge, and, to 
comfort the irksomeness, has peopled their 
solitude with a bevy of fair attendants, maids 
of honour, or ladies of the bed-chamber, 
according to the approved etiquette at a 
court of the nineteenth century ; giving to 
the whole scene the air of a fSte champetre, if 
we will but excuse the absence of the gentle- 
men. This is well, and Watteauish. But 
what is become of the solitary mystery — the 

Daughters three, 
That sing around the golden tree ? 

This is not the way in which Poussin would 
have treated this subject. 

The paintings, or rather the stupendous 
architectural designs, of a modern artist, have 
been urged as objections to the theory of our 
motto. They are of a character, we confess, 
to stagger it. His towered structures are of 
the highest order of the material sublime. 
Whether they were dreams, or transcripts of 
some elder workmanship — Assyrian ruins 
old — restored by this mighty artist, they 
satisfy our most stretched and craving con- 
ceptions of the glories of the antique world. 
It is a pity that they were ever peopled. On 
that side, the imagination of the artist halts, 
and appears defective. Let us examine the 
point of the story in the " Belshazzar's 
Feast." We will introduce it by an apposite 
anecdote. 



ON THE PRODUCTION'S OF MODERN ART. 



459 



The court historians of the day record, that 
at the first dinner given by the late King 
(then Prince Kegent) at the Pavilion, the 
following characteristic frolic was played off. 
The guests were select and admiring ; the 
banquet profuse and admirable ; the lights 
lustrous and oriental ; the eye was perfectly 
dazzled with the display of plate, among 
which the great gold salt-cellar, brought from 
the regalia in the Tower for this especial 
purpose, itself a tower ! stood conspicuous 
for its magnitude. And now the Eev. * * * *, 
the then admired court Chaplain, was pro- 
ceeding with the grace, when, at a signal 
given, the lights were suddenly overcast, and 
a huge transparency was discovered, in which 
glittered in gold letters — 

"Brighton — Earthquake — Swallow-tjp- 



Imagine the confusion of the guests ; the 
Georges and garters, jewels, bracelets, moulted 
upon the occasion ! The fans dropped, and 
picked up the next morning by the sly court- 
pages ! Mrs. Fitz-what's-her-name fainting, 
and the Countess of * * * holding the smell- 
ing-bottle, till the good-humoured Prince 
caused harmony to be restored, by calling in 
fresh candles, and declaring that the whole 
was nothing but a pantomime hoax, got up 
by the ingenious Mr. Farley, of Covent 
Garden, from hints which his Eoyal High- 
ness himself had furnished ! Then imagine 
the infinite applause that followed, the 
mutual rallyings, the declarations that " they 
were not much frightened," of the assembled 



The point of time in the picture exactly 
answers to the appearance of the trans- 
parency in the anecdote. The huddle, the 
flutter, the bustle, the escape, the alarm, and 
the mock alarm ; the prettinesses heightened 
by consternation ; the courtier's fear which 
was flattery ; and the lady's which was 
affectation ; all that we may conceive to 
have taken place in a mob of Brighton 
courtiers, sympathising with the well-acted 
surprise of their sovereign ; all this, and no 
more, is exhibited by the well-dressed lords 
and ladies in the Hall of Belus. Just this 
sort of consternation we have seen among a 
flock of disquieted wild geese at the report 
only of a gun having gone off ! 

But is this vulgar fright, this mere animal 



anxiety for the preservation of their persons, 
— such as we have witnessed at a theatre, 
when a slight alarm of fire has been given — 
an adequate exponent of a supernatural 
terror 1 the way in which the finger of God, 
writing judgments, would have been met by 
the withered conscience % There is a human 
fear, and a divine fear. The one is disturbed, 
restless, and bent upon escape. The other is 
bowed down, effortless, passive. When the 
spirit appeared before Eliphaz in the visions 
of the night, and the hair of his flesh stood 
up, was it in the thoughts of the Temanite 
to ring the bell of his chamber, or to call up 
the servants 1 But let us see in the text 
what there is to justify all this huddle of 
vulgar consternation. 

From the words of Daniel it appears that 
Belshazzar had made a great feast to a 
thousand of his lords, and drank wine before 
the thousand. The golden and silver vessels 
are gorgeously enumerated, with the princes, 
the king's concubines, and his wives. Then 
follows — 

" In the same hour came forth fingers of a 
man's hand, and wrote over against the 
candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of 
the king's palace ; and the king saw the part 
of the hand that wrote. Then the king's 
countenance was changed, and his thoughts 
troubled him, so that the joints of his loins 
were loosened, and his knees smote one 
against another." 

This is the plain text. By no hint can it 
be otherwise inferred, but that the appearance 
was solely confined to the fancy of Belshazzar, 
that his single brain was troubled. Not a 
word is spoken of its being seen by any else 
there present, not even by the queen herself, 
who merely undertakes for the interpretation 
of the phenomenon, as related to her, doubt- 
less, by her husband. The lords are simply 
said to be astonished ; i. e. at the trouble and 
the change of countenance in their sovereign. 
Even the prophet does not appear to have 
seen the scroll, which the king saw. He 
recals it only, as Joseph did the Dream to 
the King of Egypt. " Then was the part of 
the hand sent from him [the Lord], and this 
writing was written." He speaks of the 
phantasm as past. 

Then what becomes of this needless multi- 
plication of the miracle % this message to a royal 
conscience, singly expressed — for it was said, 



460 



ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 



" Thy kingdom is divided," — simultaneously 
impressed upon the fancies of a thousand 
Qourtiers, who were implied in it neither 
directly nor grammatically 1 

But admitting the artist's own version of 
the story, and that the sight was seen also by 
the thousand courtiers — let it have been 
visible to all Babylon — as the knees of Bel- 
shazzar were shaken, and his countenance 
troubled, even so would the knees of every 
man in Babylon, and their countenances, as 
of an individual man, have been troubled ; 
bowed, bent down, so would they have re- 
mained, stupor-fixed, with no thought of 
struggling with that inevitable judgment. 

Not all that is optically possible to be 
seen, is to be shown in every picture. The 
eye delightedly dwells upon the brilliant 
individualities in a " Marriage at Cana," by 
Veronese, or Titian, to the very texture and 
colour of the wedding garments, the ring 
glittering upon the bride's fingers, the metal 
and fashion of the wine-pots ; for at such 
seasons there is leisure and luxury to be 
curious. But in a " day of judgment," or in 
a " day of lesser horrors, yet divine," as at 
the impious feast of Belshazzar, the eye 
should see, as the actual eye of an agent or 
patient in the immediate scene would see, 
only in masses and indistinction. Not only 
the female attire and jewelry exposed to the 
critical eye of fashion, as minutely as the 
dresses in a Lady's Magazine, in the criticised 
picture, — but perhaps the curiosities of ana- 
tomical science, and studied diversities of 
posture, in the falling angels and sinners of 
Michael Angelo, — have no business in then- 
great subjects. There was no leisure for them. 

By a wise falsification, the great masters 
of painting got at their true conclusions ; by 
not showing the actual appearances, that is, 
all that was to be seen at any given moment 
by an indifferent eye, but only what the eye 
might be supposed to see in the doing or 
suffering of some portentous action. Sup- 
pose the moment of the swallowing up of 
Pompeii. There they were to be seen — 
houses, columns, architectural proportions, 
differences of public and private buildings, 
men and women at their standing occupa- 
tions, the diversified thousand postures, 
attitudes, dresses, in some confusion truly, 
but physically they were visible. But what 
eye saw them at that eclipsing moment, 



which reduces confusion to a kind of unity, 
and when the senses are upturned from their 
proprieties, when sight and hearing are a 
feeling only ? A thousand years have passed, 
and we are at leisure to contemplate the 
weaver fixed standing at his shuttle, the 
baker at his oven, and to turn over with 
antiquarian coolness the pots and pans of 
Pompeii. 

" Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and 
thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon." Who, 
in reading this magnificent Hebraism, in his 
conception, sees aught but the heroic son of 
Nun, with the outstretched-arm, and the 
greater and lesser light obsequious ? Doubt- 
less there were to be seen hill and dale, and 
chariots and horsemen, on open plain, or 
winding by secret defiles, and all the circum- 
stances and stratagems of war. But whose 
eyes would have been conscious of this array 
at the interposition of the synchronic miracle ? 
Yet in the picture of this subject by the artist 
of the " Belshazzar's Feast" — no ignoble 
work either — the marshalling and landscape 
of the war is everything, the miracle sinks 
into an anecdote of the day ; and the eye 
may " dart through rank and file traverse " 
for some minutes, before it shall discover, 
among his armed followers, which is Joshua ! 
Not modern art alone, but ancient, where 
only it is to be found if anywhere, can be 
detected erring, from defect of this imagina- 
tive faculty. The world has nothing to show 
of the preternatural in painting, transcending 
the figure of Lazarus bursting his grave- 
clothes, in the great picture at Angerstein's. 
It seems a thing between two beings. A 
ghastly horror at itself struggles with newly- 
apprehending gratitude at second life be- 
stowed. It cannot forget that it was a ghost. 
It has hardly felt that it is a body. It has 
to tell of the world of spirits. — Was it from 
a feeling, that the crowd of half-impassioned 
by-standers, and the still more irrelevant 
herd of passers-by at a distance, who have 
not heard, or but faintly have been told of 
the passing miracle, admirable as they are 
in design and hue — for it is a glorified work 
— do not respond adequately to the action — 
that the single figure of the Lazarus has 
been attributed to Michael Angelo, and the 
mighty Sebastian unfairly robbed of the 
fame of the greater half of the interest ? 
Now that there were not indifferent passers- 



OIST THE PKODUCTIONS OF MODERN A RT. 



461 



by within actual scope of the eyes of those 
present at the miracle, to whom the sound of 
it had but faintly, or not at all, reached, it 
would be hardihood to deny ; but would 
they see them ? or can the mind in the con- 
ception of it admit of such unconcerning ob- 
jects ; can it think of them at all 1 or what 
associating league to the imagination can 
there be between the seers, and the seers 
not, of a presential miracle 1 

"Were an artist to paint upon demand a 
picture of a Dryad, w T e will ask whether, in 
the present low state of expectation, the 
patron would not, or ought not be fully satis- 
fied with a beautiful naked figure recumbent 
under wide-stretched oaks ? Disseat- those 
woods, and place the same figure among 
fountains, and fall of pellucid water, and 
you have a — Naiad ! No so in a rough print 
we have seen after Julio Eomano, we think 
— for it is long since — there, by no process, 
with mere change of scene, could the figure 
have reciprocated characters. Long, gro- 
tesque, fantastic, yet with a grace of her 
own, beautiful in convolution and distortion, 
linked to her connatural tree, co-twisting 
with its limbs her own, till both seemed 
either — these, animated branches; those, 
disanimated members — yet the animal and 
vegetable lives sufficiently kept distinct — his 
Dryad lay — an approximation of two natures, 
which to conceive, it must be seen ; analogous 
to, not the same with, the delicacies of 
Ovidian transformations. 

To the lowest subjects, and, to a superficial 
comprehension, the most barren, the Great 
Masters gave loftiness and fruitfulness. The 
large eye of genius saw in the meanness of 
present objects their capabilities of treatment 
from their relations to some grand Past or 
Future. How has Eaphael — we must still 
linger about the Vatican — treated the humble 
craft of the ship-builder, in his " Building of 
the Ark ? " It is in that scriptural series, 
to which we have referred, and which, judg- 
ing from some fine rough old graphic sketches 
of them which we possess, seem to be of a 
higher and more poetic grade than even the 
Cartoons. The dim of sight are the timid 
and the shrinking. There is a cowardice in 
modern art. As the Frenchman, of whom 
Coleridge's friend made the prophetic guess 
at Eome, from the beard and horns of the 
Moses of Michael Angelo collected no in- 



ferences beyond that of a He Goat and a 
Cornuto ; so from this subject, of mere me- 
chanic promise, it would instinctively turn 
away, as from one incapable of investiture 
with any grandeur. The dock-yards at Wool- 
wich would object derogatory associations. 
The dep6t at Chatham would be the mote 
and the beam in its intellectual eye. But 
not t© the nautical preparations in the ship- 
yards of Civita Vecchia did Eaphael look for 
instructions, when he imagined the building 
of the Vessel that was to be conservatory of 
the wrecks of the species of drowned man- 
kind. In the intensity of the action, he 
keeps ever out of sight the meanness of the 
operation. There is the Patriarch, in calm 
forethought, and with holy prescience, giving 
directions. And there are his agents — the 
solitary but sufficient Three — hewing, sawing, 
every one with the might and earnestness of 
a Demiurgus ; under some instinctive rather 
than technical guidance ! giant-muscled ; 
every one a Hercules, or liker to those 
Vulcanian Three, that in sounding caverns 
under Mongibello wrought in fire — Brontes, 
and black Steropes, and Pyracmon. So work 
the workmen that should repair a world ! 

Artists again err in the confounding of 
poetic with pictorial subjects. In the latter, 
the exterior accidents are nearly everything, 
the unseen qualities as nothing. Othello's 
colour — the infirmities and corpulence of a Sir 
John Falstaff — do they haunt us perpetually 
in the reading ? or are they obtruded upon 
our conceptions one time for ninety-nine 
that we are lost in admiration at the re- 
spective moral or intellectual attributes of 
the character 1 But in a picture Othello is 
always a Blackamoor ; and the other only 
Plump Jack. Deeply corporealised, and 
enchained hopelessly in the grovelling fetters 
of externality, must be the mind, to which, 
in its better moments, the image of the high- 
souled, high-intelligenced Quixote — the 
errant Star of Knighthood, made more 
tender by eclipse — has never presented itself 
divested from the unhallowed accompani- 
ment of a Sancho, or a rabblement at the 
heels of Eosinante. That man has read his 
book by halves ; he has laughed, mistaking 
his author's purport, which was — tears. The 
artist that pictures Quixote (and it is in this 
degrading point that he is every season held 
up at our Exhibitions) in the shallow hope of 



462 



ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 



exciting mirth, would have joined the rabble 
at the heels of his starved steed. We wish 
not to see that counterfeited, which we would 
not have wished to see in the reality. Con- 
scious of the heroic inside of the noble 
Quixote, who, on hearing that his withered 
person was passing, would have stepped over 
his threshold to gaze upon his forlorn habili- 
ments, and the " strange bed-fellows which 
misery brings a man acquainted with ? " 
Shade of Cervantes ! who in thy Second 
Part could put into the mouth of thy Quixote 
those high aspirations of a super- chivalrous 
gallantry, where he replies to one of the 
shepherdesses, apprehensive that he would 
spoil their pretty net-works, and inviting 
him to be a guest with them, in accents like 
these : " Truly, fairest Lady, Actceon was not 
more astonished when he saw Diana bathing 
herself at the fountain, than I have been in 
beholding your beauty : I commend the 
manner of your pastime, and thank you for 
your kind offers ; and, if I may serve you, so 
I may be sure you will be obeyed, you may 
command me : for my profession is this, To 
show myself thankful, and a doer of good to 
all sorts of people, especially of the rank that 
your person shows you to be ; and if those 
nets, as they take up but a little piece of 
ground, should take up the whole world, T 
would seek out new worlds to pass through, 
rather than break them : and (he adds) that 
you may give credit to this my exaggeration, 
behold at least he that promiseth you this, 
is Don Quixote de la Mancha, if haply this 
name hath come to your hearing." Illus- 
trious Eomancer ! were the " fine frenzies," 
which possessed the brain of thy own 
Quixote, a fit subject, as in this Second Part, 
to be exposed to the jeers of Duennas and 
Serving men ? to be monstered, and shown 
up at the heartless banquets of great men ? 
Was that pitiable infirmity, which in thy 
First Part misleads him, always from within, 
into half-ludicrous, but more than half-com- 
passionable and admirable errors, not inflic- 
tion enough from heaven, that men by 
studied artifices must devise and practise 
upon the humour, to inflame where they 
should soothe it ? Why, Goneril would have 
blushed to practise upon the abdicated king 



at this rate, and the she-wolf Regan not have 
endured to play the pranks upon his fled 
wits, which thou hast made thy Quixote 
suffer in Duchesses' halls, and at the hands 
of that unworthy nobleman.* 

In the First Adventures, even, it needed 
all the art of the most consummate artist in 
the Book way that the world hath yet seen, 
to keep up in the mind of the reader the 
heroic attributes of the character without 
relaxing; so as absolutely that they shall 
suffer no alloy from the debasing fellowship 
of the clown. If it ever obtrudes itself as a 
disharmony, are we inclined to laugh : or not, 
rather, to indulge a contrary emotion ? — 
Cervantes, stung, perchance, by the relish 
with which his Eeading Public had received 
the fooleries of the man, more to their palates 
than the generosities of the master, in the 
sequel let his pen run riot, lost the harmony 
and the balance, and sacrificed a great idea 
to the taste of his contemporaries. We 
know that in the present day the Knight 
has fewer admirers than the Squire. Anti- 
cipating, what did actually happen to him — 
as afterwards it did to his scarce inferior 
follower, the Author of " Guzman de Alfa- 
rache " — that some less knowing hand would 
prevent him by a spurious Second Part ; and 
judging that it would be easier for his com- 
petitor to out-bid him in the comicalities, 
than in the romance, of his work, he aban- 
doned his Knight, and has fairly set up the 
Squire for his Hero. For what else has he 
unsealed the eyes of Sancho ? and instead of 
that twilight state of semi-insanity — the 
madness at second-hand — the contagion, 
caught from a stronger mind infected — that 
war between native cunning, and hereditary 
deference, with which he has hitherto accom- 
panied his master — two for a pair almost — 
does he substitute a downright Knave, with 
open eyes, for his own ends only following a 
confessed Madman ; and offering at one time 
to lay, if not actually laying, hands upon 
him ! From the moment that Sancho loses 
his reverence, Don Quixote is become — a 
treatable lunatic. Our artists handle him 
accordingly. 

* Yet from this Second Part, our cried-up pictures 
are mostly selected ; the waiting-women with beards, &c. 



THE WEDDING. 



463 



THE WEDDING. 



I do not know when I have been better 
pleased than at being invited last week to 
be present at the wedding of a friend's 
daughter. I like to make one at these cere- 
monies, which to ns old people give back our 
youth in a manner, and restore our gayest 
season, in the remembrance of our own 
success, or the regrets, scarcely less tender, 
of our own youthful disappointments, in 
this point of a settlement. On these occa- 
sions I am sure to be in good-humour for 
a week or two after, and enjoy a reflected 
honey-moon. Being without a family, I am 
flattered with these temporary adoptions 
into a friend's family ; I feel a sort of cousin- 
hood, or uncleship, for the season ; I am 
inducted into degrees of affinity ; and, in the 
participated socialities of the little com- 
munity, I lay down for a brief while my 
solitary bachelorship. I carry this humour 
so far, that I take it unkindly to be left out, 
even when a funeral is going on in the house 
of a dear friend. But to my subject. 

The union itself had been long settled, 
but its celebration had been hitherto deferred, 
to an almost unreasonable state of suspense 
in the lovers, by some invincible prejudices 
which the bride's father had unhappily con- 
tracted upon the subject of the too early 
marriages of females. He has been lec- 
turing any time these five years — for to that 
length the courtship has been protracted — 
upon the propriety of putting off the so- 
lemnity, till the lady should have completed 
her five-and-twentieth year. We all began 
to be afraid that a suit, which as yet had 
abated of none of its ardours, might at last 
be lingered on, till passion had time to cool, 
and love go out in the experiment. But 
a little wheedling on the part of his wife, 
who was by no means a party to these over- 
strained notions, joined to some serious ex- 
postulations on that of his friends, who, 
from the growing infirmities of the old 
gentleman, could not promise ourselves many 
years' enjoyment of his company, and were 
anxious to bring matters to a conclusion 



during his lifetime, at length prevailed ; and 
on Monday last the daughter of my old 

friend, Admiral , having attained the 

womanly age of nineteen, was conducted to 

the church !by her pleasant cousin J , 

who told some few years older. 

Before the youthful part of my female 
readers express their indignation at the 
abominable loss of time occasioned to the 
lovers by the preposterous notions of my old 
friend, they will do well to consider the 
reluctance which a fond parent naturally 
feels at parting with his child. To this 
unwillingness, I believe, in most cases may 
be traced the difference of opinion on this 
point between child and parent, whatever 
pretences of interest or prudence may be 
held out to cover it. The hard-heartedness 
of fathers is a fine theme for romance writers, 
a sure and moving topic ; but is there not 
something untender, to say no more of it, in 
the hurry which a beloved child is sometimes 
in to tear herself from the paternal stock, 
and commit herself to strange graftings ? 
The case is heightened where the lady, as in 
the present instance, happens to be an only 
child. I do not understand these matters 
experimentally, but I can make a shrewd 
guess at the wounded pride of a parent upon 
these occasions. It is no new observation, 
I believe, that a lover in most cases has no 
rival so much to be feared as the father. 
Certainly there is a jealousy in unparalleled 
subjects, which is little less heart-rending 
than the passion which we more strictly 
christen by that name. Mothers' scruples 
are more easily got over ; for this reason, 
I suppose, that the protection transferred to a 
husband is less a derogation and a loss to their 
authority than to the paternal. Mothers, 
besides, have a trembling foresight, which 
paints the inconveniences (impossible to be 
conceived in the same degree by the other 
parent) of a life of forlorn celibacy, which 
the refusal of a tolerable match may entail 
upon their child. Mothers' instinct is a surer 
guide here, than the cold reasonings of a 



464 



THE WEDDING. 



father on such a topic. To this instinct may 
be imputed, and by it alone may be excused 
the unbeseeming artifices, by which some 
wives push on the matrimonial projects of 
their daughters, which the husband, however 
approving, shall entertain with comparative 
indifference. A little shamelessness on this 
head is pardonable. With this explanation, 
forwardness becomes a grace, and maternal 
importunity receives the name of a virtue. — 
But the parson stays, while I preposterously 
assume his ofiice ; I am preaching, while the 
bride is on the threshold. 

Nor let any of my female readers suppose 
that the sage reflections which have just 
escaped me have the obliquest tendency of 
application to the young lady, who, it will 
be seen, is about to venture upon a change 
in her condition, at a mature and competent 
age, and not without the fullest approbation 
of all parties. I only deprecate very hasty 
marriages. 

It had been fixed that the ceremony should 
be gone through at an early hour, to give 
time for a little dejeune afterwards, to which 
a select party of friends had been invited. 
We were in church a little before the clock 
struck eight. 

Nothing could be more judicious or grace- 
ful than the dress of the bride-maids — the 
three charming Miss Foresters — on this 
morning. To give the bride an opportunity 
of shining singly, they had come habited all 
in green. I am ill at describing female 
apparel ; but while she stood at the altar in 
vestments white and candid as her thoughts, 
a sacrificial whiteness, they assisted in robes, 
such as might become Diana's nymphs — 
Foresters indeed — as such who had not yet 
come to the resolution of putting off cold 
virginity. These young maids, not being so 
blest as to have a mother living, I am told, 
keep single for their father's sake, and live 
altogether so happy with their remaining 
parent, that the hearts of their lovers are 
ever broken with the prospect (so inaus- 
picious to their hopes) of such uninterrupted 
and provoking home-comfort. Gallant girls ! 
each a victim worthy of Iphigenia ! 

I do not know what business I have to be 
present in solemn places. I cannot divest 
me of an unseasonable disposition to levity 
upon the most awful occasions. I was never 
cut out for a public functionary. Ceremony 



and I have long shaken hands ; but I could 
not resist the importunities of the young 
lady's father, whose gout unhappily confined 
him at home, to act as parent on this occa- 
sion, and give away the bride. Something 
ludicrous occurred to me at this most serious 
of all moments — a sense of my unfitness to 
have the disposal, even in imagination, of 
the sweet young creature beside me. I fear 
I was betrayed to some lightness, for the 
awful eye of the parson — and the rector's 
eye of Saint Mildred's in the Poultry is no 
trifle of a rebuke — was upon me in an 
instant, souring my incipient jest to the 
tristful severities of a funeral. 

This was the only misbehaviour which 
I can plead to upon this solemn occasion, 
unless what was objected to me after 
the ceremony, by one of the handsome 

Miss T s, be accounted a solecism. She 

was pleased to say that she had never seen a 
gentleman before me give away a bride, in 
black. Now black has been my ordinary 
apparel so long — indeed I take it to be the 
proper costume of an author — the stage 
sanctions it — that to have appeared in some 
lighter colour would have raised more mirth 
at my expense, than the anomaly had created 
censure. But I could perceive that the 
bride's mother, and some elderly ladies 
present (God bless them !) would have been 
well content, if I had come in any other 
colour than that. But I got over the omen 
by a lucky apologue, which I remembered 
out of Pilpay, or some Indian author, of 
all the birds being invited to the linnet's 
wedding, at which, when all the rest came 
in their gayest feathers, the raven alone 
apologised for his cloak because " he had no 
other." This tolerably reconciled the elders. 
But with the young people all was merri- 
ment, and shaking of hands, and congratu- 
lations, and kissing away the bride's tears, 
and kissing from her in return, till a young 
lady, who assumed some experience in these 
matters, having worn the nuptial bands 
some four or five weeks longer than her 
friend, rescued her, archly observing, with 
half an eye upon the bridegroom, that at 
this rate she would have " none left." 

My friend the Admiral was in fine wig 
and buckle on this occasion — a striking con- 
trast to his usual neglect of personal appear- 
ance. He did not once shove up his borrowed 



THE WEDDING. 



465 



locks (his custom ever at his morning studies) 
to betray the few grey stragglers of his 
own beneath them. He wore an aspect of 
thoughtful satisfaction. I trembled for the 
hour, which at length approached, when 
after a protracted breakfast of three hours — 
if stores of cold fowls, tongues, hams, botar- 
goes, dried fruits, wines, cordials, &c, can 
deserve so meagre an appellation — the coach 
was announced, which was come to carry 
off the bride and bridegroom for a season, 
as custom has sensibly ordained, into the 
country ; upon which design, wishing them 
a felicitous journey, let us return to the 
assembled guests. 

As when a well-graced actor leaves the stage, 

The eyes of men 

Are idly bent on him that enters next, 

so idly did we bend our eyes upon one 
another, when the chief performers in the 
morning's pageant had vanished. None told 
his tale. None sipped her glass. The poor 
Admiral made an effort — it was not much. 
I had anticipated so far. Even the infinity 
of full satisfaction, that had betrayed itself 
through the prim looks and quiet deport- 
ment of his lady, began to wane into some- 
thing of misgiving. No one knew whether 
to take their leaves or stay. We seemed 
assembled upon a silly occasion. In this 
crisis, betwixt tarrying and departure, I must 
do justice to a foolish talent of mine, which 
had otherwise like to have brought me into 
disgrace in the fore-part of the day ; I mean 
a power, in any emergency, of thinking and 
giving vent to all manner of strange non- 
sense. In this awkward dilemma I found it 
sovereign. I rattled off some of my most 
excellent absurdities. All were willing to be 
relieved, at any expense of reason, from the 
pressure of the intolerable vacuum which 
had succeeded to the morning bustle. By 
this means I was fortunate in keeping 
together the better part of the company to 
a late hour ; and a rubber of whist (the 
Admiral's favourite game) with some rare 



strokes of chance as well as skill, which 
came opportunely on his side — lengthened 
out till midnight — dismissed the old gentle- 
man at last to his bed with comparatively 
easy spirits. 

I have been at my old friend's various 
times since. I do not know a visiting place 
where every guest is so perfectly at his ease ; 
nowhere, where harmony is so strangely the 
result of confusion. Everybody is at cross 
purposes, yet the effect is so much better 
than uniformity. Contradictory orders ; 
servants pulling one way ; master and mis- 
tress driving some other, yet both diverse ; 
visitors huddled up in corners ; chairs, 
unsymmetrised ; candles disposed by chance ; 
meals at odd hours, tea and supper at once, 
or the latter preceding the former ; the host 
and the guest conferring, yet each upon a 
different topic, each understanding himself, 
neither trying to understand or hear the 
other ; draughts and politics, chess and 
political economy, cards and conversation on 
nautical matters, going on at once, without 
the hope, or indeed the wish, of distin- 
guishing them, make it altogether the most 
perfect concordia discors you shall meet with. 
Yet somehow the old house is not quite 
what it should be. The Admiral still enjoys 
his pipe, but he has no Miss Emily to fill it 
for him. The instrument stands where it 
stood, but she is gone, whose delicate touch 
could sometimes for a short minute appease 
the warring elements. He has learnt, as 
Marvel expresses it, to " make his destiny 
his choice." He bears bravely up, but he 
does not come out with his flashes of wild 
wit so thick as formerly. His sea-songs 
seldomer escape him. His wife, too, looks as 
if she wanted some younger body to scold 
and set to rights. "We all miss a junior 
presence. It is wonderful how one young 
maiden freshens up, and keeps green, the 
paternal roof. Old and young seem to have 
an interest in her, so long as she is not 
absolutely disposed of. The youthfulness of 
the house is flown. Emily is married. 



466 



REJOICINGS UPON THE NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE. 



EEJOICINGS UPON THE NEW YEAE'S COMING OF AGE. 



The Old Tear being dead, and the New 
Year coming of age, which he does, by 
Calendar Law, as soon as the breath is out 
of the old gentleman's body, nothing would 
serve the young spark but he must give a 
dinner upon the occasion, to which all the 
Bays in the year were invited. The Festivals, 
whom he deputed as his stewards, were 
mightily taken with the notion. They had 
been engaged time out of mind, they said, in 
providing mirth and good cheer for mortals 
below ; and it was time they should have a 
taste of their own bounty. It was stiffly 
debated among them whether the Fasts 
should be admitted. Some said the appear- 
ance of such lean, starved guests, with their 
mortified faces, would pervert the ends of 
the meeting. But the objection was over- 
ruled by Christmas Day, who had a design 
upon Ash Wednesday (as you shall hear), and 
a mighty desire to see how the old Domine 
would behave himself in his cups. Only 
the Vigils were requested to come with 
their lanterns, to light the gentlefolks home 
at night. 

All the Days came to their day. Covers 
were provided for three hundred and sixty- 
five guests at the principal table ; with an 
occasional knife and fork at the side-board 
for the Twenty-Ninth of February. 

I should have told you that cards of 
invitation had been issued. The carriers 
were the Hours ; twelve little, merry, 
whirligig foot-pages, as you should desire to 
see, that went all round, and found out the 
persons invited well enough, with the ex- 
ception of Easter Day, /Shrove Tuesday, and a 
few such Moveables, who had lately shifted 
their quarters. 

Well, they all met at last, foul Days, fine 
Days, all sorts of Days, and a rare dm they 
made of it. There was nothing but, Hail ! 
fellow Day, — well met — brother Day — sister 
Day — only Lady Day kept a little on the 
aloof, and seemed somewhat scornful. Yet 
some said, Twelfth Day cut her out and out, 
for she came in a tiffany suit, white and 



gold, like a queen on a frost-cake, all royal, 
glittering, and Epiphanous. The rest came, 
some in green, some in white — but old Lent 
and his family were not yet out of mourning. 
Eainy Days came in, dripping ; and sun- 
shiny Days helped them to change their 
stockings. Wedding Day was there in his 
marriage finery, a little the worse for wear. 
Pay Day came late, as he always does ; and 
Doomsday sent word — he might be expected. 

April Fool (as my young lord's jester) took 
upon himself to marshal the guests, and 
wild work he made with it. It would have 
posed old Erra Pater to have found out any 
given Day in the year, to erect a scheme 
upon — good Days, bad Days, were so shuffled 
together, to the confounding of all sober 
horoscopy. 

He had stuck the Twenty-First of June 
next to the Twenty-Second of December, and 
the former looked like a Maypole siding a 
marrow-bone. Ash Wednesday got wedged 
in (as was concerted) betwixt Christmas and 
Lord Mayor's Days. Lord ! how he laid 
about him ! Nothing but barons of beef 
and turkeys would go down with him — to 
the great greasing and detriment of his new 
sackcloth bib and tucker. And still Christmas 
Day was at his elbow, plying him with the 
wassail-bowl, till he roared, and hiccupp'd, 
and protested there was no faith in dried 
ling, but commended it to the devil for a 
sour, windy, acrimonious, censorious, hy-po- 
crit-crit-critical mess, and no dish for a 
gentleman. Then he dipt his fist into the 
middle of the great custard that stood before 
his left hand neighbour, and daubed his 
hungry beard all over with it, till you would 
have taken him for the Last Day in December, 
it so hung in icicles. 

At another part of the table, Shrove 
Tuesday was helping the Second of September 
to some cock broth, — which courtesy the 
latter returned with the delicate thigh of a 
hen pheasant — so there was no love lost for 
that matter. The Last of Lent was spunging 
upon Shrovetide's pancakes ; which April 



REJOICINGS UPON THE NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE. 



467 



Fool perceiving, told him he did well, for 
pancakes were proper to a good fry-day. 

In another part, a hubbub arose about the 
Thirtieth of January, who, it seems, being a 
sour, puritanic character, that thought 
nobody's meat good or sanctified enough for 
him, had smuggled into the room a calf's 
head, which he had had cooked at home for 
that purpose, thinking to feast thereon 
incontinently ; but as it lay in the dish, 
March Manyweathers, who is a very fine lady, 
and subject to the meagrims, screamed out 
there was a "human head in the platter," 
and raved about Herodias' daughter to that 
degree, that the obnoxious viand was obliged 
to be removed ; nor did she recover her 
stomach till she had gulped down a Restora- 
tive, confected of Oak Apple, which the merry 
Twenty-Ninth of May always carries about 
with him for that purpose. 

The King's health* being called for after 
this, a notable dispute arose between the 
Twelfth of August (a zealous old Whig 
gentlewoman) and the Twenty-Third of April 
(a new-fangled lady of the Tory stamp), as 
to which of them should have the honour to 
propose it. August grew hot upon the 
matter, affirming time out of mind the 
prescriptive right to have lain with her, till 
her rival had basely supplanted her ; whom 
she represented as little better than a kept 
mistress, who went about in fine clothes, while 
she (the legitimate Birthday) had scarcely 
a rag, &c. 

April Fool, being made mediator, con- 
firmed the right, in the strongest form of 
words, to the appellant, but decided for 
peace' sake that the exercise of it should 
remain with the present possessor. At the 
same time, he slyly rounded the first lady in 
the ear, that an action might lie against the 
Crown for bi-geny. 

It beginning to grow a little duskish, 
Candlemas lustily bawled out for lights, 
which was opposed by all the Days, who 
protested against burning daylight. Then 
fair water was handed round in silver ewers, 
and the same lady was observed to take an 
unusual time in Washing herself. 

May Day, with that sweetness which is 
peculiar to her, in a neat speech proposing 
the health of the founder, crowned her 

* King George IV. 



goblet (and by her example the rest of the 
company) with garlands. This being done, 
the lordly New Year, from the upper end of 
the table, in a cordial but somewhat lofty 
tone, returned thanks. He felt proud on an 
occasion of meeting so many of his worthy 
father's late tenants, promised to improve 
their farms, and at the same time to abate 
(if anything was found unreasonable) in their 
rents. 

At the mention of this, the four Quarter 
Days involuntarily looked at each other, and 
smiled ; April Fool whistled to an old tune 
of " New Brooms ; " and a surly old rebel at 
the further end of the table (who was 
discovered to be no other than the Fifth of 
November) muttered out, distinctly enough 
to be heard by the whole company, words to 
this effect, that " when the old one is gone, 
he is a fool that looks for a better." Which 
rudeness of his, the guests resenting, unani- 
mously voted his expulsion ; and the male- 
content was thrust out neck and heels into 
the cellar, as the properest place for such a 
boutefeu and firebrand as he had shown 
himself to be. 

Order being restored — the young lord 
(who, to say truth, had been a little ruffled, 
and put beside his oratory) in as few, and 
yet as obliging words as possible, assured 
them of entire welcome ; and, with a graceful 
turn, singling out poor Twenty-Ninth of 
February, that had sate all this while mum- 
chance at the side-board, begged to couple 
his health with that of the good company 
before him — which he drank accordingly ; 
observing that he had not seen his honest 
face any time these four years — with a 
number of endearing expressions besides. 
At the same time, removing the solitary Day 
from the forlorn seat which had been 
assigned him, he stationed him at his own 
board, somewhere between the Greek Calends 
and Latter Lammas. 

Ash Wednesday, being now called upon for 
a song, with his eyes fast stuck in his head, 
and as well as the Canary he had swallowed 
would give him leave, struck up a Carol, 
which Christmas Day had taught him for the 
nonce ; and was followed by the latter, who 
gave " Miserere," in fine style, hitting off the 
mumping notes and lengthened drawl of Old 
Mortification with infinite humour. April 
Fool swore they had exchanged conditions ; 



468 



OLD CHINA. 



but Good Friday was observed to look 
extremely grave ; and Sunday held her fan 
before her face that she might not be seen to 
smile. 

Shrove-tide, Lord Mayor's Day, and April 
Fool, next joined in a glee — 

Which is the properest day to drink ? 

in which all the Days chiming in, made a 
merry burden. 

They next fell to quibbles and conundrums. 
The question being proposed, who had the 
greatest number of followers — the Quarter 
Days said, there could be no question as to 
that ; for they had all the creditors in the 
world dogging their heels. But April Fool 
gave it in favour of the Forty Days before 
Easter ; because the debtors in all cases out- 
numbered the creditors, and they kept lent 
all the year. 

All this while Valentine's Day kept 
courting pretty May, who sate next him, 
slipping amorous billets-doux under the table, 
till the Dog Days (who are naturally of a 
warm constitution) began to be jealous, and 
to bark and rage exceedingly. April Fool, 
who likes a bit of sport above measure, and 
had some pretensions to the lady besides, as 
being but a cousin once removed, — clapped 
and halloo'd them on ; and as fast as their 
indignation cooled, those mad wags, the 
Ember Days, were at it with their bellows, to 
blow it into a flame ; and all was in a 
ferment ; till old Madam Septuagesima (who 
boasts herself the Mother of the Days) wisely 
diverted the conversation with a tedious 
tale of the lovers which she could reckon 



when she was young ; and of one Master 
Rogation Day in particular, who was for 
ever putting the question to her ; but she 
kept him at a distance, as the chronicle 
would tell — by which T apprehend she 
meant the Almanack. Then she rambled 
on to the Days that were gone, the good old 
Days, and so to the Days before the Flood — 
which plainly showed her old head to be 
little better than crazed and doited. 

Day being ended, the Days called for their 
cloaks and great-coats, and took their leaves. 
Lord Mayor's Day went off in a Mist, as 
usual ; Shortest Day in a deep black Fog, that 
wrapt the little gentleman all round like a 
hedge-hog. Two Vigils — so watchmen are 
called in heaven — saw Christmas Day safe 
home — they had been used to the business 
before. Another Vigil — a stout, sturdy, 
patrole, called the Eve of St. Christopher — 
seeing Ash Wednesday in a condition little 
better than he should be — e'en whipt him 
over his shoulders, pick-a-back fashion, 
and Old Mortification went floating home 
singing— 

On the bat's back do I fly, 

and a number of old snatches besides, between 
drunk and sober ; but very few Aves or 
Penitentiaries (you may believe me) were 
among them. Longest Day set off westward 
in beautiful crimson and gold — the rest, 
some in one fashion, some in another ; but 
Valentine and pretty May took their de- 
parture together in one of the prettiest 
silvery twilights a Lover's Day could wish 
to set in. 



OLD CHINA. 



I have an almost feminine partiality for 
old china. When I go to see any great house, 
I inquire for the china-closet, and next for 
the picture gallery. I cannot defend the 
order of preference, but by saying, that we 
have all some taste or other, of too ancient a 
date to admit of our remembering distinctly 
that it was an acquired one. I can call to 
mind the first play, and the first exhibition, 
that I was taken to j but I am not conscious 



of a time when china jars and saucers were 
introduced into my imagination. 

I had no repugnance then — why should I 
now have ? — to those little, lawless, azure- 
tinctured grotesques, that under the notion 
of men and women, float about, uncircum- 
scribed by any element, in that world before 
perspective — a china tea-cup. 

I like to see my old friends — whom distance 
cannot diminish — figuring up in the air (so 



OLD CHINA. 



469 



they appear to our optics), yet on terra firma 
still — for so we must in courtesy interpret 
that speck of deeper blue, — which the decorous 
artist, to prevent absurdity, had made to 
spring up beneath their sandals. 

I love the men with women's faces, and 
the women, if possible, with still more 
womanish expressions. 

Here is a young and courtly Mandarin, 
handing tea to a lady from a salver — two 
miles off. See how distance seems to set off 
respect ! And here the same lady, or 
another — for likeness is identity on tea-cups — 
is stepping into a little fairy boat, moored on 
the hither side of this calm garden - river, 
with a dainty mincing foot, which in a right 
angle of incidence (as angles go in our world) 
must infallibly land her in the midst of a 
flowery mead — a furlong off on the other 
side of the same strange stream ! 

Farther on — if far or near can be predicated 
of their world — see horses, trees, pagodas, 
dancing the hays. 

Here — a cow and rabbit couchant, and co^ 
extensive — so objects show, seen through 
the lucid atmosphere of fine Cathay. 

I was pointing out to my cousin last 
evening, over our Hyson, (which we are old- 
fashioned enough to drink unmixed still of 
an afternoon) some of these speciosa miracula 
upon a set of extraordinary old blue china 
(a recent purchase) which we were now for 
the first time using ; and could not help 
remarking, how favourable circumstances 
had been to us of late years, that we could 
afford to please the eye sometimes with 
trifles of this sort — when a passing sentiment 
seemed to overshade the brows of my com- 
panion. I am quick at detecting these 
summer clouds in Bridget. 

" I wish the good old times would come 
again," she said, " when we were not quite 
so rich. I do not mean, that I want to be 
poor ; but there was a middle state " — so 
she was pleased to ramble on, — " in which I 
am sure we were a great deal happier. A 
purchase is but a purchase, now that you 
have money enough and to spare. Formerly 
it used to be a triumph. When we coveted a 
cheap luxury (and, O ! how much ado I had 
to get you to consent in those times !) — we 
were used to have a debate two or three days 
before, and to weigh the for and against, and 
think what we might spare it out of, and what 



saving we could hit upon, that should be an 
equivalent. A thing was worth buying then, 
when we felt the money that we paid for it. 

" Do you remember the brown suit, which 
you made to hang upon you, till all your 
friends cried shame upon you, it grew so 
thread-bare — and all because of that folio 
Beaumont and Fletcher, which you dragged 
home late at night from Barker's in Covent- 
garden ? Do you remember how we eyed it 
for weeks before we could make up our 
minds to the purchase, and had not come to 
a determination till it was near ten o'clock 
of the Saturday night, when you set off from 
Islington, fearing you should be too late — 
and when the old bookseller with some 
grumbling opened his shop, and by the 
twinkling taper (for he was setting bed- 
wards) lighted out the relic from his dusty 
treasures — and when you lugged it home, 
wishing it were twice as cumbersome — and 
when you presented it to me — and when we 
were exploring the perfectness of it {collating 
you called it)— and while I was repairing 
some of the loose leaves with paste, which 
your impatience would not suffer to be left 
till daybreak — was there no pleasure in 
being a poor man ? or can those neat black 
clothes which you wear now, and are so 
careful to keep brushed, since we have 
become rich and finical, give you half the 
honest vanity, with which you flaunted it 
about in that overworn suit — your old 
corbeau — for four or five weeks longer than 
you should have done, to pacify your con- 
science for the mighty sum of fifteen — or 
sixteen shillings was it 1 — a great affair we 
thought it then — which you had lavished on 
the old folio. Now you can afford to buy 
any book that pleases you, but I do not see 
that you ever bring me home any nice old 
purchases now. 

"When you came home with twenty 
apologies for laying out a less number of 
shillings upon that print after Lionardo, 
which we christened the ' Lady Blanch ; ' 
when you looked at the purchase, and 
thought of the money — and thought of the 
money, and looked again at the picture — was 
there no pleasure in being a poor man ? Now, 
you have nothing to do but to walk into 
Colnaghi's, and buy a wilderness of Lionardos, 
Yet do you ? 

" Then, do you remember our pleasant 



470 



OLD CHINA. 



walks to Enfield, and Potter's bar, and 
Waltham, when we had a holy day — holydays, 
and all other fun, are gone now we are rich 
— and the little hand-basket in which I used 
to deposit our day's fare of savory cold lamb 
and salad — and how you would pry about at 
noon-tide for some decent house, where we 
might go in and produce our store — only 
paying for the ale that you must call for — 
and speculate upon the looks of the landlady, 
and whether she was likely to allow us a 
table-cloth — and wish for such another 
honest hostess, as Izaak Walton has described 
many a one on the pleasant banks of the 
Lea, when he went a fishing — and sometimes 
they would prove obliging enough, and some- 
times they would look grudgingly upon us — 
but we had cheerful looks still for one another, 
and would eat our plain food savorily, 
scarcely grudging Piscator his Trout Hall ? 
Now — when we go out a day's pleasuring, 
which is seldom moreover, we ride part of 
the way — and go into a fine inn, and order 
the best of dinners, never debating the 
expense — which after all, never has half the 
relish of those chance country snaps, when 
we were at the mercy of uncertain usage, and 
a precarious welcome. 

" You are too proud to see a play any- 
where now but in the pit. Do you remember 
where it was we used to sit, when we saw 
the Battle of Hexham, and the Surrender of 
Calais, and Bannister and Mrs. Bland in the 
Children in the "Wood — when we squeezed 
out our shillings a-piece to sit three or four 
times in a season in the one-shilling gallery 
— where you felt all the time that you ought 
not to have brought me — and more strongly 
I felt obligation to you for having brought 
me — and the pleasure was the better for a 
little shame — and when the curtain drew up, 
what cared we for our place in the house, or 
what mattered it where we were sitting, 
when our thoughts were with Rosalind in 
Arden, or with Viola at the Court of Illyria. 
You used to say, that the Gallery was the 
best place of all for enjoying a play socially 
— that the relish of such exhibitions must be 
in proportion to the infrequency of going — 
that the company we met there, not being in 
general readers of plays, were obliged to 
attend the more, and did attend, to what was 
going on, on the stage — because a word lost 
would have been a chasm, which it was 



impossible for them to fill up. With such 
reflections we consoled our pride then— and 
I appeal to you, whether as a woman, I 
met generally with less attention and accom- 
modation than I have done since in more 
expensive situations in the house? The 
getting in indeed, and the crowding up those 
inconvenient staircases, was bad enough, — 
but there was still a law of civility to woman 
recognised to quite as great an extent as 
we ever found in the other passages — and 
how a little difficulty overcome heightened 
the snug seat and the play, afterwards ! Now 
we can only pay our money and walk in. 
You cannot see, you say, in the galleries now. 
I am sure we saw, and heard too, well enough 
then — but sight, and all, I think, is gone 
with our poverty. 

" There was pleasure in eating straw- 
berries, before they became quite common — 
in the first dish of peas, while they were yet 
dear — to have them for a nice supper, a treat. 
What treat can we have now ? If we were to 
treat ourselves now — that is, to have dainties 
a little above our means, it would be selfish 
and wicked. It is the very little more that 
we allow ourselves beyond what the actual 
poor can get at, that makes what I call a 
treat — when two people living together, as 
we have done, now and then indulge them- 
selves in a cheap luxury, which both like ; 
while each apologises, and is willing to take 
both halves of the blame to his single share. 
I see no harm in people making much of 
themselves, in that sense of the word, It 
may give them a hint how to make much of 
others. But now, what I mean by the word 
— we never do make much of ourselves. 
None but the poor can do it. I do not mean 
the veriest poor of all, but persons as we 
were, just above poverty. 

" I know what you were going to say, that 
it is mighty pleasant at the end of the year 
to make all meet, — and much ado we used 
to have every Thirty-first Night of December 
to account for our exceedings — many a long 
face did you make over your puzzled accounts, 
and in contriving to make it out how we 
had spent so much — or that we had not 
spent so much — or that it was impossible 
we should spend so much next year — and still 
we found our slender capital decreasing — 
but then, — betwixt ways, and projects, and 
compromises of one sort or another, and 



THE CHILD ANGEL; A DREAM. 



471 



talk of curtailing this charge, and doing with- 
out that for the future — and the hope that 
youth brings, and laughing spirits (in which 
you were never poor till now), we pocketed 
up oar loss, and in conclusion, with ' lusty 
brimmers ' (as you used to quote it out of 
hearty cheerful Mr. Cotton, as you called him), 
we used to welcome in l the coming guest.' 
Now we have no reckoning at all at the end of 
the old year — no nattering promises about 
the new year doing better for us." 

Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most 
occasions, that when she gets into a rhetori- 
cal vein, I am careful how I interrupt it. 
I could not help, however, smiling at the 
phantom of wealth which her dear imagina- 
tion had conjured up out of a clear income of 

poor hundred pounds a year. " It is 

true we were happier when we were poorer, 
but we were also younger, my cousin. I am 
afraid we must put up with the excess, for if 
we were to shake the superflux into the sea, 
we should not much mend ourselves. That 
we had much to struggle with, as we grew 
up together, we have reason to be most 
thankful. It strengthened and knit our com- 
pact closer. We could never have been what 
we have been to each other, if we had always 
had the sufficiency which you now complain of. 
The resisting power — those natural dilations 
of the youthful spirit, which circumstances 
cannot straiten — with us are long since 
passed away. Competence to age is supple- 



mentary youth, a sorry supplement indeed, 
but I fear the best that is to be had. We 
must ride where we formerly walked: live 
better and lie softer — and shall be wise to do 
so — than we had means to do in those good 
old days you speak of. Yet could those days 
return — could you and I once more walk our 
thirty miles a day — could Bannister and Mrs. 
Bland again be young, and you and I be 
young to see them — could the good old one- 
shilling gallery days return — they are dreams, 
my cousin, now — but could you and I at this 
moment, instead of this quiet argument, by 
our well-carpeted fireside, sitting on this 
luxurious sofa — be once more struggling up 
those inconvenient staircases, pushed about, 
and squeezed, and elbowed by the poorest 
rabble of poor gallery scramblers — could 
I once more hear those anxious shrieks 
of yours — and the delicious Thank God, 
we are safe, which always followed when 
the topmost stair, conquered, let in the 
first light of the whole cheerful theatre 
down beneath us — I know not the fathom 
line that ever touched a descent so deep 
as I would be willing to bury more wealth 
in than Crcesus had, or the great Jew 

R is supposed to have, to purchase it. 

And now do just look at that merry little 
Chinese waiter holding an umbrella, big 
enough for a bed-tester, over the head of that 
pretty insipid half Madona-ish chit of a lady 
in that very blue summer-house." 



THE CHILD ANGEL : A DEEAM. 



I chanced upon the prettiest, oddest, fan- 
tastical thing of a dream the other night, that 
you shall hear of. I had been reading the 
"Loves of the Angels," and went to bed with 
my head full of speculations, suggested by 
that extraordinary legend. It had given 
birth to innumerable conjectures ; and, I 
remember the last waking thought, which I 
gave expression to on my pillow, was a sort 
of wonder, " what could come of it." 

I was suddenly transported, how or 
whither I could scarcely make out — but to 
some celestial region. It was not the real 
heavens neither — not the downright Bible 



heaven — but a kind of fairy-land heaven, 
about which a poor human fancy may have 
leave to sport and air itself, I will hope, 
without presumption. 

Methought — what wild things dreams are ! 
— I was present — at what would you ima- 
gine 1 — at an angel's gossiping. 

Whence it came, or how it came, or who 
bid it come, or whether it came purely of its 
own head, neither you nor I know — but 
there lay, sure enough, wrapt in its little 
cloudy swaddling-bands — a Child Angel. 

Sun-threads — filmy beams — ran through 
the celestial napery of what seemed its 



472 



THE CHILD ANGEL; A DREAM. 



princely cradle. All the winged orders 
hovered round, watching when the new-born 
should open its yet closed eyes ; which, when 
it did, first one, and then the other — with a 
solicitude and apprehension, yet not such as, 
stained with fear, dim the expanding eyelids 
of mortal infants, but as if to explore its path 
in those its unhereditary palaces — what an 
inextinguishable titter that time spared not 
celestial visages ! Nor wanted there to my 
seeming — 0, the inexplicable simpleness of 
dreams ! — bowls of that cheering nectar, 

— which mortals caudle call below. 

Nor were wanting faces of female minis- 
trants, — stricken in years, as it might seem, 
— so dexterous were those heavenly attend- 
ants to counterfeit kindly similitudes of earth, 
to greet with terrestrial child- rites the young 
present, which earth had made to heaven. 

Then were celestial harpings heard, not in 
full symphony, as those by which the spheres 
are tutored ; but, as loudest instruments on 
earth speak oftentimes, muffled ; so to accom- 
modate their sound the better to the weak 
ears of the imperfect-born. And, with the 
noise of those subdued soundings, the Angelet 
sprang forth, fluttering its rudiments of 
pinions — but forthwith flagged and was re- 
covered into the arms of those full-winged 
angels. And a wonder it was to see how, as 
years went round in heaven — a year in 
dreams is as a day — continually its white 
shoulders put forth buds of wings, but want- 
ing the perfect angelic nutriment, anon was 
shorn of its aspiring, and fell fluttering — still 
caught by angel hands, for ever to put forth 
shoots, and to fall fluttering, because its birth 
was not of the unmixed vigour of heaven. 

And a name was given to the Babe Angel, 
and it was to be called Ge- Urania, because its 
production was of earth and heaven. 

And it could not taste of death; by reason 
of its adoption into immortal palaces : but it 
was to know weakness, and reliance, and the 
shadow of human imbecility ; and it went 
with a lame gait ; but in its goings it ex- 
ceeded all mortal children in grace and swift- 
ness. Then pity first sprang up in angelic 
bosoms; and yearnings (like the human) 
touched them at the sight of the immortal 
lame one. 

And with pain did then first those In- 
tuitive Essences, with pain and strife to 



their natures (not grief), put back their 
bright intelligences, and reduce their ethereal 
minds, schooling them to degrees and slower 
processes, so to adapt their lessons to the 
gradual illumination (as must needs be) of 
the half-earth-born ; and what intuitive no- 
tices they could not repel (by reason that 
their nature is, toknow all things at once) the 
half-heavenly novice, by the better part of its 
nature, aspired to receive into its under- 
standing ; so that Humility and Aspiration 
went on even-paced in the instruction of the 
glorious Amphibium. 

But, by reason that Mature Humanity is 
too gross to breathe the air of that super-sub- 
tile region, its portion was, and is, to be a 
child for ever. 

And because the human part of it might 
not press into the heart and inwards of the 
palace of its adoption, those full-natured 
angels tended it by turns in the purlieus of the 
palace, where were shady groves and rivulets, 
like this green earth from which it came ; so 
Love, with Voluntary Humility, waited upon 
the entertainment of the new-adopted. 

And myriads of years rolled round (in 
dreams Time is nothing), and still it kept, 
and is to keep, perpetual childhood, and is 
the Tutelar Genius of Childhood upon earth, 
and still goes lame and lovely. 

By the banks of the river Pison is seen, 
lone sitting by the grave of the terrestrial 
Adah, whom the angel Nadir loved, a Child ; 
but not the same which I saw in heaven. 
A mournful hue overcasts its lineaments ; 
nevertheless, a correspondency is between 
the child by the grave, and that celestial 
orphan, whom I saw above : and the dimness 
of the grief upon the heavenly, is a shadow 
or emblem of that which stains the beauty 
of the terrestrial. And this correspondency 
is not to be understood but by dreams. 

And in the archives of heaven I had grace 
to read, how that once the angel Nadir, 
being exiled from his place for mortal pas- 
sion, upspringing on the wings of parental 
love (such power had parental love for a 
moment to suspend the else-irrevocable law) 
appeared for a brief instant in his station, 
and, depositing a wondrous Birth, straight- 
way disappeared, and the palaces knew him 
no more. And this charge was the self-same 
Babe, who goeth lame and lovely — but Adah 
sleepeth by the river Pison. 



CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 



473 



CONFESSIONS OF A DEUNKAED. 



Dehortations from the use of strong 
liquors have been the favourite topic of sober 
declaimers in all ages, and have been received 
with abundance of applause by water-drink- 
ing critics. But with the patient himself, 
the man that is to be cured, unfortunately 
their sound has seldom prevailed. Yet the 
evil is acknowledged, the remedy simple. 
Abstain. No force can oblige a man to raise 
the glass to his head against his will. 'Tis 
as easy as not to steal, not to tell lies. 

Alas ! the hand to pilfer, and the tongue 
to bear false witness, have no constitutional 
tendency. These are actions in different to 
them. At the first instance of the reformed 
will, they can be brought off without a 
murmur. The itching finger is but a figure 
in speech, and the tongue of the liar can with 
the same natural delight give forth useful 
truths with which it has been accustomed to 
scatter their pernicious contraries. But 
when a man has commenced sot 

O pause, thou sturdy moralist, thou person 
of stout nerves and a strong head, whose 
liver is happily untouched, and ere thy gorge 
riseth at the name which I have written, first 
learn what the thing is ; how much of com- 
passion, how much of human allowance, thou 
mayest virtuously mingle with thy disappro- 
bation. Trample not on the ruins of a man. 
Exact not, under so terrible a penalty as 
infamy, a resuscitation from a state of death 
almost as real as that from which Lazarus 
rose not but by a miracle. 

Begin a reformation, and custom will make 
it easy. But what if the beginning be dread- 
ful, the first steps not like climbing a moun- 
tain but going through fire ? what if the 
whole system must undergo a change violent 
as that which we conceive of the mutation of 
form in some insects 1 what if a process 
comparable to flaying alive be to be gone 
through ? is the weakness that sinks under 
such struggles to be confounded with the 
pertinacity which clings to other vices, which 
have induced no constitutional necessity, no 
engagement of the whole victim, body and soul ? 



I have known one in that state, when he 
has tried to abstain but for one evening, — 
though the poisonous potion had long ceased 
to bring back its first enchantments, though 
he was sure it would rather deepen his 
gloom than brighten it, — in the violence of 
the struggle, and the necessity he has felt of 
getting rid of the present, sensation at any 
rate, I have known him to scream out, to 
cry aloud, for the anguish and pain of the 
strife within him. 

Why should I hesitate to declare, that the 
man of whom I speak is myself ? I have no 
puling apology to make to mankind. I see 
them all in one way or another deviating 
from the pure reason. It is to my own na- 
ture alone I am accountable for the woe that 
I have brought upon it. 

I believe that there are constitutions, 
robust heads and iron insides, whom scarce 
any excesses can hurt ; whom brandy(I have 
seen them drink it like wine), at all events 
whom wine, taken in ever so plentiful a 
measure, can do no worse injury to than just 
to muddle their faculties, perhaps never very 
pellucid. On them this discourse is wasted. 
They would but laugh at a weak brother, 
who, trying his strength with them, and 
coming off foiled from the contest, would 
fain persuade theni that such agonistic exer- 
cises are dangerou'sl It is to a very different 
description of persons I speak. It is to the 
weak, the nervous ; to those who feel the 
want of some artificial aid to raise their 
spirits in society to what is no more than the 
ordinary pitch of all around them without it. 
This is the secret of our drinking. Such 
must fly the convivial board in the first in- 
stance, if they do not mean to sell themselves 
for term of life. 

Twelve years ago I had completed my six- 
and-twentieth year. I had lived from the 
period of leaving school to that time pretty 
much in solitude. My companions were 
chiefly books, or at most one or two living 
ones of my own book-loving and sober stamp. 
I rose early, went to bed betimes, and the 



474 



CONFESSIONS OF A DEUNKAED. 



faculties which God had given me, I have 
reason to think, did not rust in me unused. 

About that time I fell in with some com- 
panions of a different order. They were 
men of boisterous spirits, sitters up a-nights, 
disputants, drunken ; yet seemed to have 
something noble about them. "We dealt 
about the wit, or what passes for it after 
midnight, jovially. Of the quality called 
fancy I certainly possessed a larger share 
than my companions. Encouraged by their 
applause, I set up for a professed joker ! I, 
who of all men am least fitted for such an 
occupation, having, in addition to the greatest 
difficulty which I experience at all times of 
finding words to express my meaning, a na- 
tural nervous impediment in my speech ! 

Eeader, if you are gifted with nerves like 
mine, aspire to any character but that of a 
wit. When you find a tickling relish upon 
your tongue disposing you to that sort of 
conversation, especially if you find a preter- 
natural flow of ideas setting in upon you at 
the sight of a bottle and fresh glasses, avoid 
giving way to it as you would fly your 
greatest destruction. If you cannot crush 
the power of fancy, or that within you which 
you mistake for such, divert it, give it some 
other play. Write an essay, pen a character 
or description, — but not as I do now, with 
tears trickling down your cheeks. 

To be an object of compassion to friends, 
of derision to foes ; to be suspected by 
strangers, stared at by fools ; to be esteemed 
dull when you cannot be witty, to be ap- 
plauded for witty when you know that you 
have been dull ; to be called upon for the 
extemporaneous exercise * of that faculty 
which no premeditation can give ; to be 
spurred on to efforts which end in contempt ; 
to be set on to provoke mirth which procures 
the procurer hatred; to give pleasure and 
be paid with squinting malice ; to swallow 
draughts of life-destroying wine which are 
to be distilled into airy breath to tickle vain 
auditors ; to mortgage miserable morrows 
for nights of madness ; to waste whole seas 
of time upon those who pay it back in little 
inconsiderable drops of grudging applause, — 
are the wages of buffoonery and death. 

Time, which has a sure stroke at dissolving 
all connexions which have no solider fasten- 
ing than this liquid cement, more kind to 
me than my own taste or penetration, at 



length opened my eyes to the supposed 
qualities of my first friends. No trace of 
them is left but in the vices which they in- 
troduced, and the habits they infixed. In 
them my friends survive still, and exercise 
ample retribution for any supposed infidelity 
that I may have been guilty of towards 
them. 

My next more immediate companions were 
and are persons of such intrinsic and felt 
worth, that though accidentally their ac- 
quaintance has proved pernicious to me, I 
do not know that if the thing were to do 
over again, I should have the courage to 
eschew the mischief at the price of forfeiting 
the benefit. I came to them reeking from 
the steams of my late over-heated notions of 
companionship ; and the slightest fuel which 
they unconsciously afforded, was sufficient to 
feed my old fires into a propensity. 

They were no drinkers, but, one from pro- 
fessional habits, and another from a custom 
derived from his father, smoked tobacco. 
The devil could not have devised a more 
subtle trap to re-take a backsliding penitent. 
The transition, from gulping down draughts 
of liquid fire to puffing out innocuous blasts 
of dry smoke, was so like cheating him. But 
he is too hard for us when we hope to com- 
mute. He beats us at barter ; and when we 
think to set off a new failing against an old 
infirmity, 'tis odds but he puts the trick 
upon us of two for one. That (comparatively) 
white devil of tobacco brought with him in 
the end seven worse than himself. 

It were impertinent to carry the reader 
through all the processes by which, from 
smoking at first with malt liquor, I took my 
degrees through thin wines, through stronger 
wine and water, through small punch, to 
those juggling compositions, which, under 
the name of mixed liquors, slur a great deal 
of brandy or other poison under less and less 
water continually, until they come next to 
none, and so to none at all. But it is hateful 
to disclose the secrets of my Tartarus. 

I should repel my readers, from a mere 
incapacity of believing me, were I to tell 
them what tobacco has been to me, the 
drudging service which I have paid, the 
slavery which I have vowed to it. How, 
when I have resolved to quit it, a feeling as 
of ingratitude has started up ; how it has put 
on personal claims and made the demands 



CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 



475 



of a friend upon me. How the reading of 
it casually in a book, as where Adams takes 
his whiff in the chimney-corner of some 
inn in Joseph Andrews, or Piscator in the 
Complete Angler breaks his fast upon a 
morning pipe in that delicate room Piscator- 
ibus Sacrum, has in a moment broken down 
the resistance of weeks. How a pipe was 
ever in my midnight path before me, till the 
vision forced me to realise it, — how then 
its ascending vapours curled, its fragrance 
lulled, and the thousand delicious minister- 
ings conversant about it, employing every 
faculty, extracted the sense of pain. How 
from illuminating it came to darken,- from a 
quick solace it turned to a negative relief, 
thence to a restlessness and dissatisfaction, 
thence to a positive misery. How, even now, 
when the whole secret stands confessed in 
all its dreadful truth before me, I feel myself 
linked to it beyond the power of revocation. 
Bone of my bone 

Persons not accustomed to examine the 
motives of their actions, to reckon up the 
countless nails that rivet the chains of habit, 
or perhaps being bound by none so obdurate 
as those I have confessed to, may recoil from 
this as from an overcharged picture. But 
what short of such a bondage is it, which in 
spite of protesting friends, a weeping wife, 
and a reprobating world, chains down many 
a poor fellow, of no original indisposition to 
goodness, to his pipe and his pot ? 

I have seen a print after Correggio, in 
which three female figures are ministering 
to a man who sits fast bound at the root of 
a tree. Sensuality is soothing him, Evil 
Habit is nailing him to a branch, and Eepug- 
nance at the same instant of time is applying 
a snake to his side. In his face is feeble 
delight, the recollection of past rather than 
perception of present pleasures, languid 
enjoyment of evil with utter imbecility to 
good, a Sybaritic effeminacy, a submission to 
bondage, the springs of the will gone down 
like a broken clock, the sin and the suffering 
co-instantaneous, or the latter forerunning 
the former, remorse preceding action — all 
this represented in one point of time. — When 
I saw this, I admired the wonderful skill of 
the painter. But when I went away, I wept, 
because I thought of my own condition. 

Of that there is no hope that it should 
ever change. The waters have gone over 



me. But out of the black depths, could I be 
heard, I would cry out to all those who have 
but set a foot in the perilous flood. Could 
the youth, to whom the flavour of his first 
wine is delicious as the opening scenes of 
life or the entering upon some newly dis- 
covered paradise, look into my desolation, 
and be made to understand what a dreary 
thing it is when a man shall feel himself 
going down a precipice with open eyes 
and a passive will, — to see his destruction 
and have no power to stop it, and yet to feel 
it all the way emanating from himself ; to 
perceive all goodness emptied out of him, 
and yet not to be able to forget a time when 
it was otherwise ; to bear about the piteous 
spectacle of his own self- ruins : — could he 
see my fevered eye, feverish with last night's 
drinking, and feverishly looking for this 
night's repetition of the folly ; could he feel 
the body of the death out of which I cry 
hourly with feebler and feebler outcry to be 
delivered, — it were enough to make him dash 
the sparkling beverage to the earth in all 
the pride of its mantling temptation ; to 
make him clasp his teeth, 

and not undo 'em 
To suffer wet damnation to run thro' em. 

Yea, but (methinks I hear somebody 
object) if sobriety be that fine thing you 
would have us to understand, if the comforts 
of a cool brain are to be preferred to that 
state of heated excitement which you describe 
and deplore, what hinders in your instance 
that you do not return to those habits from 
which you would induce others never to 
swerve ? if the blessing be worth preserving, 
is it not worth recovering 1 

Recovering ! — O if a wish could transport 
me back to those days of youth, when a 
draught from the next clear spring could 
slake any heats which summer suns and 
youthful exercise had power to stir up in the 
blood, how gladly would I return to thee, 
pure element, the drink of children, and of 
child-like holy hermit ! In my dreams I can 
sometimes fancy thy cool refreshment purling 
over my burning tongue. But my waking 
stomach rejects it. That which refreshes 
innocence only makes me sick and faint. 

But is there no middle way betwixt total 
abstinence and the excess which kills you ? 
— For your sake, reader, and that you may 



CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 



never attain to my experience, with pain 
I must utter the dreadful truth, that there 
is none, none that I can find. In my stage 
of habit (I speak not of habits less confirmed 
— for some of them I believe the advice to 
be most prudential) in the stage which I have 
reached, to stop short of that measure which 
is sufficient to draw on torpor and sleep, the 
benumbing apoplectic sleep of the drunkard, 
is to have taken none at all. The pain of 
the self-denial is all one. And what that is, 
I had rather the reader should believe on 
my credit, than know from his own trial. 
He will come to know it, whenever he shall 
arrive in that state, in which, paradoxical as 
it may appear, reason shall only visit him 
through intoxication : for it is a fearful truth, 
that the intellectual faculties by repeated 
acts of intemperance may be driven from 
their orderly sphere of action, their clear 
daylight ministeries, until they shall be 
brought at last to depend, for the faint 
manifestation of their departing energies, 
upon the returning periods of the fatal 
madness to which they owe their devasta- 
tion. The drinking man is never less himself 
than during his sober intervals. Evil is so 
far his good.* 

Behold me then, in the robust period of 
life, reduced to imbecility and decay. Hear 
me count my gains, and the profits which 
I have derived from the midnight cup. 

Twelve years ago, I was possessed of a 
healthy frame of mind and body. I was 
never strong, but I think my constitution 
(for a weak one) was as happily exempt 
from the tendency to any malady as it was 
possible to be. I scarce knew what it was 
to ail anything. Now, except when I am 
losing myself in a sea of drink, I am never 
free from those uneasy sensations in head 
and stomach, which are so much worse to 
bear than any definite pains or aches. 

At that time I was seldom in bed after 
six in the morning, summer and winter. 
I awoke refreshed, and seldom without some 
merry thoughts in my head, or some piece of 

* When poor M painted his last picture, with a 

pencil in one trembling hand, and a glass of brandy and 
water in the other, his fingers owed the comparative 
steadiness with which they were enabled to go through 
their task in an imperfect manner, to a temporary firm- 
ness derived from a repetition of practices, the general 
effect of which had shaken both them and him so 
terribly. 



a song to welcome the new-born day. Now, 
the first feeling which besets me, after 
stretching out the hours of recumbence to 
their last possible extent, is a forecast of the 
wearisome day that lies before me, with a 
secret wish that I could have lain on still, 
or never awaked. 

Life itself, my waking life, has much of 
the confusion, the trouble, and obscure per- 
plexity, of an ill dream. In the day time 
I stumble upon dark mountains. 

Business, which, though never very par- 
ticularly adapted to my nature, yet as some- 
thing of necessity to be gone through, and 
therefore best undertaken with cheerfulness, 
I used to enter upon with some degree of 
alacrity, now wearies, affrights, perplexes 
me. I fancy all sorts of discouragements, 
and am ready to give up an occupation which 
gives me bread, from a harassing conceit of 
incapacity. The slightest commission given 
me by a friend, or any small duty which 
I have to perform for myself, as giving orders 
to a tradesman, &c. haunts me as a labour 
impossible to be got through. So much the 
springs of action are broken, jf 

The same cowardice attends me in all my 
intercourse with mankind. I dare not pro- 
mise that a friend's honour, or his cause, 
would be safe in my keeping, if I were put 
to the expense of any manly resolution in 
defending it. So much the springs of moral 
action are deadened within me. 

My favourite occupations in times past 
now cease to entertain. I can do nothing 
readily. Application for ever so short a time 
kills me. This poor abstract of my condition 
was penned at long intervals, with scarcely 
any attempt at connexion of thought, which 
is now difficult to me. 

The noble passages which formerly de- 
lighted me in history or poetic fiction, now 
only draw a few weak tears, allied to dotage. 
My broken and dispirited nature seems to 
sink before anything great and admirable. 

I perpetually catch myself in tears, for any 
cause, or none. It is inexpressible how much 
this infirmity adds to a sense of shame, and 
a general feeling of deterioration. 

These are some of the instances, concerning 
which I can say with truth, that it was not 
always so with me.. 

Shall I lift up the veil of my weakness 
any further 1 — or is this disclosure sufficient ? 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 



477 



I am a poor nameless egotist, who have no 
vanity to consult by these Confessions. I 
know not whether I shall be laughed at, or 
heard seriously. Such as they are, I com- 



mend them to the reader's attention, if he 
find his own case any way touched. I have 
told him what I am come to. Let him stop 
in time. 



POPULAK FALLACIES. 



I.— THAT A BULLY IS ALWAYS A COWARD. 

This axiom contains a principle of com- 
pensation, which disposes us to admit the 
truth of it. But there is no safe trusting to 
dictionaries and definitions. "We should 
more willingly fall in with this popular 
language, if we did not find brutality some- 
times awkwardly coupled with valour in the 
same vocabulary. The comic writers, with 
their poetical justice, have contributed not a 
little to mislead us upon this point. To see 
a hectoring fellow exposed and beaten upon 
the stage, has something in it wonderfully 
diverting. Some people's share of animal 
spirits is notoriously low and defective. It 
has not strength to raise a vapour, or furnish 
out the wind of a tolerable bluster. These 
love to be told that huffing is no part of 
valour. The truest courage with them is 
that which is the least noisy and obtrusive. 
But confront one of these silent heroes with 
the swaggerer of real life, and his confidence 
in the theory quickly vanishes. Pretensions 
do not uniformly bespeak non-performance. 
A modest, inoffensive deportment does not 
necessarily imply valour ; neither does the 
absence of it justify us in denying that 
quality. Hickman wanted modesty — we do 
not mean him of Clarissa — but who ever 
doubted his courage % Even the poets — 
upon whom this equitable distribution of 
qualities should be most binding — have 
thought it agreeable to nature to depart 
from the rule upon occasion. Harapha, in 
the " Agonistes," is indeed a bully upon the 
received notions. Milton has made him at 
once a blusterer, a giant, and a dastard. But 
Almanzor, in Dryden, talks of driving armies 
singly before him — and does it. Tom Brown 
had a shrewder insight into this kind of 
character than either of his predecessors. 
He divides the palm more equably, and 
allows his hero a sort of dimidiate pre- 



eminence : — " Bully Dawson kicked by half 
the town, and half the town kicked by 
Bully Dawson." This was true distributive 
justice. 

II.— THAT ILL-GOTTEN GAIN NEVER PROSPERS. 

The weakest part of mankind have this 
saying commonest in their mouth. It is the 
trite consolation administered to the easy 
dupe, when he has been tricked out of his 
money or estate, that the acquisition of it 
will do the owner no good. But the rogues 
of this world — the prudenter part of them, 
at least, — know better; and if the obser- 
vation had been as true as it is old, would 
not have failed by this time to have 
discovered it. They have pretty sharp 
distinctions of the fluctuating and the 
permanent. "Lightly come, lightly go," is 
a proverb, which they can very well afford 
to leave, when they leave little else, to the 
losers. They do not always find manors, got 
by rapine or chicanery, insensibly to melt 
away, as the poets will have it ; or that all 
gold glides, like thawing snow, from the 
thief's hand that grasps it. Church land, 
alienated to lay uses, was formerly denounced 
to have this slippery quality. But some 
portions of it somehow always stuck so fast, 
that the denunciators have been fain to 
postpone the prophecy of refundment to a 
late posterity. 

III.— THAT A MAN MUST NOT LAUGH AT HIS 
OWN JEST. 

The severest exaction surely ever invented 
upon the self-denial of poor human nature ! 
This is to expect a gentleman to give a treat 
without partaking of it ; to sit esurient at 
his own table, and commend the flavour of 
his venison upon the absurd strength of his 
never touching it himself. On the contrary, 



478 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 



we love to see a wag taste his own joke to 
his party; to watch a quirk or a merry 
conceit flickering upon the lips some seconds 
before the tongue is delivered of it. If it be 
good, fresh, and racy — begotten of the 
occasion ; if he that utters it never thought 
it before, he is naturally the first to be 
tickled with it ; and any suppression of such 
complacence we hold to be churlish and 
insulting. What does it seem to imply but 
that your company is weak or foolish enough 
to be moved by an image or a fancy, that 
shall stir you not at all, or but faintly ? 
This is exactly the humour of the fine 
gentleman in Mandeville, who, while he 
dazzles his guests with the display of some 
costly toy, affects himself to "see nothing 
considerable in it." 



TV.— THAT SUCH A ONE SHOWS HIS BREEDING. 
—THAT IT IS EASY TO PERCEIVE HE IS 
NO GENTLEMAN. 

A speech from the poorest sort of people, 
which always indicates that the party 
vituperated is a gentleman. The very fact 
which they deny is that which galls and 
exasperates them to use this language. The 
forbearance with which it is usually received 
is a proof what interpretation the by-stander 
sets upon it. Of a kin to this, and still less 
politic, are the phrases with which, in their 
street rhetoric, they ply one another more 
grossly ; — He is a poor creature. — He has not 

a rag to cover &c. ; though this last, we 

confess, is more frequently applied by females 
to females. They do not perceive that the 
satire glances upon themselves. A poor 
man, of all things in the world, should not 
upbraid an antagonist with poverty. Are 
there no other topics — as, to tell him his 

father was hanged — his sister, &c. , 

without exposing a secret which should be 
kept snug between them ; and doing an 
affront to the order to which they have the 
honour equally to belong ? All this while 
they do not see how the wealthier man 
stands by and laughs in his sleeve at both. 



V.— THAT THE POOR COPY THE VICES OF 
THE RICH. 



A smooth text to the letter ; and, preached 
from the pulpit, is sure of a docile audience 



from the pews lined with satin. It is twice 
sitting upon velvet to a foolish squire to be 
told, that he — and not perverse nature, as the 
homilies would make us imagine, is the true 
cause of all the irregularities in his parish. 
This is striking at the root of free-will indeed, 
and denying the originality of sin in any 
sense. But men are not such implicit sheep 
as this comes to. If the abstinence from evil 
on the part of the upper classes is to derive 
itself from no higher principle than the 
apprehension of setting ill patterns to the 
lower, we beg leave to discharge them from 
all squeamishness on that score : they may 
even take their fill of pleasures, where they 
can find them. The Genius of Poverty, 
hampered and straitened as it is, is not so 
barren of invention, but it can trade upon 
the staple of its own vice, without drawing 
upon their capital. The poor are not quite 
such servile imitators as they take them for. 
Some of them are very clever artists in their 
way. Here and there we find an original. 
Who taught the poor to steal, to pilfer? 
They did not go to the great for schoolmas- 
ters in these faculties surely. It is well if in 
some vices they allow us to be — no copyists. 
In no other sense is it true that the poor 
copy them, than as servants may be said to 
take after their masters and mistresses, when 
they succeed to their reversionary cold meats. 
If the master, from indisposition or some 
other cause, neglect his food, the servant 
dines notwithstanding. 

" O, but (some will say) the force of 
example is great." We knew a lady who 
was so scrupulous on this head, that she 
would put up with the calls of the most 
impertinent visitor, rather than let her ser- 
vant say she was not at home, for fear of 
teaching her maid to tell an untruth ; and 
this in the very face of the fact, which she 
knew well enough, that the wench was one 
of the greatest liars upon the earth without 
teaching ; so much so, that her mistress 
possibly never heard two words of consecu- 
tive truth from her in her life. But nature 
must go for nothing : example must be every- 
thing. This liar in grain, who never opened 
her mouth without a lie, must be guarded 
against a remote inference, which she (pretty 
casuist !) might possibly draw from a form 
of words — literally false, but essentially 
deceiving no one — that under some circum- 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 



479 



stances a fib might not be so exceedingly 
sinful — a fiction, too, not at all in her own 
way, or one that she could be suspected of 
adopting, for few servant-wenches care to be 
denied to visitors. 

This word example reminds us of another 
fine word which is in use upon these occa- 
sions — encouragement. " People in our sphere 
must not be thought to give encouragement 
to such proceedings." To such a frantic 
height is this principle capable of being 
carried, that we have known individuals who 
have thought it within the scope of their 
influence to sanction despair, and give eclat 
to — suicide. A domestic in the family of a 
county member lately deceased, from love, or 
some unknown cause, cut his throat, but not 
successfully. The poor fellow was otherwise 
much loved and respected ; and great interest 
was used in his behalf, upon his recovery, 
that he might be permitted to retain his 
place ; his word being first pledged, not 
without some substantial sponsors to promise 
for him, that the like should never happen 
again. His master was inclinable to keep 
him, but his mistress thought otherwise ; 
and John in the end was dismissed, her lady- 
ship declaring that she " could not think of 
encouraging any such doings in the county." 

VI.— THAT ENOUGH IS AS GOOD AS A FEAST. 

Not a man, woman, or child, in ten miles 
round Guildhall, who really believes this 
saying. The inventor of it did not believe it 
himself. It was made in revenge by some- 
body, who was disappointed of a regale. It 
is a vile cold-scrag-of-mutton sophism ; a lie 
palmed upon the palate, which knows better 
things. If nothing else could be said for a 
feast, this is sufficient, that from the super- 
flux there is usually something left for the 
next day. Morally interpreted, it belongs to 
a class of proverbs which have a tendency to 
make us undervalue money. Of this cast 
are those notable observations, that money is 
not health ; riches cannot purchase every- 
thing : the metaphor which makes gold to 
be mere muck, with the morality which 
traces fine clothing to the sheep's back, and 
denounces pearl as the unhandsome excre- 
tion of an oyster. Hence, too, the phrase 
which imputes dirt to acres — a sophistry so 
barefaced, that even the literal sense of it is 



true only in a wet season. This, and abund- 
ance of similar sage saws assuming to incul- 
cate content, we verily believe to have been 
the invention of some cunning borrower, who 
had designs upon the purse of his wealthier 
neighbour, which he could only hope to carry 
by force of these verbal jugglings. Translate 
any one of these sayings out of the artful 
metonymy which envelopes it, and the trick 
is apparent. Goodly legs and shoulders of 
mutton, exhilarating cordials, books, pictures, 
the opportunities of seeing foreign countries, 
independence, heart's ease, a man's own time 
to himself, are not muck — however we may 
be pleased to scandalise with that appella- 
tion the faithful metal that provides them 
for us. 



VII.— OF TWO DISPUTANTS THE WARMEST IS 
GENERALLY IN THE WRONG. 

Our experience would lead us to quite an 
opposite conclusion. Temper, indeed, is no 
test of truth ; but warmth and earnestness 
are a proof at least of a man's own conviction 
of the rectitude of that which he maintains. 
Coolness is as often the result of an unprin- 
cipled indifference to truth or falsehood, as 
of a sober confidence in a man's own side in 
a dispute. Nothing is more insulting some- 
times than the appearance of this philoso- 
phic temper. There is little Titubus, the 
stammering law-stationer in Lincoln's-inn — 
we have seldom known this shrewd little 
fellow engaged in an argument where we 
were not convinced he had the best of it, if 
his tongue would but fairly have seconded 
him. When he has been spluttering excel- 
lent broken sense for an hour together, 
writhing and labouring to be delivered of 
the point of dispute — the very gist of the 
controversy knocking at his teeth, which like 
some obstinate iron-grating still obstructed 
its deliverance — his puny frame convulsed, 
and face reddening all over at an unfairness 
in the logic which he wanted articulation to 
expose, it has moved our gall to see a smooth 
portly fellow of an adversary, that cared 
not a button for the merits of the question, 
by merely laying his hand upon the head of 
the stationer, and desiring him to be calm 
(your tall disputants have always the advan- 
tage), with a provoking sneer carry the 
argument clean from him in the opinion of 



480 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 



all the by-standers, who have gone away 
clearly convinced that Titubus must have 
been in the wrong, because he was in a 

passion ; and that Mr. , meaning his 

opponent, is one of the fairest and at the 
same time one of the most dispassionate 
arguers breathing. 



VIII.— THAT VERBAL ALLUSIONS ARE NOT WIT, 
BECAUSE THEY WILL NOT BEAR A TRANS- 
LATION. 

The same might be said of the wittiest 
local allusions. A custom is sometimes as 
difficult to explain to a foreigner as a pun. 
What would become of a great part of the 
wit of the last age, if it were tried by this 
test ? How would certain topics, as alder- 
manity, cuckoldry, have sounded to a Teren- 
tian auditory, though Terence himself had 
been alive to translate them 1 Senator 
urbanus with Curruca to boot for a synonyme, 
would but faintly have done the business. 
Words, involving notions, are hard enough 
to render ; it is too much to expect us to 
translate a sound, and give an elegant version 
to a jingle. The Yirgilian harmony is not 
translatable, but by substituting harmonious 
sounds in another language for it. To Latin- 
ise a pun, we must seek a pun in Latin, that 
will answer to it ; as, to give an idea of the 
double endings in Hudibras, we must have 
recourse to a similar practice in the old 
monkish doggrel. Dennis, the fiercest op- 
pugner of puns in ancient or modern times, 
professes himself highly tickled with the 
" a stick," chiming to " ecclesiastic." Yet 
what is this but a species of pun, a verbal 
consonance 1 



IX.— THAT THE WORST PUNS ARE THE BEST. 

If by worst be only meant the most far- 
fetched and startling, we agree to it. A pun 
is not bound by the laws which limit nicer 
wit. It is a pistol let off at the ear ; not a 
feather to tickle the intellect. It is an antic 
which does not stand upon manners, but 
comes bounding into the presence, and does 
not show the less comic for being dragged 
in sometimes by the head and shoulders. 
What though it limp a little, or prove de- 
fective in one leg 1 — all the better. A pun 
may easily be too curious and artificial. 



Who has not at one time or other been at a 
party of professors (himself perhaps an old 
offender in that line), where, after ringing a 
round of the most ingenious conceits, every 
man contributing his shot, and some there 
the most expert shooters of the day ; after 
making a poor word run the gauntlet till it 
is ready to drop ; after hunting and winding 
it through all the possible ambages of similar 
sounds ; after squeezing, and hauling, and 
tugging at it, till the very milk of it will not 
yield a drop further, — suddenly some obscure, 
unthought-of fellow in a corner, who was 
never 'prentice to the trade, whom the com- 
pany for very pity passed over, as we do by a 
known poor man when a money-subscription 
is going round, no one Calling upon him for 
his quota — has all at once come out with 
something so whimsical, yet so pertinent ; so 
brazen in its pretensions, yet so impossible 
to be denied ; so exquisitely good, and so 
deplorably bad, at the same time, — that it 
has proved a Eobin Hood's shot ; anything 
ulterior to that is despaired of; and the 
party breaks up, unanimously voting it to be 
the very worst (that is, best) pun of the 
evening. This species of wit is the better 
for not being perfect in all its parts. What 
it gains in completeness, it loses in natural- 
ness. The more exactly it satisfies the 
critical, the less hold it has upon some other 
faculties. The puns which are most enter- 
taining are those which will least bear an 
analysis. Of this kind is the following, re- 
corded with a sort of stigma, in one of Swift's 
Miscellanies. 

An Oxford scholar, meeting a porter who 
was carrying a hare through the streets, 
accosts him with this extraordinary question : 
" Prithee, friend, is that thy own hare, or a 
wig 1 " 

There is no excusing this, and no resisting 
it. A man might blur ten sides of paper 
in attempting a defence of it against a critic 
who should be laughter-proof. The quibble 
in itself is not considerable. It is only a 
new turn given by a little false pronunciation, 
to a very common, though not very courteous 
inquiry. Put by one gentleman to another at 
a dinner-party, it would have been vapid ; to 
the mistress of the house it would have 
shown much less wit than rudeness. We 
must take in the totality of time, place, and 
person ; the pert look of the inquiring 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 



481 



scholar, the desponding looks of the puzzled 
porter : the one stopping at leisure, the other 
hurrying on with his burden ; the innocent 
though rather abrupt tendency of the first 
member of the question, with the utter and 
inextricable irrelevancy of the second ; the 
place — a public street, not favourable to frivo- 
lous investigations ; the affrontive quality of 
the primitive inquiry (the common question) 
invidiously transferred to the derivative (the 
new turn given to it) in the implied satire ; 
namely, that few of that tribe are expected 
to eat of the good things which they carry, 
they being in most countries considered 
rather as the temporary trustees than owners 
of such dainties, — which the fellow was 
beginning to understand ; but then the wig 
again comes in, and he can make nothing of 
it ; all put together constitute a picture : 
Hogarth could have made it intelligible on 
canvass. 

Yet nine out of ten critics will pronounce 
this a very bad pun, because of the defective- ' 
ness in the concluding member, which is its 
very beauty, and constitutes the surprise. 
The same person shall cry up for admirable 
the cold quibble from Virgil about the 
broken Cremona ;* because it is made out 
in all its parts, and leaves nothing to the 
imagination. "We venture to call it cold ; 
because, of thousands who have admired it, 
it would be difficult to find one who has 
heartily chuckled at it. As appealing to the 
judgment merely (setting the risible faculty 
aside), we must pronounce it a monument of 
curious felicity. But as some stories are said 
to be too good to be true, it may with equal 
truth be asserted of this biverbal allusion, 
that it is too good to be natural. One can- 
not help suspecting that the incident was in- 
vented to fit the line. It would have been 
better had it been less perfect. Like some 
Virgilianhemistichs,it has suffered by filling 
up. The nimium Vicina was enough in 
conscience ; the Cremonce afterwards loads it. 
It is, in fact, a double pun ; and we have 
always observed that a superfoetation in this 
sort of wit is dangerous. When a man has 
said a good thing, it is seldom politic to follow 
it up. We do not care to be cheated a 
second time ; or, perhaps the mind of man 
(with reverence be it spoken) is not capacious 
enough to lodge two puns at a time. The 

* Swift. 



impression, to be forcible, must be simulta- 
neous and undivided. 



X.— THAT HANDSOME IS THAT HANDSOME DOES. 

Those who use this proverb can never 
have seen Mrs. Conrady. 

The soul, if we may believe Plotinus, is a 
ray from the celestial beauty. As she par- 
takes more or less of this heavenly light, she 
informs, with corresponding characters, the 
fleshly tenement which she chooses, and 
frames to herself a suitable mansion. 

All which only proves that the soul of Mrs. 
Conrady, in her pre-existent state, was no 
great judge of architecture. 

To the same effect, in a Hymn in honour 
of Beauty, divine Spenser 
sings : — 

Every spirit as it is more pure, 



And hath, in it the more of heavenly light, 
So it the fairer body doth procure 
To habit in, and it more fairly dight 
With cheerful grace and amiable sight. 
For of the soul the body form doth take : 
For soul is form and doth the body make. 

But Spenser, it is clear, never saw Mrs. 
Conrady. 

These poets, we find, are no safe guides in 
philosophy ; for here, in his very next stanza 
but one, is a saving clause, which throws us 
all out again, and leaves us as much to seek 
as ever : — 

Yet oft it falls, that many a gentle mind 
Dwells in deformed tabernacle drown'd, 
Either by chance, against the course of kind, 
Or through unaptness in the substance found, 
Which it assumed of some stubborn ground, 
That will not yield unto her form's direction, 
But is performed with some foul imperfection. 

From which it would follow, that Spenser 
had seen somebody like Mrs. Conrady. 

The spirit of this good lady — her previous 
anima — must have stumbled upon one of 
these untoward tabernacles which he speaks 
of. A more rebellious commodity of clay for 
a ground, as the poet calls it, no gentle mind 
— and sure hers is one of the gentlest — ever 
had to deal with. 

Pondering upon her inexplicable visage — 
inexplicable, we mean, but by this modifica- 
tion of the theory — we have come to a con- 
clusion that, if one must be plain, it is better 
to be plain all over, than amidst a tolerable 
residue of features to hang out one that shall 



I i 



482 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 



be exceptionable. No one can say of Mrs. 
Conrady's countenance that it would be better 
if she had but a nose. It is impossible to 
pull her to pieces in this manner. We have 
seen the most malicious beauties of her own 
sex baffled in the attempt at a selection. The 
tout-ensemble defies particularising. It is too 
complete — too consistent, as we may say — 
to admit of these invidious reservations. It 
is not as if some Apelles had picked out here 
a lip — and there a chin — out of the collected 
ugliness of Greece, to frame a model by. 
It is a symmetrical whole. We challenge 
the minutest connoisseur to cavil at any part 
or parcel of the countenance in question ; to 
say that this, or that, is improperly placed. 
We are convinced that true ugliness, no less 
than is affirmed of true beauty, is the result 
of harmony. Like that, too, it reigns without 
a competitor. No one ever saw Mrs. Con- 
rady, without pronouncing her to be the 
plainest woman that he ever met with in the 
course of his life. The first time that you 
are indulged with a sight of her face, is an 
era in your existence ever after. You are 
glad to have seen it — like Stonehenge. No 
one can pretend to forget it. No one ever 
apologised to her for meeting her in the 
street on such a day and not knowing her : 
the pretext would be too bare. Nobody can 
mistake her for another. Nobody can say of 
her, " I think I have seen that face some- 
where, but I cannot call to mind where." 
You must remember that in such a parlour 
it first struck you — like a bust. You won- 
dered where the owner of the house had 
picked it up. You wondered more when it 
began to move its lips — so mildly too ! No 
one ever thought of asking her to sit for her 
picture. Lockets are for remembrance ; and 
it would be clearly superfluous to hang an 
image at your heart, which, once seen, can 
never be out of it. It is not a mean face 
either ; its entire originality precludes that. 
Neither is it of that order of plain faces 
which improve upon acquaintance. Some 
very good but ordinary people, by an un- 
wearied perseverance in good offices, put a 
cheat upon our eyes ; juggle our senses out 
of their natural impressions ; and set us 
upon discovering good indications in a coun- 
tenance, which at first sight promised nothing 
less. We detect gentleness, which had escaped 
us, lurking about an under lip. But when 



Mrs. Conrady has done you a service, her 
face remains the same ; when she has done 
you a thousand, and you know that she is 
ready to double the number, still it is that 
individual face. Neither can you say of it, 
that it would be a good face if it were not 
marked by the small pox— a compliment 
which is always more admissive than excusa- 
tory — for either Mrs. Conrady never had the 
small-pox : or, as we say, took it kindly. No, 
it stands upon its own merits fairly. There 
it is. It is her mark, her token ; that which 
she is known by. 



XI.— THAT WE MUST NOT LOOK A GIFT HORSE 
IN THE MOUTH. 

Nor a lady's age in the parish register. 
We hope we have more delicacy than to do 
either ; but some faces spare us the trouble 
of these dental inquiries. And what if the 
beast, which my friend would force upon 
my acceptance, prove, upon the face of it, a 
sorry Rosinante, a lean, ill-favoured jade, 
whom no gentleman could think of setting 
up in his stables 1 Must I, rather than not 
be obliged to my friend, make her a com- 
panion to Eclipse or Lightfoot ! A horse- 
giver, no more than a horse-seller, has a 
right to palm his spavined article upon us 
for good ware. An equivalent is expected 
in either case ; and, with my own good will, 
I would no more be cheated put of my 
thanks than out of my money. Some people 
have a knack of putting upon you gifts of 
no real value, to engage you to substantial 
gratitude. We thank them for nothing. 
Our friend Mitis carries this humour of 
never refusing a present, to the very point 
of absurdity — if it were possible to couple 
the ridiculous with so much mistaken deli- 
cacy, and real good-nature. Not an apart- 
ment in his fine house (and he has a true 
taste in household decorations), but is stuffed 
up with some preposterous print or mirror 
— the worst adapted to his panels that may 
be — the presents of his friends that know 
his weakness ; while his noble Vandykes 
are displaced, to make room for a set of 
daubs, the work of some wretched artist of 
his acquaintance, who, having had them re- 
turned upon his hands for bad likenesses, 
finds his account in bestowing them here 
gratis. The good creature has not the heart 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 



483 



to mortify the painter at the expense of an 
honest refusal. It is pleasant (if it did not 
vex one at the same time) to see him sitting 
in his dining parlour, surrounded with ob- 
scure aunts and cousins to God knows whom, 
while the true Lady Marys and Lady Bettys 
of his own honourable family, in favour to 
these adopted frights, are consigned to the 
stair-case and the lumber-room. In like 
manner his goodly shelves are one by one 
stripped of his favourite old authors, to give 
place to a collection of presentation copies — 
the flour and bran of modern poetry. A 
presentation copy, reader — if haply you are 
yet innocent of such favours — is a copy of a 
book which does not sell, sent you by the 
aiithor, with his foolish autograph at the 
beginning of it ; for which, if a stranger, he 
only demands your friendship ; if a brother 
author, he expects from you a book of yours, 
which does sell, in return. We can speak 
to experience, having by us a tolerable 
assortment of these gift-horses. Not to ride 
a metaphor to death — we are willing to ac- 
knowledge, that in some gifts there is sense. 
A duplicate out of a friend's library (where he 
has more than one copy of a rare author) is 
intelligible. There are favours, short of the 
pecuniary — a thing not fit to be hinted at 
among gentlemen — which confer as much 
grace upon the acceptor as the offerer ; the 
kind, we confess, which is most to our palate, 
is of those little conciliatory missives, which 
for their vehicle generally choose a hamper 
■ — little odd presents of game, fruit, perhaps 
wine — though it is essential to the delicacy 
of the latter, that it be home-made. "We 
love to have our friend in the country sitting 
thus at our table by proxy ; to apprehend 
his presence (though a hundred miles may 
be between us) by a turkey, whose goodly 
aspect reflects to us his "plump corpuscu- 
lum ; " to taste him in grouse or woodcock ; 
to feel him gliding down in the toast pecu- 
liar to the latter ; to concorporate him in a 
slice of Canterbury brawn. This is indeed 
to have him within ourselves ; to know him 
intimately : such participation is methinks 
unitive, as the old theologians phrase it. 
For these considerations we should be sorry 
if certain restrictive regulations, which are 
thought to bear hard upon the peasantry of 
this country, were entirely done away with. 
A hare, as the law now stands, makes many 



friends. Caius conciliates Titius (knowing 
his goUt) with a leash of partridges. Titius 
(suspecting his partiality for them) passes 
them to Lucius ; who, in his turn, preferring 
his friend's relish to his own, makes them 
over to Marcius ; till in their ever- widening 
progress, and round of unconscious circummi- 
gration, they distribute the seeds of harmony 
over half a parish. We are well-disposed to 
this kind of sensible remembrances ; and are 
the less apt to be taken by those little airy 
tokens — impalpable to the palate — which, 
under the names of rings, lockets, keep-sakes, 
amuse some people's fancy mightily. We 
could never away with these indigestible 
trifles. They are the very kickshaws and 
foppery of friendship. 



XII.— THAT HOME IS HOME THOUGH IT IS 
NEVER SO HOMELY. 

Homes there are, we are sure, that are no 
homes ; the home of the very poor man, and 
another which we shall speak to presently. 
Crowded places of cheap entertainment, and 
the benches of alehouses, if they could speak, 
might bear mournful testimony to the first. 
To them the very poor man resorts for an 
image of the home, which he cannot find at 
home. For a starved grate, and a scanty 
firing, that is not enough to keep alive the 
natural heat in the fingers of so many shiver- 
ing children with their mother, he finds in 
the depths of winter always a blazing hearth, 
and a hob to warm his pittance of beer by. 
Instead of the clamours of a wife, made 
gaunt by famishing, he meets with a cheer- 
ful attendance beyond the merits of the 
trifle which he can afford to spend. He has 
companions which his home denies him, for 
the very poor man has no visitors. He can 
look into the goings on of the world, and 
speak a little to politics. At home there are 
no politics stirring, but the domestic. All 
interests, real or imaginary, all topics that 
should expand the mind of man, and con- 
nect him to a sympathy with general exist- 
ence, are crushed in the absorbing consider- 
ation of food to be obtained for the family. 
Beyond the price of bread, news is senseless 
and impertinent. At home there is no lar- 
der. Here there is at least a show of plenty ; 
and while he cooks his lean scrap of butcher's 
meat before the common bars, or munches 

i i 2 



484 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 



his humbler cold viands, his relishing bread 
and cheese with an onion, in a corner, where 
no one reflects upon his poverty, he has a 
sight of the substantial joint providing for 
the landlord and his family. He takes an 
interest in the dressing of it ; and while he 
assists in removing the trivet from the fire, 
he feels that there is such a thing as beef 
and cabbage, which he was beginning to for- 
get at home. All this while he deserts his 
wife and children. But what wife, and what 
children 1 Prosperous men, who object to 
this desertion, image to themselves some 
clean contented family like that which they 
go home to. But look at the countenance of 
the poor wives who follow and persecute 
their good-man to the door of the public- 
house, which he is about to enter, when 
something like shame would restrain him, 
if stronger misery did not induce him to 
pass the threshold. That face, ground by 
want, in which every cheerful, every con- 
versable lineament has been long effaced by 
misery, — is that a face to stay at home with ? 
is it more a woman, or a wild cat ? alas ! it 
is the face of the wife of his youth, that 
once smiled upon him. It can smile no 
longer. "What comforts can it share ? what 
burthens can it lighten? Oh, 'tis a fine 
thing to talk of the humble meal shared to- 
gether ! But what if there be no bread in 
the cupboard 1 The innocent prattle of his 
children takes out the sting of a man's 
poverty. But the children of the very poor 
do not prattle. It is none of the least fright- 
ful features in that condition, that there is 
no childishness in its dwellings. Poor people, 
said a sensible old nurse to us once, do not 
bring up their children ; they drag them up. 
The little careless darling of the wealthier 
nursery, in their hovel is transformed be- 
times into a premature reflecting person. 
No one has time to dandle it, no one thinks 
it worth while to coax it, to soothe it, to 
toss it up and down, to humour it. There is 
none to kiss away its tears. If it cries, it 
can only be beaten. It has been prettily 
said, that "a babe is fed with milk and 
praise." But the aliment of this poor babe 
was thin, unnourishing ; the return to its 
little baby-tricks, and efforts to engage at- 
tention, bitter ceaseless objurgation. It 
never had a toy, or knew what a coral 
meant. It grew up without the lullaby of 



nurses, it was a stranger to the patient 
fondle, the hushing caress, the attracting 
novelty, the costlier plaything, or the cheaper 
off-hand contrivance to divert the child ; the 
prattled nonsense (best sense to it), the wise 
impertinences, the wholesome lies, the apt 
story interposed, that puts a stop to present 
sufferings, and awakens the passions of young 
wonder. It was never sung to — no one ever 
told to it a tale of the nursery. It was 
dragged up, to live or to die as it happened. 
It had no young dreams. It broke at once 
into the iron realities of life. A child exists 
not for the very poor as any object of dalli- 
ance; it is only another mouth to be fed, 
a pair of little hands to be betimes inured 
to labour. It is the rival, till it can be the 
co-operator, for food with the parent. It is 
never his mirth, his diversion, his solace : it 
never makes him young again, with recall- 
ing his young times. The children of the 
very poor have no young times. It makes 
the very heart to bleed to overhear the 
casual street-talk between a poor woman 
and her little girl, a woman of the better 
sort of poor, in a condition rather above the 
squalid beings which we have been contem- 
plating. It is not of toys, of nursery books, 
of summer holidays (fitting that age) ; of the 
promised sight, or play ; of praised suffi- 
ciency at school. It is of mangling and 
clear-starching, of the price of coals, or of 
potatoes. The questions of the child, that 
should be the very outpourings of curiosity 
in idleness, are marked with forecast and 
melancholy providence. It has come to be 
a woman, — before it was a child. It has 
learned to go to market ; it chaffers, it 
haggles, it envies, it murmurs ; it is know- 
ing, acute, sharpened ; it never prattles. 
Had we not reason to say that the home of 
the very poor is no home ? 

There is yet another home, which we are 
constrained to deny to be one. It has a 
larder, which the home of the poor man 
wants ; its fireside conveniences, of which 
the poor dream not. But with all this, it is 
no home. It is — the house of a man that is 
infested with many visitors. May we be 
branded for the veriest churl, if we deny our 
heart to the many noble-hearted friends 
that at times exchange their dwelling for 
our poor roof! It is not of guests that 
we complain, but of endless, purposeless 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 



485 



visitants ; droppers in, as they are called. 
We sometimes wonder from what sky they 
fall. It is the very error of the position of 
our lodging ; its horoscopy was ill calcu- 
lated, being just situate in a medium — a 
plaguy suburban mid-space — fitted to catch 
idlers from town or country. We are older 
than we were, and age is easily put out of 
its way. We have fewer sands in our glass 
to reckon upon, and we cannot brook to see 
them drop in endlessly succeeding imperti- 
nences. At our time of life, to be alone 
sometimes is as needful as sleep. It is the 
refreshing sleep of the day. The growing 
infirmities of age manifest themselves in no- 
thing more strongly, than in an inveterate 
dislike of interruption. The thing which we 
are doing, we wish to be permitted to do. 
We have neither much knowledge nor de- 
vices ; but there are fewer in the place to 
which we hasten. We are not willingly put 
out of our way, even at a game of nine-pins. 
While youth was, we had vast reversions in 
time future ; we are reduced to a present 
pittance, and obliged to economise in that 
article. We bleed away our moments now 
as hardly as our ducats. We cannot bear 
to have our thin wardrobe eaten and fretted 
into by moths. We are willing to barter our 
good time with a friend, who gives us in 
exchange his own. Herein is the distinction 
between the genuine guest and the visitant. 
This latter takes your good time, and gives 
you his bad in exchange. The guest is do- 
mestic to you as your good cat, or household 
bird ; the visitant is your fly, that flaps in at 
your window, and out again, leaving no- 
thing but a sense of disturbance, and victuals 
spoiled. The inferior functions of life begin 
to move heavily. We cannot concoct our 
food with interruptions. Our chief meal, to 
be nutritive, must be solitary. With diffi- 
culty we can eat before a guest ; and never 
understood what the relish of public feasting 
meant. Meats have no sapor, nor digestion 
fair play, in a crowd. The unexpected 
coming in of a visitant stops the machine. 
There is a punctual generation who time 
their calls to the precise commencement of 
your dining-hour — not to eat — but to see 
you eat. Our knife and fork drop in- 
stinctively, and we feel that we have swal- 
lowed our latest morsel. Others again show 
their genius, as we have said, in knocking 



the moment you have just sat down to a 
book. They have a peculiar compassionate 
sneer, with which they " hope that they do 
not interrupt your studies." Though they 
flutter off the next moment, to carry their 
impertinences to the nearest student that 
they can call their friend, the tone of the 
book is spoiled ; we shut the leaves, and 
with Dante's lovers, read no more that day. 
It were well if the effect of intrusion were 
simply co-extensive with its presence, but it 
mars all the good hours afterwards. These 
scratches in appearance leave an orifice that 
closes not hastily. " It is a prostitution of 
the bravery of friendship," says worthy 
Bishop Taylor, " to spend it upon impertinent 
people, who are, it may be, loads to their 
families, but can never ease my loads." This 
is the secret of their gaddings, their visits, 
and morning calls. They too have homes, 
which are — no homes. 



XIII.— THAT YOU MUST LOVE ME AND LOVE 
MY DOG. 

" Good sir, or madam — as it may be — we 
most willingly embrace the offer of your 
friendship. We have long known your ex- 
cellent qualities. We have wished to have 
you nearer to us ; to hold you within the 
very innermost fold of our heart. We can 
have no reserve towards a person of your 
open and noble nature. The frankness of 
your humour suits us exactly. We have 
been long looking for such a friend. Quick 
— let us disburthen our troubles into each 
other's bosom — let us make our single joys 
shine by reduplication — But yap, yap, yap ! 
what is this confounded cur 1 he has 
fastened his tooth, which is none of the 
bluntest, just in the fleshy part of my leg." 

" It is my dog, sir. You must love him 
for my sake. Here, Test — Test — Test ! " 

" But he has bitten me." 

" Ay, that he is apt to do, till you are 
better acquainted with him. I have had 
him three years. He never bites me." 

Yap, yap, yap ! — " He is at it again." 

" Oh, sir, you must not kick him. He does 
not like to be kicked. I expect my dog 
to be treated with all the respect due to 
myself." 

" But do you always take him out with 
you, when you go a friendship-hunting ? " 



4S6 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 



" Invariably. 'Tis the sweetest, prettiest, 
best-conditioned animal. I call him my test 
— the touchstone by which to try a friend. 
No one can properly be said to love me, who 
does not love him." 

" Excuse us, dear sir — or madam, afore- 
said — if upon further consideration we are 
obliged to decline the otherwise invaluable 
offer of your friendship. We do not like 



" Mighty well, sir, — you know the con- 
ditions — you may have worse offers. Come 
along, Test." 

The above dialogue is not so imaginary, 
but that, in the intercourse of life, we have 
had frequent occasions of breaking off an 
agreeable intimacy by reason of these canine 
appendages. They do not always come in 
the shape of dogs ; they sometimes wear the 
more plausible and human character of kins- 
folk, near acquaintances, my friend's friend, 
his partner, his wife, or his children. We 
could never yet form a friendship — not to 
speak of more delicate correspondence — how- 
ever much to our taste, without the inter- 
vention of some third anomaly, some imper- 
tinent clog affixed to the relation — the 
understood dog in the proverb. The good 
things of life are not to be had singly, but 
come to us with a mixture ; like a school- 
boy's holiday, with a task affixed to the tail 
of it. What a delightful companion is * * * *, 
if he did not always bring his tall cousin 
with him ! He seems to grow with him ; 
like some of those double births which we 
remember to have read of with such wonder 
and delight in the old " Athenian Oracle," 
where Swift commenced author by writing 
Pindaric Odes (what a beginning for him !) 
upon Sir William Temple. There is the 
picture of the brother, with the little brother 
peeping out at his shoulder ; a species of 
fraternity, which we have no name of kin 
close enough to comprehend. When * * * * 
comes, poking in his head and shoulder into 
your room, as if to feel his entry, you think, 
surely you have now got him to yourself— 
what a three hours' chat we shall have !— 
but ever in the haunch of him, and before 
his diffident body is well disclosed in your 
apartment, appears the haunting shadow of 
the cousin, overpeering his modest kinsman, 
and sure to overlay the expected good talk 
with his insufferable procerity of stature, and 



uncorresponding dwarfishness of observation. 
Misfortunes seldom come alone. 'Tis hard 
when a blessing comes accompanied. Cannot 
we like Sempronia, without sitting down to 
chess with her eternal brother; or know 
Sulpicia, without knowing all the round of 
her card-playing relations ? — must my 
friend's brethren of necessity be mine also ? 
must we be hand and glove with Dick Selby 
the parson, or Jack Selby the calico-printer, 
because W. S., who is neither, but a ripe 
wit and a critic, has the misfortune to claim 
a common parentage with them ? Let him 
lay down his brothers ; and 'tis odds but we 
will cast him in a pair of ours (we have a 
supernux) to balance the concession. Let 
F. H. lay down his garrulous uncle ; and 
Honorius dismiss his vapid wife, and super- 
fluous establishment of six boys : things be- 
tween boy and manhood — too ripe for play, 
too raw for conversation — that come in, im- 
pudently staring their father's old friend 
out of countenance ; and will neither aid 
nor let alone, the conference ; that we may 
once more meet upon equal terms, as we 
were wont to do in the disengaged state of 
bachelorhood. 

It is well if your friend, or mistress, be 
content with these canicular probations. 
Few young ladies but in this sense keep a 
dog. But when Eutilia hounds at you her 
tiger aunt ; or Euspina expects you to 
cherish and fondle her viper sister, whom 
she has preposterously taken into her bosom, 
to try stinging conclusions upon your con- 
stancy ; they must not complain if the house 
be rather thin of suitors. Scylla must have 
broken off many excellent matches in her 
time, if she insisted upon all, that loved her, 
loving her dogs also. 

An excellent story to this moral is told of 
Merry, of Delia Cruscan memory. In tender 
youth he loved and courted a modest ap- 
panage to the Opera — in truth a dancer, — 
who had won him by the artless contrast 
between her manners and situation. She 
seemed to him a native violet, that had been 
transplanted by some rude accident into 
that exotic and artificial hotbed. Nor, in 
truth, was she less genuine and sincere than 
she appeared to him. He wooed and won 
this flower. Only for appearance' sake, and 
for due honour to the bride's relations, she 
craved that she might have the attendance 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 



487 



of her friends and kindred at the approaching 
solemnity. The request was too amiable 
not to be conceded : and in this solicitude 
for conciliating the good-will of mere rela- 
tions, he found a presage of her superior 
attentions to himself, when the golden shaft 
should have " killed the flock of all affections 
else." The morning came : and at the Star 
and Garter, Eichmond — the place appointed 
for the breakfasting — accompanied with one 
English friend, he impatiently awaited what 
reinforcements the bride should bring to 
grace the ceremony. A rich muster she had 
made. They came in six coaches — the whole 
corps du ballet — French, Italian, men and 
women. Monsieur de B., the famous 
pirouetter of the day, led his fair spouse, but 
craggy, from the banks of the Seine. The 
Prima Donna had sent her excuse. But the 
first and second Buffa were there ; and 
Signor Sc — , and Signora Ch — , and Madame 
V — , with a countless cavalcade besides of 
chorusers, figurantes ! at the sight of whom 
Merry afterwards declared, that "then for 
the first time it struck him seriously, that he 
was about to marry — a dancer." But there 
was no help for it. Besides, it was her day ; 
these were, in fact, her friends and kinsfolk. 
The assemblage, though whimsical, was all 
very natural. But when the bride — handing 
out of the last coach a still more extraordi- 
nary figure than the rest — presented to him as 
her father — the gentleman that was to give 
her away — no less a person than Signor 
Delpini himself — with a sort of pride, as 
much as to say, See what I have brought to 
do us honour ! — the thought of so extraor- 
dinary a paternity quite overcame him ; and 
slipping away under some pretence from the 
bride and her motley adherents, poor Merry 
took horse from the back yard to the nearest 
sea-coast, from which, shipping himself to 
America, he shortly after consoled himself 
with a more congenial match in the person 
of Miss Brunton ; relieved from his intended 
clown father, and a bevy of painted buffas 
for bridemaids. 



XIV.— THAT WE SHOULD RISE WITH THE LARK. 

^"At what precise minute that little airy 
musician doffs his night gear, and prepares 
to tune up his unseasonable matins, we are 
not naturalists enough to determine. But 



for a mere human gentleman — that has no 
orchestra business to call him from his warm 
bed to such preposterous exercises — we take 
ten, or half after ten (eleven, of course, 
during this Christmas solstice), to be the 
very earliest hour at which he can begin to 
think of abandoning his pillow. To think of 
it, we say ; for to do it in earnest requires 
another half hour's good consideration. Not 
but there are pretty sun-risings, as we are 
told, and such like gawds, abroad in the 
world, in summer-time especially, some 
hours before what we have assigned ; which 
a gentleman may see, as they say, only for 
getting up. But having been tempted once 
or twice, in earlier life, to assist at those 
ceremonies, we confess our curiosity abated. 
"We are no longer ambitious of being the 
sun's courtiers, to attend at his morning 
levees. We hold the good hours of the dawn 
too sacred to waste them upon such obser- 
vances ; which have in them, besides, some- 
thing Pagan and Persic. To say truth, we 
never anticipated our usual hour, or got up 
with the sun (as 'tis called), to go a journey, 
or upon a foolish whole day's pleasuring, but 
we suffered for it all the long hours after 
in listlessness and headaches ; Nature her- 
self sufficiently declaring her sense of our 
presumption in aspiring to regulate our frail 
waking courses by the measures of that 
celestial and sleepless traveller. We deny 
not that there is something sprightly and 
vigorous, at the outset especially, in these 
break-of-day excursions. It is flattering to 
get the start of a lazy world ; to conquer 
death by proxy in his image. But the seeds 
of sleep and mortality are in us ; and we pay 
usually, in strange qualms before night falls, 
the penalty of the unnatural inversion. 
Therefore, while the busy part of mankind 
are fast huddling on their clothes, are already 
up and about their occupations, content to 
have swallowed their sleep by wholesale ; 
we choose to linger a-bed, and digest our 
dreams. It is the very time to recombine 
the wandering images, which night in a 
confused mass presented ; to snatch them 
from forgetfulness ; to shape, and mould 
them. Some people have no good of their 
dreams. Like fast feeders, they gulp them 
too grossly, to taste them curiously. We love 
to chew the cud of a foregone vision : to 
collect the scattered rays of a brighter 



488 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 



phantasm, or act over again, with firmer 
nerves, the sadder nocturnal tragedies ; to 
drag into day-light a struggling and half- 
vanishing night-mare ; to handle and examine 
the terrors, or the airy solaces. We have 
too much respect for these spiritual com- 
munications, to let them go so lightly. We 
are not so stupid, or so careless as that 
Imperial forgetter of his dreams, that we 
should need a seer to remind us of the form 
of them. They seem to us to have as much 
significance as our waking concerns : or 
rather to import us more nearly, as more 
nearly we approach by years to the shadowy 
world, whither we are hastening. We have 
shaken hands with the world's business ; 
we have done with it ; we have discharged 
ourself of it. Why should we get up 1 we 
have neither suit to solicit, nor affairs to 
manage. The drama has shut in upon us at 
the fourth act. We have nothing here to 
expect, but in a short time a sick bed, and 
a dismissal. We delight to anticipate death 
by such shadows as night affords. We are 
already half acquainted with ghosts. We 
were never much in the world. Disappoint- 
ment early struck a dark veil between us 
and its dazzling illusions. Our spirits showed 
grey before our hairs. The mighty changes 
of the world already appear as but the vain 
stuff out of which dramas are composed. 
We have asked no more of life than what 
the mimic images in play-houses present us 
with. Even those types have waxed fainter. 
Our clock appears to have struck. We are 
superannuated. In this dearth of mundane 
satisfaction, we contract politic alliances 
with shadows. It is good to have friends at 
court. The abstracted media of dreams 
seem no ill introduction to that spiritual 
presence, upon which, in no long time, we 
expect to be thrown. We are trying to 
know a little of the usages of that colony ; 
to learn the language, and the faces we shall 
meet with there, that we may be the less 
awkward at our first coming among them. 
We willingly call a phantom our fellow, as 
knowing we shall soon be of their dark com- 
panionship. Therefore, we cherish dreams. 
We try to spell in them the alphabet of the 
invisible world ; and think we know already, 
how it shall be with us. Those uncouth 
shapes, which, while we clung to flesh and 
blood, affrighted us, have become familiar. 



We feel attenuated into their meagre 
essences, and have given the hand of half- 
way approach to incorporeal being. We 
once thought life to be something ; but it 
has unaccountably fallen from us before its 
time. Therefore we choose to dally with 
visions. The sun has no purposes of ours to 
light us to. Why should we get up 1 



XV.— THAT WE SHOULD LIE DOWN WITH THE 
LAMB. 

We could never quite understand the 
philosophy of this arrangement, or the 
wisdom of our ancestors in sending us for 
instruction to these woolly bedfellows. A 
sheep, when it is dark, has nothing to do but 
to shut his silly eyes, and sleep if he can. 
Man found out long sixes, — Hail, candle- 
light ! without disparagement to sun or 
moon, the kindliest luminary of the three — 
if we may not rather style thee their radiant 
deputy, mild viceroy of the moon ! — We love 
to read, talk, sit silent, eat, drink, sleep, by 
candle-light. They are everybody's sun and 
moon. This is our peculiar and household 
planet. Wanting it, what savage unsocial 
nights must our ancestors have spent, 
wintering in caves and unillumined fast- 
nesses ! They must have lain about and 
grumbled at one another in the dark. What 
repartees could have passed, when you must 
have felt about for a smile, and handled a 
neighbour's cheek to be sure that he under- 
stood it 1 This accounts for the seriousness 
of the elder poetry. It has a sombre cast 
(try Hesiod or Ossian), derived from the 
tradition of those unlantern'd nights. Jokes 
came in with candles. We wonder how they 
saw to pick up a pin, if they had any. How 
did they sup 1 what a melange of chance 
carving they must have made of it ! — here 
one had got a leg of a goat, when he wanted 
a horse's shoulder — there another had dipped 
his scooped palm in a kid-skin of wild honey, 
when he meditated right mare's milk. There 
is neither good eating nor drinking in fresco^,/ 
Who, even in these civilised times, has never' 
experienced this, when at some economic 
table he has commenced dining after dusk, 
and waited for the flavour till the lights 
came ? The senses absolutely give and take 
reciprocally. Can you tell pork from veal 
in the dark ? or distinguish Sherris from 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 



pure Malaga % Take away the candle from 
the smoking man ; by the glimmering of the 
left ashes, he knows that he is still smoking, 
but he knows it only by an inference ; till 
the restored light, coming in aid of the 
olfactories, reveals to both senses the full 
aroma. Then how he redoubles his puffs! how 
he burnishes ! — there is absolutely no such 
thing as reading but by a candle. We have 
tried the affectation of a book at noon-day 
in gardens, and in sultry arbours ; but it was 
labour thrown away. Those gay motes in 
the beam come about you, hovering and 
teasing, like so many coquettes, that will 
have you all to their self, and are jealous of 
your abstractions. By the midnight taper, 
the writer digests his meditations. By the 
same light we must approach to their perusal, 
if we would catch the flame, the odour. It 
is a mockery, all that is reported of the 
influential Phoebus. No true poem ever 
owed its birth to the sun's light. They are 
abstracted works — 

Things that were born, when none but the still night, 
And his dumb candle, saw his pinching throes. 

Marry, daylight — daylight might furnish the 
images, the crude material ; but for the fine 
shapings, the true turning and filing (as 
mine author hath it), they must be content 
to hold their inspiration of the candle. The 
mild internal light, that reveals them, like 
fires on the domestic hearth, goes out in the 
sun-shine. Night and silence call out the 
starry fancies. Milton's Morning Hymn in 
Paradise, we would hold a good wager, was 
penned at midnight ; and Taylor's rich 
description of a sun-rise smells decidedly 
of the taper. Even ourself, in these 
our humbler lucubrations, tune our best- 
measured cadences (Prose has her cadences) 
not unfrequently to the charm of the drowsier 
watchman, " blessing the doors ; " or the 
wild sweep of winds at midnight. Even now 
a loftier speculation than we have yet 
attempted, courts our endeavours. We 
would indite- something about the Solar 
System. — Betty, bring the 



XVI.— THAT A SULKY TEMPER IS A MISFORTUNE. 

We grant that it is, and a very serious 
one — to a man's friends, and to all that have 
to do with him ; but whether the condition 



of the man himself is so much to be deplored 
may admit of a question. We can speak a 
little to it, being ourselves but lately 
recovered — we whisper it in confidence, 
reader, — out of a long and desperate fit of the 
sullens. Was the cure a blessing? The 
conviction which wrought it, came too 
clearly to leave a scruple of the fanciful 
injuries — for they were mere fancies — which 
had provoked the humour. But the humour 
itself was too self-pleasing, while it lasted — 
we know how bare we lay ourself in the 
confession — to be abandoned all at once with 
the grounds of it. We still brood over 
wrongs which we know to have been 
imaginary ; and for our old acquaintance 

N , whom we find to have been a truer 

friend than we took him for, we substitute 
some phantom — a Caius or a Titius — as like 
him as we dare to form it, to wreak our yet 
unsatisfied resentments on. It is mortifying 
to fall at once from the pinnacle of neglect ; 
to forego the idea of having been ill-used 
and contumaciously treated by an old friend. 
The first thing to aggrandise a man in his 
own conceit, is to conceive of himself as 
neglected. There let him fix if he can. To 
undeceive him is to deprive him of the most 
tickling morsel within the range of self- 
complacency. No flattery can come near it. 
Happy is he who suspects his friend of an 
injustice ; but supremely blest, who thinks 
all his friends in a conspiracy to depress and 
undervalue him. There is a pleasure (we 
sing not to the profane) far beyond the 
reach of all that the world calls joy — a deep, 
enduring satisfaction in the depths, where 
the superficial seek it not, of discontent. 
Were we to recite one half of this mystery, 
— which we were let into by our late dis- 
satisfaction, all the world would be in love 
with disrespect ; we should wear a slight for 
a bracelet, and neglects and contumacies 
would be the only matter for courtship. 
Unlike to that mysterious book in the 
Apocalypse, the study of this mystery is 
unpalatable only in the commencement. 
The first sting of a suspicion is grievous ; 
but wait — out of that wound, which to flesh 
and blood seemed so difficult, there is balm 
and honey to be extracted. Your friend 
passed you on such or such a day, — having 
in his company one that you conceived 
worse than ambiguously disposed towards 



490 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 



you, — passed you in the street without 
notice. To be sure, he is something short- 
sighted ; and it was in your power to have 
accosted him. But facts and sane inferences 
are trifles to a true adept in the science of 
dissatisfaction. He must have seen you ; 

and S , who was with him, must have 

been the cause of the contempt. It galls 
you, and well it may. But have patience. 
Go home, and make the worst of it, and you 
are a made man from this time. Shut 
yourself up, and — rejecting, as an enemy to 
your peace, every whispering suggestion 
that but insinuates there may be a mistake 
— reflect seriously upon the many lesser 
instances which you had begun to perceive, 
in proof of your friend's disaffection towards 
you. None of them singly was much to the 
purpose, but the aggregate weight is positive ; 
and you have this last affront to clench 
them. Thus far the process is anything but 
agreeable. But now to your relief comes in 
the comparative faculty. You conjure up 
all the kind feelings you have had for your 
friend ; what you have been to him, and 
what you would have been to him, if he 
would have suffered you ; how you defended 
him in this or that place ; and his good 
name — his literary reputation, and so forth, 
was always dearer to you than your own ! 
Your heart, spite of itself, yearns towards 
him. You could weep tears of blood but for 
a restraining pride. How say you ! do you 
not yet begin to apprehend a comfort ? — 
some allay of sweetness in the bitter waters ? 
Stop not here, nor penuriously cheat yourself 
of your reversions. You are on vantage 
ground. Enlarge your speculations, and 
take in the rest of your friends, as a spark 
kindles more sparks. Was there one among 
them who has not to you proved hollow, 
false, slippery as water? Begin to think 
that the relation itself is inconsistent with 
mortality. That the very idea of friendship, 
with its component parts, as honour, fidelity, 
steadiness, exists but in your single bosom. 
Image yourself to yourself, as the only 
possible friend in a world incapable of that 
communion. Now the gloom thickens. The 
little star of self-love twinkles, that is to 
encourage you through deeper glooms than 
this. You are not yet at the half point of 
your elevation. You are not yet, believe 



me, half sulky enough. Adverting to the 
world in general (as these circles in the mind 
will spread to infinity), reflect with what 
strange injustice you have been treated in 
quarters where (setting gratitude and the 
expectation of friendly returns aside as 
chimeras) you pretended no claim beyond 
justice, the naked due of all men. Think 
the very idea of right and fit fled from the 
earth, or your breast the solitary receptacle 
of it, till you have swelled yourself into at 
least one hemisphere ; the other being the 
vast Arabia Stony of your friends and the 
world aforesaid. To grow bigger every 
moment in your own conceit, and the world 
to lessen ; to deify yourself at the expense 
of your species ; to judge the world — this is 
the acme and supreme point of your mystery 
— these the true Pleasures of Sulkiness. 
We profess no more of this grand secret 
than what ourself experimented on one 
rainy afternoon in the last week, sulking in 
our study. We had proceeded to the penul- 
timate point, at which the true adept seldom 
stops, where the consideration of benefit 
forgot is about to merge in the meditation 
of general injustice — when a knock at the 
door was followed by the entrance of the 
very friend whose not seeing of us in the 
morning (for we will now confess the case 
our own), an accidental oversight, had given 
rise to* so much agreeable generalisation ! 
To mortify us still more, and take down the 
whole flattering superstructure which pride 
had piled upon neglect, he had brought in 

his hand the identical S -, in whose 

favour we had suspected him of the contu- 
macy. Asseverations were needless, where 
the frank manner of them both was con- 
victive of the injurious nature of the 
suspicion. We fancied that they perceived 
our embarrassment ; but were too proud, or 
something else, to confess to the secret of it. 
We had been but too lately in the condition 
of the noble patient in Argos : — ■ 

Qui se credebat miros audire tragcedos, 
In vacuo lsetus sessor plausorque theatro — 

and could have exclaimed with equal reason 
against the friendly hands that cured us — 

Pol, me occidistis, amici, 
Non servastis, ait ; cui sic extorta voluptas, 
Et deuiptus per vim mentis gratissimus error. 



ROSAMUND GRAY, ESSAYS, 



ETC. 



TO 



MARTIN CHARLES BURNEY, Esq, 



Forgive me, Burney, if to thee these late 

And hasty products of a critic pen, 

Thyself no common judge of books and men, 

In feeling of thy worth I dedicate. 

My verse was offered to an older friend ; 

The humbler prose has fallen to thy share : 

Nor could I miss the occasion to declare, 

What spoken in thy presence must offend — 

That, set aside some few caprices wild, 

Those humourous clouds that flit o'er brightest days, 

In all my threadings of this worldly maze, 

(And I have watched thee almost from a child), 

Free from self-seeking, envy, low design, 

I have not found a whiter soul than thine* 



ROSAMUND GRAY, 



CHAPTER I. 

It was noontide. The sun was very hot. 
An old gentlewoman sat spinning in a little 
arbour at the door of her cottage. She was 
blind ; and her grand-daughter was reading 
the Bible to her. The old lady had just left 
her work, to attend to the story of Ruth. 

" Orpah kissed her mother-in-law ; but 
Ruth clave unto her." It was a passage she 
could not let pass without a comment. The 
moral she drew from it was not very new, 
to be sure. The girl had heard it a hundred 
times before — and a hundred times more she 
could have heard it, without suspecting it to 
be tedious. Rosamund loved her grand- 
mother. 

The old lady loved Rosamund too ; and 
she had reason for so doing. Rosamund was 
to her at once a child and a servant. She 
had only her left in the world. They two 
lived together. 

They had once known better days. The 
story of Rosamund's parents, their failure, 
their folly, and distresses, may be told another 
time. Our tale hath grief enough in it» 

It was now about a year and a half since 
old Margaret Gray had sold off all her 
effects, to pay the debts of Rosamund's 
father — just after the mother had died of a 
broken heart ; for her husband had fled his 
country to hide his shame in a foreign land. 
At that period the old lady retired to a small 
cottage in the village of Widford in Hert- 
fordshire. 

Rosamund, in her thirteenth year, was left 



destitute, without fortune or friends : she 
went with her grandmother. In all this 
time she had served her faithfully and 
lovingly. 

Old Margaret Gray, when she first came 
into these parts, had eyes, and could see. 
The neighbours said, they had been dimmed 
by weeping : be that as it may, she was 
latterly grown quite blind. "God is very 
good to us, child ; I can feel you yet." This 
she would sometimes say ; and we need not 
wonder to hear, that Rosamund clave unto 
her grandmother. 

Margaret retained a spirit unbroken by 
calamity. There was a principle within, 
which it seemed as if no outward circum- 
stances could reach. It was a religious 
principle, and she had taught it to Rosamund ; 
for the girl had mostly resided with her 
grandmother from her earliest years. Indeed 
she had taught her all that she knew herself ; 
and the old lady's knowledge did not extend 
a vast way. 

Margaret had drawn her maxims from 
observation ; and a pretty long experience 
in life had contributed to make her, at times, 
a little positive : but Rosamund never argued 
with her grandmother. 

Their library consisted chiefly in a large 
family Bible, with notes and expositions by 
various learned expositors, from Bishop 
Jewell downwards. 

This might never be suffered to lie about 
like other books, but was kept constantly 
wrapt up in a handsome case of green velvet, 
with gold tassels — the only relic of departed 



494 



ROSAMUND GKAY. 



grandeur they had brought with them to the 
cottage — everything else of value had been 
sold off for the purpose above mentioned. 

This Bible Eosamund, when a child, had 
never dared to open without permission ; 
and even yet, from habit, continued the 
custom. Margaret had parted with none of 
her authority ; indeed it was never exerted 
with much harshness ; and happy was 
Eosamund, though a girl grown, when she 
could obtain leave to read her Bible. It was 
a treasure too valuable for an indiscriminate 
use ; and Margaret still pointed out to her 
grand-daughter where to read. 

Besides this, they had the " Complete 
Angler, or Contemplative Man's Eecreation," 
with cuts — " Pilgrim's Progress," the first 
part — a Cookery Book, with a few dry sprigs 
of rosemary and lavender stuck here and 
there between the leaves, (I suppose to point 
to some of the old lady's most favourite 
receipts,) and there was " Wither's Emblems," 
an old book, and quaint. The old-fashioned 
pictures in this last book were among the 
first exciters of the infant Eosamund's 
curiosity. Her contemplation had fed upon 
them in rather older years. 

Eosamund had not read many books 
besides these ; or if any, they had been only 
occasional companions : these were to 
Eosamund as old friends, that she had long 
known. I know not whether the peculiar 
cast of her mind might not be traced, in part, 
to a tincture she had received, early in life, 
from Walton and Wither, from John Bunyan 
and her Bible. 

Eosamund's mind was pensive and re- 
flective, rather than what passes usually for 
clever or acute. From a child she was 
remarkably shy and thoughtful— this was 
taken for stupidity and want of feeling ; and 
the child has been sometimes whipt for being 
a stubborn thing, when her little heart was 
almost bursting with affection. 

Even now her grandmother would often 
reprove her, when she found her too grave 
-i- melancholy; give her sprightly lectures 
about good-humour and rational mirth ; 
and not unfrequently fall a-crying herself, 
to the great discredit of her lecture. Those 
endeared aer the more to Eosamund. 

Margaret would say, " Child, I love you to 
cry, when I think you are only remembering 
your poor dear father and mother ; — I would 



have you think about them sometimes — it 
would be strange if you did not ; but I fear, 
Eosamund — I fear, girl, yon sometimes think 
too deeply about your own situation and 
poor prospects in life. When you do so, you 
do wrong — remember the naughty rich man 
in the parable. He never had any good 
thoughts about God, and his religion : and 
that might have been your case." 

Eosamund, at these times, could not reply 
to her ; she was not in the habit of arguing 
with her grandmother ; so she was quite 
silent on these occasions— or else the girl 
knew well enough herself, that she had only 
been sad to think of the desolate condition 
of her best friend, to see her, in her old age, 
so infirm and blind. But she had never been 
used to make excuses, when the old lady 
said she was doing wrong. 

The neighbours were all very kind to 
them. The veriest rustics never passed 
them without a bow, or a pulling off of the 
hat — some show of courtesy, awkward 
indeed, but affectionate — with a " Good- 
morrow, madam," or " young madam/' as it 
might happen. 

Eude and savage natures, who seem born 
with a propensity to express contempt for 
anything that looks like prosperity, yet felt 
respect for its declining lustre. 

The farmers, and better sort of people, (as 
they are called,) all promised to provide for 
Eosamund when her grandmother should 
die. Margaret trusted in God and believed 
them. 

She used to say, " I have lived many 
years in the world, and have never known 
people, good people, to be left without some 
friend ; a relation, a benefactor, a something. 
God knows our wants — that it is not good 
for man or woman to be alone ; and he 
always sends us a helpmate, a leaning place, 
a somewhat.'''' Upon this sure ground of 
experience, did Margaret build her trust in 
Providence. 



CHAPTEE II. 



Eosamund had just made an end of her 
story, (as I was about to relate,) and was 
listening to the application of the moral, 
(which said application she was old enough 



ROSAMUND GRAY. 



495 



to have made herself, but her grandmother 
still continued to treat her, in many respects, 
as a child, and Rosamund was in no haste to 
lay claim to the title of womanhood,) when 
a young gentleman made his appearance and 
interrupted them. 

It was young Allan Clare, who had 
brought a present of peaches, and some 
roses, for Rosamund. 

He laid his little basket down on a seat of 
the arbour ; and in a respectful tone of voice, 
as though he were addressing a parent, 
inquired of Margaret " how she did." 

The old lady seemed pleased with his 
attentions — answered his inquiries by say- 
ing, that " her cough was less troublesome 
a-nights, but she had not yet got rid of it, 
and probably she never might ; but she did 
not like to tease young people with an 
account of her infirmities." 

A few kind words passed on either side, 
when young Clare, glancing a tender look 
at the girl, who had all this time been silent, 
took leave of them with saying, " I shall 
bring Elinor to see you in the evening." 

When he was gone, the old lady began to 
prattle. 

" That is a sweet-dispositioned youth, and 
I do love him dearly, I must say it — there is 
such a modesty in all he says or does — he 
should not come here so often, to be sure, 
but I don't know how to help it ; there is so 
much goodness in him, I can't find it in my 
heart to forbid him. But, Rosamund, girl, 
I must tell you beforehand ; when you grow 
older, Mr. Clare must be no companion for 
you : while you were both so young it was 
all very well — but the time is coming, when 
folks will think harm of it, if a rich young 
gentleman, like Mr. Clare, comes so often to 
our poor cottage. — Dost hear, girl 1 Why 
don't you answer ? Come, I did not mean 
to say anything to hurt you — speak to me, 
Rosamund — nay, I must not have you be 
sullen — I don't love people that are sullen." 

And in this manner was this poor soul 
running on, unheard and unheeded, when it 
occurred to her, that possibly the girl might 
not be within hearing. 

And true it was, that Rosamund had 
slunk away at the first mention of Mr. Clare's 
good qualities : and when she returned, 
which was not till a few minutes after 
Margaret had made an end of her fine 



harangue, it is certain her cheeks did look 
very rosy. That might have been from the 
heat of the day or from exercise, for she had 
been walking in the garden. 

Margaret, we know, was blind ; and, in 
this case, it was lucky for Rosamund that 
she was so, or she might have made some 
not unlikely surmises. 

I must not have my reader infer from this, 
that I at all think it likely, a young maid of 
fourteen would fall in love without asking 
her grandmother's leave — the thing itself is 
not to be conceived. 

To obviate all suspicions, I am disposed to 
communicate a little anecdote of Rosamund 

A month or two back her grandmother 
had been giving her the strictest prohibi- 
tions, in her walks, not to go near a certain 
spot, which was dangerous from the cir- 
cumstance of a huge overgrown oak-tree 
spreading its prodigious arms across a deep 
chalk-pit, which they partly concealed. 

To this fatal place Rosamund came one 
day — female curiosity, we know, is older 
than the flood — let us not think hardly of 
the girl, if she partook of the sexual failing. 

Rosamund ventured further and further — 
climbed along one of the branches — ap- 
proached the forbidden chasm — her foot 
slipped — she was not killed — but it was by 
a mercy she escaped — other branches inter- 
cepted her fall — and with a palpitating heart 
she made her way back to the cottage. 

It happened that evening, that her grand- 
mother was in one of her best humours, 
caressed Rosamund, talked of old times, and 
what a blessing it was they two found a 
shelter in their little cottage, and in con- 
clusion told Rosamund, " she was a good 
girl, and God would one day reward her for 
her kindness to her old blind grandmother." 

This was more than Rosamund could bear. 
Her morning's disobedience came fresh into 
her mind ; she felt she did not deserve all 
this from Margaret, and at last burst into 
a fit of crying, and made confession of her 
fault. The old gentlewoman kissed and 
forgave her. 

Rosamund never went near that naughty 
chasm again. 

Margaret would never have heard of this, 
if Rosamund-had not told of it herself. But 
this young maid had a delicate moral sense, 
which would not suffer her to take advantage 



49(5 



ROSAMUND GRAY. 



of her grandmother, to deceive her, or 
conceal anything from her, though Margaret 
was old, and blind, and easy to be imposed 
upon. 

Another virtuous trait I recollect of Rosa- 
mund, and now I am in the vein will tell it. 

Some, I know, will think these things 
trifles — and they are so — but if these 
minutiae make my reader better acquainted 
with Eosamund, I am content to abide the 
imputation. 

These promises of character, hints, and 
early indications of a sweet nature, are to me 
more dear, and choice in the selection, than 
any of those pretty wild flowers, which this 
young maid, this virtuous Eosamund, has 
ever gathered in a fine May morning, to 
make a posy to place in the bosom of her 
old blind friend. 

Eosamund had a very just notion of draw- 
ing, and would often employ her talent in 
making sketches of the surrounding scenery. 

On a landscape, a larger piece than she 
had ever yet attempted, she had now been 
working for three or four months. She had 
taken great pains with it, given much time 
to it, and it was nearly finished. For whose 
particular inspection it was designed, I will 
not venture to conjecture. We know it 
could not have been for her grandmother's. 

One day she went out on a short errand, 
and left her landscape on the table. When 
she returned, she found it gone. 

Eosamund from the first suspected some 
mischief, but held her tongue. At length 
she made the fatal discovery. Margaret, in 
her absence, had laid violent hands on it ; 
not knowing what it was, but taking it for 
some waste-paper, had torn it in half, and 
with one half of this elaborate composition 
had twisted herself up — a thread -paper ! 

Eosamund spread out her hands at sight 
of the disaster, gave her grandmother a 
roguish smile, but said not a word. She 
knew the poor soul would only fret, if she 
told her of it, — and when once Margaret 
was set a fretting for other people's misfor- 
tunes, the fit held her pretty long. 

So Eosamund that very afternoon began 
another piece of the same size and subject ; 
and Margaret, to her dying day, never 
dreamed of the mischief she had uncon- 
sciously done. 



CHAPTEE III. 

Eosamund Gray was the most beautiful 
young creature that eyes ever beheld. Her 
face had the sweetest expression in it — a 
gentleness — a modesty — a timidity — a certain 
charm — a grace without a name. 

There was a sort of melancholy mingled 
in her smile. It was not the thoughtless 
levity of a girl — it was not the restrained 
simper of premature womanhood — it was 
something which the poet Young might have 
remembered, when he composed that perfect 
line, 

" Soft, modest, melancholy, female, fair." 

She was a mild-eyed maid, and everybody 
loved her. Young Allan Clare, when but a 
boy, sighed for her. 

Her yellow hair fell in bright and curling 
clusters, like 

" Those hanging locks 
Of young Apollo." 

Her voice was trembling and musical. A 
graceful diffidence pleaded for her whenever 
she spake — and, if she said but little, that 
little found its way to the heart. 

Young, and artless, and innocent, meaning 
no harm, and thinking none ; affectionate as 
a smiling infant — playful, yet inobtrusive, as 
a weaned lamb — everybody loved her. 
Young Allan Clare, when but a boy, sighed 
for her. 

The moon is shining in so brightly at my 
window, where I write, that I feel it a crime 
not to suspend my employment awhile to 
gaze at her. 

See how she glideth, in maiden honour, 
through the clouds, who divide on either 
side to do her homage. 

Beautiful vision ! — as I contemplate thee, 
an internal harmony is communicated to my 
mind, a moral brightness, a tacit analogy of 
mental purity ; a calm like that we ascribe 
in fancy to the favoured inhabitants of thy 
fairy regions, " argent fields." 

I marvel not, O moon, that heathen people, 
in the " olden times," did worship thy deity 
— Cynthia, Diana, Hecate. Christian Europe 
invokes thee not by these names now — her 
idolatry is of a blacker stain : Belial is her 
God — she worships Mammon. 



ROSAMUND GRAY. 



497 



False things are told concerning thee, fair 
planet — for I will ne'er believe that thou 
canst take a perverse pleasure in distorting 
the brains of us, poor mortals. Lunatics ! 
moonstruck ! Calumny invented, and folly 
took up, these names. I would hope better 
things from thy mild aspect and benign 
influences. 

Lady of Heaven, thou lendest thy pure 
lamp to light the way to the virgin mourner, 
when she goes to seek the tomb where her 
warrior lover lies. 

Friend of the distressed, thou speakest 
only peace to the lonely sufferer, who walks 
forth in the placid evening, beneath thy 
gentle light, to chide at fortune, or to com- 
plain of changed friends, or unhappy loves. 

Do I dream, or doth not even . now a 
heavenly calm descend from thee into my 
bosom, as I meditate on the chaste loves of 
Eosamund and her Clare ! 



CHAPTEE IV. 

Allan Clare was just two years older 
than Eosamund. He was a boy of fourteen, 
when he first became acquainted with her — 
it was soon after she had come to reside with 
her grandmother at Widford. 

He met her by chance one day, carry- 
ing a pitcher in her hand, which she had 
been filling from a neighbouring well — the 
pitcher was heavy, and she seemed to be 
bending with its weight. 

Allan insisted on carrying it for her — for 
he thought it a sin that a delicate young 
maid, like her, should be so employed, and 
he stand idle by. 

Allan had a propensity to do little kind 
offices for everybody — but at the sight of 
Eosamund Gray, his first fire was kindled — 
his young mind seemed to have found an 
object, and his enthusiasm was from that 
time forth awakened. His visits, from that 
day, were pretty frequent at the cottage. 

He was never happier than when he could 
get Eosamund to walk out with him. He 
would make her admire the scenes he ad- 
mired — fancy the wild flowers he fancied — 
watch the clouds he was watching — and not 
unfrequently repeat to her poetry which he 
loved, and make her love it. 



On their return, the old lady, who con- 
sidered them yet as but children, would bid 
Eosamund fetch Mr. Clare a glass of her 
currant-wine, a bowl of new milk, or some 
cheap dainty which was more welcome to 
Allan than the costliest delicacies of a 
prince's court. 

The boy and girl, for they were no more 
at that age, grew fond of each other — more 
fond than either of them suspected. 

" They would sit, and sigh, 
And look upon each other, and conceive 
Not what they ail'd ; yet something they did ail, 
And yet were well — and yet they were not well ; 
And what was their disease, they could not tell." . 

And thus, 

" In this first garden of their simpleness 
They spent their childhood." 

A circumstance had lately happened, which 
in some sort altered the nature of their 
attachment. 

Eosamund was one day reading the tale of 
" Julia de Eoubigne " — a book which young 
Clare had lent her. 

Allan was standing by, looking over her, 
with one hand thrown round her neck, and 
a finger of the other pointing to a passage in 
Julia's third letter. 

" Maria ! in my hours of visionary in- 
dulgence, I have sometimes painted to myself 
a husband — no matter whom — comforting me 
amidst the distresses which fortune had laid 
upon us. I have smiled upon him through 
my tears ; tears, not of anguish, but of ten- 
derness ! — our children were playing around 
us, unconscious of misfortune ; we had 
taught them to be humble, and to be happy ; 
our little shed was reserved to us, and their 
smiles to cheer it. — I have imagined the 
luxury of such a scene, and affliction became 
a part of my dream of happiness." 

The girl blushed as she read, and trembled 
— she had a sort of confused sensation, that 
Allan was noticing her — yet she durst not 
lift her eyes from the book, but continued 
reading, scarce knowing what she read. 

Allan guessed the cause of her confusion, 
Allan trembled too — his colour came and 
went — his feelings became impetuous — and 
flinging both arms round her neck, he kissed 
his young favourite. 

Eosamund was vexed and pleased, soothed 
and frightened, all in a moment — a fit of 
tears came to her relief. 



K K 



498 



ROSAMUND GRAY. 



Allan had indulged before in these little 
freedoms, and Kosamund had thought no 
harm of them ; but from this time the girl 
grew timid and reserved — distant in her 
manner, and careful of her behaviour in 
Allan's presence — not seeking his society as 
before, but rather shunning it — delighting 
more to feed upon his idea in absence. 

Allan too, from this day, seemed changed : 
his manner became, though not less tender, 
yet more respectful and diffident — his bosom 
felt a throb it had till now not known, in 
the society of Eosamund — and, if he was 
less familiar with her than in former times, 
that charm of delicacy had superadded a 
grace to Eosamund, which, while he feared, 
he loved. 

There is a mysterious character, heightened, 
indeed, by fancy and passion, but not with- 
out foundation in reality and observation, 
which true lovers have ever imputed to the 
object of their affections. This character 
Eosamund had now acquired with Allan — 
something angelic, perfect, exceeding nature. 

Young Clare dwelt very near to the cot- 
tage. He had lost his parents, who were 
rather wealthy, early in life ; and was left to 
the care of a sister some ten years older than 
himself. 

Elinor Clare was an excellent young lady 
— discreet, intelligent, and affectionate. 
Allan revered her as a parent, while he loved 
her as his own familiar friend. He told all 
the little secrets of his heart to her — but 
there was one, which he had hitherto unac- 
countably concealed from her — namely, the 
extent of his regard for Eosamund. 

Elinor knew of his visits to the cottage, 
and was no stranger to the persons of Mar- 
garet and her grand-daughter. She had 
several times met them, when she had been 
walking with her brother — a civility usually 
passed on either side — but Elinor avoided 
troubling her brother with any unseasonable 
questions. 

Allan's heart often beat, and he has been 
going to tell his sister all — but something 
like shame (false or true, I shall not stay to 
inquire) had hitherto kept him back ; — still 
the secret, unrevealed, hung upon his con- 
science like a crime — for his temper had a 
sweet and noble frankness in it, which 
bespake him yet a virgin from the world. 

There was a fine openness in his counte- 



nance — the character of it somewhat resem- 
bled Eosamund's — except that more fire and 
enthusiasm were discernible in Allan's ; his 
eyes were of a darker blue than Eosamund's 
— his hair was of a chestnut colour — his 
cheeks ruddy, and tinged with brown. There 
was a cordial sweetness in Allan's smile, the 
like to which I never saw in any other face. 

Elinor had hitherto connived at her 
brother's attachment to Eosamund. Elinor, 
I believe, was something of a physiognomist, 
and thought she could trace in the counte- 
nance and manner of Eosamund, qualities 
which no brother of hers need be ashamed to 
love. 

The time was now come when Elinor was 
desirous of knowing her brother's favourite 
more intimately— an opportunity offered of 
breaking the matter to Allan. 

The morning of the day in which he 
carried his present of fruit and flowers to 
Eosamund, his sister had observed him more 
than usually busy in the garden, culling fruit 
with a nicety of choice not common to him. 

She came up to him, unobserved, and, 
taking him by the arm, inquired, with a 
questioning smile — " What are you doing, 
Allan ? and who are those peaches designed 
for 1 " 

" For Eosamund Gray " — he replied — and 
his heart seemed relieved of a burthen which 
had long oppressed it. 

" I have a mind to become acquainted 
with your handsome friend — will you intro- 
duce me, Allan 1 I think I should, like to go 
and see her this afternoon." 

" Do go, do go, Elinor — you don't know 
what a good creature she is ; and old blind 
Margaret, you will like her very much." 

His sister promised to accompany him after 
dinner ; and they parted. Allan gathered no 
more peaches, but hastily cropping a few 
roses to fling into his basket, went away with 
it half-filled, being impatient to announce 
to Eosamund the coming of her promised 
visitor. 



CHAPTEE V. 



When Allan returned home, he found an 
invitation had been left for him, in his 
absence, to spend that evening with a young 



ROSAMUND GRAY. 



49<J 



friend, who had just quitted a public school 
in London, and was come to pass one night 
in his father's house at Widford, previous to 
his departure the next morning for Edin- 
burgh University. 

It was Allan's bosom friend — they had not 
met for some months — and it was probable 
a much longer time must intervene before 
they should meet again. 

Yet .Allan could not help looking a little 
blank when he first heard of the invitation. 
This was to have been an important evening. 
But Elinor soon relieved her brother by ex- 
pressing her readiness to go alone to the 
cottage. 

" I will not lose the pleasure I promised 
myself, whatever you may determine upon, 
Allan ; I will go by myself rather, than be 
disappointed." 

" Will you, will you, Elinor ? " 

Elinor promised to go — and I believe, 
Allan, on a second thought, was not very 
sorry to be spared the awkwardness of intro- 
ducing two persons to each other, both so 
dear to him, but either of whom might 
happen not much to fancy the other. 

At times, indeed, he was confident that 
Elinor must love Eosamund, and Eosamund 
must love Elinor ; but there were also times 
in which he felt misgivings — it was an event 
he could scarce hope for very joy ! 

Allan's real presence that evening was more 
at the cottage than at the house, where his 
bodily semblance was visiting — his friend 
could not help complaining of a certain 
absence of mind, a coldness he called it. 

It might have been expected, and in the 
course of things predicted, that Allan would 
have asked his friend some questions of what 
had happened since their last meeting, what 
his feelings were on leaving school, the 
probable time when they should meet again, 
and a hundred natural questions which 
friendship is most lavish of at such times ; 
but nothing of all this ever occurred to Allan 
— they did not even settle the method of 
their future correspondence. 

The consequence was, as might have been 
expected, Allan's friend thought him much 
altered, and, after his departure, sat down 
to compose a doleful sonnet about a " faithless 
friend." — I do not find that he ever finished 
it — indignation, or a dearth of rhymes, 
causing him to break off in the middle. 



CHAPTEE VI. 

In my catalogue of the little library at 
the cottage, I forgot to mention a book of 
Common Prayer. My reader's fancy might 
easily have supplied the omission — old ladies 
of Margaret's stamp (God bless them !) may 
as well be without their spectacles, or their 
elbow chair, as their prayer-book — I love 
them for it. 

Margaret's was a handsome octavo, printed 
by Baskerville, the binding red, and fortified 
with silver at the edges. Out of this book 
it was their custom every afternoon to read 
the proper psalms appointed for the day. 

The way they managed was this : they 
took verse by verse — Eosamund read her 
little portion, and Margaret repeated hers 
in turn, from memory — for Margaret could 
say all the Psalter by heart, and a good part 
of the Bible besides. She would not unfre- 
quently put the girl right when she stumbled 
or skipped. This Margaret imputed to 
giddiness — a quality which Eosamund was 
by no means remarkable for — but old ladies, 
like Margaret, are not in all instances alike 
discriminative. 

They had been employed in this manner 
just before Miss Clare arrived at the cottage. 
The psalm they had been reading was the 
hundred and fourth — Margaret was naturally 
led by it into a discussion of the works of 
creation. 

There had been thunder in the course of 
the day — an occasion of instruction which 
the old lady never let pass — she began — 

" Thunder has a very awful sound — some 
say God Almighty is angry whenever it 
thunders — that it is the voice of God 
speaking to us ; for my part, I am not afraid 
of it " 

And in this manner the old lady was 
going on to particularise, as usual, its 
beneficial effects, in clearing the air, de- 
stroying of vermin, &c, when the entrance 
of Miss Clare put an end to her discourse. 

Eosamund received her with respectful 
tenderness — and, taking her grandmother 
by the hand, said, with great sweetness, — 
" Miss Clare is come to see you, grand- 
mother." 

" I beg pardon, lady — I cannot see you — 
but you are heartily welcome. Is your 



k k 2 



500 



ROSAMUND GRAY. 



brother with, you, Miss Clare ? — I don't hear 
him." 

" He could not come, madam, but he sends 
his love by me." 

"You have an excellent brother, Miss 
Clare — but pray do us the honour to take 

some refreshment — Eosamund " 

And the old lady was going to give 
directions for a bottle of her currant wine — 
when Elinor, smiling, said " she was come to 
take a cup of tea with her, and expected to 
find no ceremony." 

" After tea, I promise myself a walk with 
you, Eosamund, if your grandmother can 
spare you." Eosamund looked at her grand- 
mother. 

ft Oh, for that matter, I should be sorry to 
debar the girl from any pleasure — I am sure 
it's lonesome enough for her to be with me 
always — and if Miss Clare will take you out, 
child, I shall do very well by myself till you 
return — it will not be the first time, you 
know, that I have been left here alone — 
some of the neighbours will be dropping in 
bye and bye — or, if not, I shall take no 
harm." 

Eosamund had all the simple manners of a 
child ; she kissed her grandmother, and 
looked happy. 

All tea-time the old lady's discourse was 
little more than a panegyric on young Clare's 
good qualities. Elinor looked at her young 
friend, and smiled. Eosamund was beginning 
to look grave — but there was a cordial 
sunshine in the face of Elinor, before which 
any clouds of reserve that had been gathering 
on Eosamund's soon brake away. 

"Does your grandmother ever go out, 
Eosamund ? " 

Margaret prevented the girl's reply, by 
saying — " My dear young lady, I am an old 
woman, and very infirm — Eosamund takes 
me a few paces beyond the door sometimes 
— but I walk very badly — I love best to sit 
in our little arbour when the sun shines — I 
can yet feel it warm and cheerful — and, if I 
lose the beauties of the season, I shall be 
very happy if you and Eosamund can take 
delight in this fine summer evening." 

" I shall want to rob you of Eosamund's 
company now and then, if we like one 
another. I had hoped to have seen you, 
madam, at our house. I don't know whether 
we could not make room for you to come 



and live with us — what say you to it ? 
Allan would be proud to tend you, I am 
sure ; and Eosamund and I should be nice 
company." 

Margaret was all unused to such kind- 
nesses, and wept — Margaret had a great 
spirit — yet she was not above accepting an 
obligation from a worthy person — there was 
a delicacy in Miss Clare's manner — she could 
have no interest but pure goodness, to induce 
her to make the offer — at length the old lady 
spake from a full heart. 

" Miss Clare, this little cottage received us 
in our distress — it gave us shelter when 
we had no home — we have praised God 
in it — and, while life remains, I think I 
shall never part from it — Eosamund does 
everything for me " — 

" And will do, grandmother, as long as I 
live ; " — and then Eosamund fell a-crying. 

" You are a good girl, Eosamund ; and if 
you do but find friends when I am dead and 
gone, I shall want no better accommodation 
while I live — but God bless you, lady, a 
thousand times, for your kind offer." 

Elinor was moved to tears, and, affecting a 
sprightliness, bade Eosamund prepare for 
her walk. The girl put on her white silk 
bonnet ; and Elinor thought she never beheld 
so lovely a creature. 

They took leave of Margaret, and walked 
out together; they rambled over all Eosa- 
mund's favourite haunts — through many a 
sunny field — by secret glade or wood-walk, 
where the girl had wandered so often with 
her beloved Clare. 

Who now so happy as Eosamund ? She 
had oft-times heard Allan speak with great 
tenderness of his sister — she was now ramb- 
ling, arm in arm, with that very sister, the 
" vaunted sister " of her friend, her beloved 
Clare. 

Not a tree, not a bush, scarce a wild- 
flower in their path, but revived in Eosa- 
mund some tender recollection, a conversation 
perhaps, or some chaste endearment. Life, 
and a new scene of things, were now opening 
before her — she was got into a fairy land of 
uncertain existence. 

Eosamund was too happy to talk much — 
but Elinor was delighted with her when she 
did talk : — the girl's remarks were suggested 
most of them by the passing scene — and they 
betrayed, all of them, the liveliness of present 



ROSAMUND GRAY. 



501 



impulse ; — her conversation did not consist 
in a comparison of vapid feeling, an inter- 
change of sentiment lip-deep — it had all the 
freshness of young sensation in it. 
Sometimes they talked of Allan. 
"Allan is very good," said Eosamund, 
"very good indeed to my grandmother — he 
will sit with her, and hear her stories, and 
read to. her, and try to divert her a hundred 
ways. I wonder sometimes he is not tired. 
She talks him to death ! " 

"Then you confess, Eosamund, that the 
old lady does tire you sometimes ?" 

" Oh no, I did not mean that — it's very 
different — I am used to all her ways, and I 
can humour her, and please her, and I ought 
to do it, for she is the only friend I ever had 
in the world." 

The new friends did not conclude their 
walk till it was late, and Eosamund began 
to be apprehensive about the old lady, who 
had been all this time alone. 

On their return to the cottage, they found 
that Margaret had been somewhat impatient 
— old ladies, good old ladies, will be so at 
times — age is timorous and suspicious of 
danger, where no danger is. 

Besides, it was Margaret's bed-time, for 
she kept very good hours — indeed, in the 
distribution of her meals, and sundry other 
particulars, she resembled the livers in the 
antique world, more than might well beseem 
a creature of this. 

So the new friends parted for that night — 
Elinor having made Margaret promise to 
give Eosamund leave to come and see her 
the next day. 



CHAPTEE VII. 



Miss Clare, we may be sure, made her 
brother very happy, when she told him of 
the engagement she had made for the 
morrow, and how delighted she had been 
with his handsome friend. 

Allan, I believe, got little sleep that night. 
I know not, whether joy be not a more 
troublesome bed-fellow than grief — hope 
keeps a body very wakeful, I know. 

Elinor Clare was the best good creature — 
the least selfish human being I ever knew — 
always at work for other people's good, 



planning other people's happiness — con- 
tinually forgetful to consult for her own 
personal gratifications, except indirectly, in 
the welfare of another ; — while her parents 
lived, the most attentive of daughters— since 
they died, the kindest of sisters — I never 
knew but one like her. It happens that I 
have some of this young lady's letters in my 
possession — I shall present my reader with 
one of them. It was written a short time 
after the death of her mother, and addressed 
to a cousin, a dear friend of Elinor's, who 
was then on the point of being married to 
Mr. Beaumont, of Staffordshire, and had 
invited Elinor to assist at her nuptials. I 
will transcribe it with minute fidelity. 



ELINOR CLARE TO MARIA LESLIE. 

Widford, July the —,17—. 

Health, Innocence, and Beauty, shall be 
thy bridemaids, my sweet cousin. I have no 
heart to undertake the office. Alas ! what 
have I to do in the house of feasting ? 

Maria ! I fear lest my griefs should prove 
obtrusive. Yet bear with me a little — I have 
recovered already a share of my former 
spirits. 

I fear more for Allan than myself. The 
loss of two such parents, within so short an 
interval, bears very heavy on him. The boy 
hangs about me from morning till night. He 
is perpetually forcing a smile into his poor 
pale cheeks — you know the sweetness of his 
smile, Maria. 

To-day, after dinner, when he took his 
glass of wine in his hand, he burst into tears, 
and would not, or could not then, tell me 
the reason — afterwards he told me — "he 
had been used to drink Mamma's health 
after dinner, and that came into his head 
and made him cry." I feel the claims the 
boy has upon me — I perceive that I am 
living to some end — and the thought sup- 
ports me. 

Already I have attained to a state of com- 
placent feelings — my mother's lessons were 
not thrown away upon her Elinor. 

In the visions of last night her spirit 
seemed to stand at my bed-side — a light, as 
of noonday, shone upon the room — she 
opened my curtains — she smiled upon me 
with the same placid smile as in her life- 
time. I felt no fear. "Elinor," she said 



502 



ROSAMUND GRAY. 



" for my sake take care of young Allan," — 
and I awoke with calm feelings. 

Maria ! shall not the meeting of blessed 
spirits, think you, be something like this ? — 
I think, I could even now behold my mother 
without dread — I would ask pardon of her 
for all my past omissions of duty, for all the 
little asperities in my temper, which have 
so often grieved her gentle spirit when 
living. Maria ! I think she would not turn 
away from me. 

Oftentimes a feeling, more vivid than 
memory, brings her before me — I see her sit 
in her old elbow chair — her arms folded upon 
her lap — a tear upon her cheek, that seems 
to upbraid her unkind daughter for some 
inattention — I wipe it away and kiss her 
honoured lips. 

Maria ! when I have been fancying all 
this, Allan will come in, with his poor eyes 
red with weeping, and taking me by the 
hand, destroy the vision in a moment. 

I am prating to you, my sweet cousin, but 
it is the prattle of the heart, which Maria 
loves. Besides, whom have I to talk to of 
these things but you 1 — you have been my 
counsellor in times past, my companion, and 
sweet familiar friend. Bear with me a little 
— I mourn the " cherishers of my infancy." 

I sometimes count it a blessing that my 
father did not prove the survivor. You 
know something of his story. You know 
there was a foul tale current — it was the 

busy malice of that bad man, S , 

which helped to spread it abroad — you will 
recollect the active good-nature of our 

friends W and T ; what pains they 

took to undeceive people — with the better 
sort their kind labours prevailed ; but there 
was still a party who shut their ears. You 
know the issue of it. My father's great 
spirit bore up against it for some time — my 
father never was a bad man — but that spirit 
was broken at the last — and the greatly- 
injured man was forced to leave his old 
paternal dwelling in Staffordshire — for the 
neighbours had begun to point at him. 
Maria ! I have seen them point at him, and 
have been ready to drop. 

In this part of the country, where the 
slander had not reached, he sought a retreat 
— and he found a still more grateful asylum 
in the daily solicitudes of the best of wives. 

" An enemy hath done this," I have heard 



him say — and at such times my mother 
would speak to him so soothingly of forgive- 
ness, and long-suffering, and the bearing of 
injuries with patience ; would heal all his 
wounds with so gentle a touch ; — I have 
seen the old man weep like a child. 

The gloom that beset his mind, at times 
betrayed him into scepticism — he has doubted 
if there be a Providence ! I have heard him 
say, " God has built a brave world, but me- 
thinks he has left his creatures to bustle in 
it how they may." 

At such times he could not endure to hear 
my mother talk in a religious strain. He 
would say, "Woman, have done — you con- 
found, you perplex me, when you talk of 
these matters, and for one day at least unfit 
me for the business of life." 

I have seen her look at him — God, 
Maria ! such a look ! it plainly spake that 
she was willing to have shared her precious 
hope with the partner of her earthly cares — 
but she found a repulse — 

Deprived of such a wife, think you, the old 
man could long have endured his existence % 
or what consolation would his wretched 
daughter have had to offer him, but silent 
add imbecile tears ? 

My sweet cousin, you will think me tedious 
— and I am so — 'but it does me good to talk 
these matters over. And do not you be 
alarmed for me — my sorrows are subsiding 
into a deep and sweet resignation. I shall 
soon be sufficiently composed, T know it, to 
participate in my friend's happiness. 

Let me call her, while yet I may, my own 
Maria Leslie ! Methinks, I shall not like 
you by any other name. Beaumont ! Maria 
Beaumont ! it hath a strange sound with it — 
I shall never be reconciled to this name — 
but do not you fear — Maria Leslie shall 
plead with me for Maria Beaumont. 

And now, my sweet Friend, 

God love you, and your 

Elinor Clare. 

I find in my collection several letters, 
written soon after the date of the preceding, 
and addressed all of them to Maria Beaumont. 
— I am tempted to make some short extracts 
from these — my tale will suffer interruption 
by them — but I was willing to preserve 
whatever memorials I could of Elinor Clare. 



ROSAMUND GRAY. 



503 



FROM ELINOR CLARE TO MARIA BEAUMONT. 
(an extract.) 

" 1 have been strolling out for half 

an hour in the fields ; and my mind has been 
occupied by thoughts which Maria has a 
right to participate. I have been bringing 
my mother to my recollection. My heart 
ached with the remembrance of infirmities, 
that made her closing years of life so sore a 
trial to her. 

I was concerned to think that our family 
differences have been one source of disquiet 
to her. I am sensible that this last we are 
apt to exaggerate after a person's death — 
and surely, in the main, there was consider- 
able harmony among the members of our 
little family — still I was concerned' to think 
that we ever gave her gentle spirit disquiet. 

I thought on years back — on all my 

parents' friends — the H s, the F s, 

on D S ■, and on many a merry even- 
ing, in the fireside circle, in that comfortable 
back parlour — it is never used now. — 

O ye Matravises * of the age, ye know not 
what ye lose in despising these petty topics 
of endeared remembrance, associated circum- 
stances of past times ; — ye know not the 
throbbings of the heart, tender yet affection- 
ately familiar, which accompany the dear 
and honoured names of father or of mother. 

Maria ! I thought on all these things ; 
my heart ached at the review of them — it 
yet aches, while I write this — but I am 
never so satisfied with my train of thoughts, 
as when they run upon these subjects — the 
tears they draw from us, meliorate and soften 
the heart, and keep fresh within us that 
memory of dear friends dead, which alone 
can fit us for a readmission to their society 
hereafter." 

FROM ANOTHER LETTER. 

" I had a bad dream this morning — 

that Allan was dead — and who, of all persons 
in the world do you think, put on mourning 
for him 1 Why — Matravis. This alone might 
cure me of superstitious thoughts, if I were 
inclined to them ; for why should Matravis 
mourn for us, or our family 1 — Still it was 
pleasant to awake, and find it but a dream. — 

* This name will be explained presently. 



Methinks something like an awaking from 
an ill dream shall the Resurrection from 
the Dead be. — Materially different from our 
accustomed scenes, and ways of life, the 
World to come may possibly not be — still it is 
represented to us under the notion of a Rest, 
a /Sabbath, a state of bliss." 



FROM ANOTHER LETTER. 

" Methinks, you and I should have 

been born under the same roof, sucked the 
same milk, conned the same horn-book, 
thumbed the same Testament, together : — 
for we have been more than sisters, Maria ! 

Something will still be whispering to me, 
that I shall one day be inmate of the same 
dwelling with my cousin, partaker with her 
in all the delights which spring from mutual 
good offices, kind words, attentions in sick- 
ness and in health, — conversation, sometimes 
innocently trivial, and at others profitably 
serious ; — books read and commented on, 
together ; meals ate, and walks taken, toge- 
ther, — and conferences, how we may best do 
good to this poor person or that, and wean 
our spirits from the world's cares, without 
divesting ourselves of its charities. What a 
picture I have drawn, Maria ! and none of 
all these things may ever come to pass." 



FROM ANOTHER LETTER. 

" Continue to write to me, my sweet 

cousin. Many good thoughts, resolutions, 
and proper views of things, pass through the 
mind in the course of the day, but are lost 
for want of committing them to paper. 
Seize them, Maria, as they pass, these Birds 
of Paradise, that show themselves and are 
gone, — and make a grateful present of the 
precious fugitives to your friend. 

To use a homely illustration, just rising in 
my fancy, — shall the good housewife take 
such pains in pickling and preserving her 
worthless fruits, her walnuts, her apricots, 
and quinces — and is there not much spiritual 
housewifery in treasuring up our mind's best 
fruits — our heart's meditations in its most 
favoured moments 1 

This sad simile is much in the fashion of 
the old Moralisers, such as I conceive honest 
Baxter to have been, such as Quarles and 
Wither were with their curious, serio-comic, 



504 



ROSAMUND GRAY. 



quaint emblems. But they sometimes reach 
the heart, when a more elegant simile rests 
in the fancy. 

Not low and mean, like these, but beauti- 
fully familiarised to our conceptions, and 
condescending to human thoughts and 
notions, are all the discourses of our Lord — 
conveyed in parable, or similitude, what 
easy access do they win to the heart, 
through the medium of the delighted imagi- 
nation ! speaking of heavenly things in fable, 
or in simile, drawn from earth, from objects 
common, accustomed. 

Life's business, with such delicious little 
interruptions as our correspondence affords, 
how pleasant it is ! — why can we not paint 
on the dull paper our whole feelings, exquisite 
as they rise up ? " 



FROM ANOTHER LETTER. 

" I had meant to have left off at this 

place ; but looking back, I am sorry to find 
too gloomy a cast tincturing my last page — a 
representation of life false and unthankful. 
Life is not all vanity and disappointment — it 
hath much of evil in it, no doubt ; but to 
those who do not misuse it, it affords comfort, 
temporary comfort, much — much that endears 
us to it, and dignifies it — many true and 
good feelings, I trust, of which we need not 
be ashamed — hours of tranquillity and hope. 
But the morning was dull and overcast, and 
my spirits were under a cloud. I feel my 
error. 

Is it no blessing that we two love one 
another so dearly — that Allan is left me — 
that you are settled in life — that worldly 
affairs go smooth with us both — above all 
that our lot hath fallen to us in a Christian 
country 1 Maria ! these things are not little. 
I will consider life as a long feast, and not 
forget to say grace." 



FROM ANOTHER LETTER. 

" Allan has written to me — you 

know, he is on a visit at his old tutor's in 
Gloucestershire — he is to return home on 
Thursday — Allan is a dear boy — he con- 
cludes his letter, which is very affectionate 
throughout, in this manner — 

Elinor, I charge you to learn the following 
.stanza by heart — 



The monarch may forget his crown, 

That on his head an hour hath been ; 
The bridegroom may forget his bride 

Was made his wedded wife yestreen ; 
The mother may forget her child, 

That smiles so sweetly on her knee : 
But I'll remember thee, Glencairn, 

And all that thou hast done for me. 



The lines are in Burns—you know, we 
read him for the first time together at 
Margate — and I have been used to refer 
them to you, and to call you, in my mind, 
Glencairn, — for you were always very good to 
me. I had a thousand failings, but you 
would love me in spite of them all. I am 
going to drink your health.'* 

I shall detain my reader no longer from 
the narrative. 



CHAPTEE VIII. 



They had but four rooms in the cottage. 
Margaret slept in the biggest room up-stairs ? 
and her grand-daughter in a kind of closet 
adjoining, where she could be within hearing, 
if her grandmother should call her in the 
night. 

The girl was often disturbed in that 
manner — two or three times in a night she 
has been forced to leave her bed, to fetch 
her grandmother's cordials, or do some little 
service for her — but she knew that 
Margaret's ailings were real and pressing, 
and Eosamund never complained — never 
suspected, that her grandmother's requisi- 
tions had anything unreasonable in them. 

The night she parted with Miss Clare, 
she had helped Margaret to bed, as usual — 
and, after saying her prayers, as the custom 
was, kneeling by the old lady's bed-side, 
kissed her grandmother, and wished her a 
good-night — Margaret blessed her, and 
charged her to go to bed directly. It was 
her customary injunction, and Eosamund 
had never dreamed of disobeying. 

So she retired to her little room. The 
night was warm and clear — the moon very 
bright — her window commanded a view of 
scenes she had been tracing in the day-time 
with Miss Clare. 

All the events of the day past, the occur- 
rences of their walk arose in her mind. She 



ROSAMUND GRAY. 



505 



fancied she should like to retrace those 
scenes — but it was now nine o'clock, a late 
hour in the village. 

Still she fancied it would be very charming 
— and then her grandmother's injunction 
came powerfully to her recollection — she 
sighed, and turned from the window — and 
walked up and down her little room. 

Ever, when she looked at the window, the 
wish returned. It was not so very late. The 
neighbours were yet about, passing under 
the window to their homes — she thought, 
and thought again, till her sensations became 
vivid, even to painfulness — her bosom was 
aching to give them vent. 

The village clock struck ten ! — the neigh- 
bours ceased to pass under the window. 
Eosamund, stealing down stairs, fastened 
the latch behind her, and left the cottage. 

One, that knew her, met her, and observed 
her with some surprise. Another recollects 
having wished her a good-night. Rosamund 
never returned to the cottage. 

An old man, that lay sick in a small house 
adjoining to Margaret's, testified the next 
morning, that he had plainly heard the old 
creature calling for her grand-daughter. All 
the night long she made her moan, and 
ceased not to call upon the name of Eosa- 
mund. But no Eosamund was there — the 
voice died away, but not till near day-break. 

When the neighbours came to search in 
the morning, Margaret was missing ! She 
had straggled out of bed, and made her way 
into Eosamund's room — worn out with 
fatigue and fright, when she found the girl 
not there, she had laid herself down to die — 
and, it is thought, she died praying — for she 
was discovered in a kneeling posture, her 
arms and face extended on the pillow, where 
Eosamund had slept the night before — a 
smile was on her face in death. 



CHAPTEE IX. 

Fain would I draw a veil over the 
transactions of that night — but I cannot — 
grief, and burning shame, forbid me to be 
silent — black deeds are about to be made 
public, which reflect a stain upon our com- 
mon nature. 

Eosamund, enthusiastic and improvident, 



wandered unprotected to a distance from 
her guardian doors — through lonely glens, 
and wood walks, where she had rambled 
many a day in safety — till she arrived at a 
shady copse, out of the hearing of any human 
habitation. 

Matravis met her. "Flown with inso- 
lence and wine," returning home late at 
night, he passed that way ! 

Matravis was a very ugly man. Sallow 
complexioned ! and if hearts can wear that 
colour, his heart was sallow-complexioned 
also. 

A young man with gray deliberation ! 
cold and systematic in all his plans ; and all 
his plans were evil. His very lust was 
systematic. 

He would brood over' his bad purposes 
for such a dreary length of time that, it 
might have been expected, some solitary 
check of conscience must have intervened 
to save him from commission. But that 
Light from Heaven was extinct in his dark 
bosom. 

Nothing that is great, nothing that is 
amiable, existed for this unhappy man. He 
feared, he envied, he suspected ; but he never 
loved. The sublime and beautiful in nature, 
the excellent and becoming in morals, were 
things placed beyond the capacity of his 
sensations. He loved not poetry — nor ever 
took a lonely walk to meditate — never beheld 
virtue, which he did not try to disbelieve, or 
female beauty and innocence, which he did 
not lust to contaminate. 

A sneer was perpetually upon his face, 
and malice grinning at his heart. He would 
say the most ill-natured things, with the 
least remorse, of any man I ever knew. 
This gained him the reputation of a wit — 
other traits got him the reputation of a 
villain. 

And this man formerly paid his court to 
Elinor Clare ! — with what success I leave 
my readers to determine. It was not in 
Elinor's nature to despise any living thing — 
but in the estimation of this man, to be 
rejected was to be despised — and Matravis 
never forgave. 

He had long turned his eyes upon 
Eosamund Gray. To steal from the bosom 
of her friends the jewel they prized so much, 
the little ewe lamb they held so dear, was 
a scheme of delicate revenge, and Matravis 



506 



ROSAMUND GRAY. 



had a two-fold motive for accomplishing this 
young maid's ruin. 

Often had he met her in her favourite 
solitudes, but found her ever cold and 
inaccessible. Of late the girl had avoided 
straying far from her own home, in the fear 
of meeting him — but she had never told her 
fears to Allan. 

Matravis had, till now, been content to be 
a villain within the limits of the law — but, 
on the present occasion, hot fumes of wine, 
co-operating with his deep desire of revenge, 
and the insolence of an unhoped-for meeting, 
overcame his customary prudence, and 
Matravis rose, at once, to an audacity of 
glorious mischief. 

Late at night he met her, a lonely, un- 
protected virgin — no friend at hand — no 
place near of refuge. 

Eosamund Gray, my soul is exceeding 
sorrowful for thee — I loathe to tell the 
hateful circumstances of thy wrongs. Night 
and silence were the only witnesses of this 
young maid's disgrace — Matravis fled. 

Eosamund, polluted and disgraced, wan- 
dered, an abandoned thing, about the fields 
and meadows till day-break. Not caring to 
return to the cottage, she sat herself down 
before the gate of Miss Clare's house— in a 
stupor of grief. 

Elinor was just rising, and had opened the 
windows of her chamber, when she perceived 
her desolate young friend. She ran to 
embrace her — she brought her into the house 
— she took her to her bosom — she kissed her 
■ — she spake to her ; but Eosamund could 
not speak. 

Tidings came from the cottage. Margaret's 
death was an event which could not be kept 
concealed from Eosamund. When the sweet 
maid heard of it, she languished, and fell 
sick — she never held up her head after that 
time. 

If Eosamund had been a sister, she could 
not have been kindlier treated than by her 
two friends. 

Allan had prospects in life — might, in 
time, have married into any of the first 
families in Hertfordshire — but Eosamund 
Gray, humbled though she was, and put to 
shame, had yet a charm for him — and he 
would have been content to share his fortunes 
with her yet, if Eosamund would have lived 
to be his companion. 



But this was not to be — and the girl soon 
after died. She expired in the arms of 
Elinor — quiet, gentle, as she lived — thankful 
that she died not among strangers — and 
expressing, by signs rather than words, a 
gratitude for the most trifling services, the 
common offices of humanity. She died 
uncomplaining ; and this young maid, this 
untaught Eosamund, might have given a 
lesson to the grave philosopher in death. 



CHAPTEE X. 



I was but a boy when these events took 
place. All the village remember the story, 
and tell of Eosamund Gray, and old blind 
Margaret. 

I parted from Allan Clare on that disas- 
trous night, and set out for Edinburgh the 
next morning, before the facts were com- 
monly known — I heard not of them — and it 
was four months before I received a letter 
from Allan. 

" His heart," he told me, " was gone from 
him — for his sister had died of a frenzy 
fever ! " — not a word of Eosamund in the 
letter — I was left to collect her story from 
sources which may one day be explained. 

I soon after quitted Scotland, on the death 
of my father, and returned to my native 
village. Allan had left the place, and I 
could gain no information, whether he were 
dead or living. 

I passed the cottage. I did not dare to 
look that way, or to inquire who lived there. 
A little dog, that had been Eosamund's, was 
yelping in my path. I laughed aloud like 
one mad, whose mind had suddenly gone 
from him — I stared vacantly around me, like 
one alienated from common perceptions. 

But I was young at that time, and the 
impression became gradually weakened as I 
mingled in the business of life. It is now 
ten years since these events took place, and I 
sometimes think of them as unreal. Allan 
Clare was a dear friend to me — but there 
are times when Allan and his sister, Mar- 
garet and her grand-daughter, appear like 
personages of a dream — an idle dream. 



ROSAMUND GRAY. 



507 



CHAPTEE XI. 

Strange things have happened unto me — I 
seem scarce awake — but I will recollect my 
thoughts, and try to give an account of 
what has befallen me in the few last weeks. 

Since my father's death our family have 
resided in London. I am in practice as a 
surgeon there. My mother died two years 
after we left Widford. 

A month or two ago, I had been busying 
myself in drawing up the above narrative, 
intending to make it public. The employ- 
ment had forced my mind to dwell upon 
facts, which had begun to fade from it — the 
memory of old times became vivid, and more 
vivid — 'I felt a strong desire to revisit the 
scenes of my native village — of the young 
loves of Eosamund and her Clare. 

A kind of dread had hitherto kept me 
back ; but I was restless now, till I had 
accomplished my wish. I set out one morn- 
ing to walk — I reached Widford about eleven 
in the forenoon — after a slight breakfast ,at 
my inn — where I was mortified to perceive 
the old landlord did not know me again — 
(old Thomas Billet — he has often made angle- 
rods for me when a child) — I rambled over 
all my accustomed haunts. 

Our old house was vacant, and to be sold. 
I entered, unmolested, into the room that 
had been my bedchamber. I kneeled down 
on the spot where my little bed had stood — 
I felt like a child — I prayed like one — it 
seemed as though old times were to return 
again — I looked round involuntarily, expect- 
ing to see some face I knew — but all was 
naked and mute. The bed was gone. My 
little pane of painted window, through which 
I loved to look at the sun when I awoke 
in a fine summer's morning, was taken out, 
and had been replaced by one of common 
glass. 

I visited, by turns, every chamber — they 
were all desolate and unfurnished, one ex- 
cepted, in which the owner had left a harp- 
sichord, probably to be sold — I touched the 
keys — I played some old Scottish tunes, 
which had delighted me when a child. Past 
associations revived with the music — blended 
with a sense of unreality, which at last be- 
came too powerful — I rushed out of the room 
to give vent to my feelings. 



I wandered, scarce knowing where, into 
an old wood, that stands at the back of the 
house — we called it the Wilderness. A well- 
known form was missing, that used to meet 
me in this place — it was thine — Ben Moxam 
— the kindest, gentlest, politest of human 
beings, yet was he nothing higher than a 
gardener in the family. Honest creature ! 
thou didst never pass me in my childish 
rambles, without a soft speech, and a smile. 
I remember thy good-natured face. But 
there is one thing, for which I can never for- 
give thee, Ben Moxam — that thou didst join 
with an old maiden aunt of mine in a cruel 
plot, to lop away the hanging branches of the 
old fir-trees — I remember them sweeping to 
the ground. 

I have often left my' childish sports to 
ramble in this place — its glooms and its soli- 
tude had a mysterious charm for my young 
mind, nurturing within me that love of quiet- 
ness and lonely thinking, which has accom- 
panied me to maturer years. 

In this Wilderness I found myself, after a 
ten years' absence. Its stately fir-trees were 
yet standing, with all their luxuriant com- 
pany of underwood — the squirrel was there, 
and the melancholy cooings of the wood- 
pigeon — all was as I had left it — my heart 
softened at the sight — it seemed as though 
my character had been suffering a change 
since I forsook these shades. 

My parents were both dead — I had no 
counsellor left, no experience of age to direct 
me, no sweet voice of reproof. The Lord 
had taken away my friends, and I knew not 
where he had laid them. I paced round the 
wilderness, seeking a comforter. I prayed 
that I might be restored to that state of in- 
nocence, in which I had wandered in those 
shades. 

Methought my request was heard, for it 
seemed as though the stains of manhood 
were passing from me, and I were relapsing 
into the purity and simplicity of childhood. 
I was content to have been moulded into a 
perfect child. I stood still, as in a trance. 
I dreamed that I was enjoying a personal 
intercourse with my heavenly Father — and, 
extravagantly, put off the shoes from my 
feet — for the place where I stood I thought, 
was holy ground. 

This state of mind could not last long, and 
I returned with languid feelings to my inn. 



508 



ROSAMUND GRAY. 



I ordered my dinner — green peas and a 
sweetbread — it had been a favourite dish 
with me in my childhood— I was allowed to 
have it on my birth-days. I was impatient 
to see it come upon table — but, when it 
came, I could scarce eat a mouthful — my 
tears choked me. I called for wine — I drank 
a pint and a half of red wine — and not till 
then had I dared to visit the church-yard, 
where my parents were interred. 

The cottage lay in my way — Margaret had 
chosen it for that very reason, to be near 
the church — for the old lady was regular in 
her attendance on public worship — I passed 
on — and in a moment found myself among 
the tombs. 

I had been present at my father's burial, 
and knew the spot again ■ — my mother's 
funeral I was prevented by illness from at- 
tending — a plain stone was placed over the 
grave, with their initials carved upon it — for 
they both occupied one grave. 

I prostrated myself before the spot — I 
kissed the earth that covered them — I con- 
templated, with gloomy delight, the time 
when I should mingle my dust with theirs 
— and kneeled, with my arms incumbent on 
the grave stone, in a kind of mental prayer 
— for I could not speak. 

Having performed these duties, I arose 
with quieter feelings, and felt leisure to 
attend to indifferent objects. — Still I con- 
tinued in the church-yard, reading the 
various inscriptions, and moralising on them 
with that kind of levity, which will not un- 
frequently spring up in the mind, in the 
midst of deep melancholy. 

I read of nothing but careful parents, 
loving husbands, and dutiful children. I said 
jestingly, where be all the bad people buried ? 
Bad parents, bad husbands, bad children — 
what cemeteries are appointed for these % — 
do they not sleep in consecrated ground ? or 
is it but a pious fiction, a generous oversight, 
in the survivors, which thus tricks out men's 
epitaphs when dead, who, in their life-time, 
discharged the offices of life, perhaps, but 
lamely ? Their failings, with their reproaches, 
now sleep with them in the grave. Man 
wars not with the dead. It is a trait of human 
nature, for which I love it. 

I had not observed, till now, a little group 
assembled at the other end of the church- 
yard ; it was a company of children, who 



were gathered round a young man, dressed 
in black, sitting on a grave-stone. 

He seemed to be asking them questions — • 
probably, about their learning — and one 
little dirty ragged-headed fellow was clam- 
bering up his knees to kiss him. The 
children had been eating black cherries — for 
some of the stones were scattered about, and 
their mouths were smeared with them. 

As I drew near them, I thought I dis- 
cerned in the stranger a mild benignity of 
countenance, which I had somewhere seen 
before — I gazed at him more attentively. 

It was Allan Clare ! sitting on the grave 
of his sister. 

I threw my arms about his neck. I ex- 
claimed " Allan " — he turned his eyes upon 
me — he knew me — we both wept aloud — it 
seemed as though the interval since we 
parted had been as nothing — I cried out, 
" Come, and tell me about these things." 

I drew him away from his little Mends — 
he parted with a show of reluctance from 
the church-yard — Margaret and her grand- 
daughter lay buried there, as well as his 
sister — I took him to my inn — secured a 
room, where we might be private — ordered 
fresh wine — scarce knowing what I did, I 
danced for joy. 

Allan was quite overcome, and taking me 
by the hand, he said, " This repays me for 
all." 

It was a proud day for me — I had found 
the friend I thought dead — earth seemed to 
me no longer valuable, than as it contained 
him; and existence a blessing no longer 
than while I should live to be his comforter. 

I began, at leisure, to survey him with 
more attention. Time and grief had left few 
traces of that fine enthusiasm, which once 
burned in his countenance — his eyes had lost 
their original fire, but they retained an un- 
common sweetness, and whenever they were 
turned upon me, their smile pierced to my 
heart. 

" Allan, I fear you have been a sufferer 1 " 
He replied not, and I could not press him 
further. I could not call the dead to life 
again. 

So we drank and told old stories — and 
repeated old poetry — and sang old songs — 
as if nothing had happened. We sat till very 
late. I forgot that I had purposed returning to 
town that evening — to Allan all places were 



ROSAMUND GRAY. 



509 



alike — I grew noisy, he grew cheerful — 
Allan's old manners, old enthusiasm, were re- 
turning upon him — we laughed, we wept, we 
mingled our tears, and talked extravagantly. 

Allan was my chamber-fellow that night 
— and lay awake planning schemes of living 
together under the same roof, entering upon 
similar pursuits, — and praising God, that we 
had met. 

I was obliged to return to town the next 
morning, and Allan proposed to accompany 
me. " Since the death of his sister," he told 
me, " he had been a wanderer." 

In the course of our walk he unbosomed 
himself without reserve — told me many par- 
ticulars of his way of life for the last nine 
or ten years, which I do not feel myself at 
liberty to divulge. 

Once, on my attempting to cheer him, 
when I perceived him over thoughtful, he 
replied to me in these words : 

"Do not regard me as unhappy when 
you catch me in these moods. I am never 
more happy than at times when, by the cast 
of my countenance, men judge me most 
miserable. 

" My friend, the events which have left 
this sadness behind them are of no recent 
date. The melancholy which comes over me 
with the recollection of them is not hurtful, 
but only tends to soften and tranquillise my 
mind, to detach me from the restlessness of 
human pursuits. 

" The stronger I feel this detachment, the 
more I find myself drawn heavenward to the 
contemplation of spiritual objects. 

" I love to keep old friendships alive and 
warm within me, because I expect a renewal 
of them in the World of /Spirits. 

" I am a wandering and unconnected thing 
on the earth. I have made no new friend- 
ships, that can compensate me for the loss of 
the old — and the more I know mankind, the 
more do#B it become necessary for me to 
supply their loss by little images, recollec- 
tions, and circumstances of past pleasures. 

" I am sensible that I am surrounded by 
a multitude of very worthy people, plain- 
hearted souls, sincere and kind. But they 
have hitherto eluded my pursuit, and will 
continue to bless the little circle of their 
families and friends, while I must remain a 
stranger to them. 

" Kept at a distance by mankind, I have 



not ceased to love them — and could 1 find 
the cruel persecutor, the malignant instru- 
ment of God's judgments on me and mine, 
I think I would forgive, and try to love him 
too. 

" I have been a quiet sufferer. From the 
beginning of my calamities it was given to 
me, not to see the hand of man in them. I 
perceived a mighty arm, which none but 
myself could see, extended over me. I gave 
my heart to the Purifier, and my will to the 
Sovereign Will of the Universe. The irre- 
sistible wheels of destiny passed on in their 
everlasting rotation, — and I suffered myself 
to be carried along with them without com- 
plaining." 



CHAPTEK XII. 



Allan told me that for some years past, 
feeling himself disengaged from every per- 
sonal tie, but not alienated from human 
sympathies, it had been his taste, his humour 
he called it, to spend a great portion of his 
time in hospitals and lazar-houses. 

He had found a wayward pleasure, he re- 
fused to name it a virtue, in tending a 
description of people, who had long ceased 
to expect kindness or friendliness from man- 
kind, but were content to accept the reluct- 
ant services, which the oftentimes unfeeling 
instruments and servants of these well-meant 
institutions deal out to the poor sick people 
under their care. 

It is not medicine, it is not broths and 
coarse meats, served up at a stated hour 
with all the hard formalities of a prison — it 
is not the scanty dole of a bed to die on — 
which dying man requires from his species. 

Looks, attentions, consolations, — in a word, 
sympathies, are what a man most needs in 
this awful close of mortal sufferings, A 
kind look, a smile, a drop of cold water to 
the parched lip — for these things a man shall 
bless you in death. 

And these better things than cordials did 
Allan love to administer — to stay by a bed- 
side the whole day, when something disgust- 
ing in a patient's distemper has kept the 
very nurses at a distance — to sit by, while 
the poor wretch got a little sleep — and be 
there to smile upon him when he awoke — to 



510 



ROSAMUND GEAY. 



slip a guinea, now and then, into the hands 
of a nurse or attendant — these things have 
been to Allan as privileges, for which he was 
content to live ; choice marks, and circum- 
stances, of his Maker's goodness to him. 

And I do not know whether occupations 
of this kind be not a spring of purer and 
nobler delight (certainly instances of a more 
disinterested virtue) than arises from what 
are called Friendships of Sentiment. 

Between two persons of liberal education, 
like opinions, and common feelings, often- 
times subsists a Variety of Sentiment, which 
disposes each to look upon the other as the 
only being in the universe worthy of friend- 
ship, or capable of understanding it, — them- 
selves they consider as the solitary receptacles 
of all that is delicate in feeling, or stable in 
attachment : when the odds are, that under 
every green hill, and in every crowded street, 
people of equal worth are to be found, who 
do more good in their generation, and make 
less noise in the doiug of it. 

It was in consequence of these benevolent 
propensities, I have been describing, that 
Allan oftentimes discovered considerable in- 
clinations in favour of my way of life, which 
I have before mentioned as being that of a 
surgeon. He would frequently attend me 
on my visits to patients ; and I began to 
think that he had serious intentions of 
making my profession his study. 

He was present with me at a scene — a 
death-bed scene — I shudder when I do but 
think of it. 



CHAPTEE XIII. 



I was sent for the other morning to the 
assistance of a gentleman, who had been 
wounded in a duel, — and his wounds by un- 
skilful treatment had been brought to a 
dangerous crisis. 



The uncommonness of the name, which 
was Matravis, suggested to me, that this 
might possibly be no other than Allan's qld 
enemy. Under this apprehension, I did 
what I could to dissuade Allan from ac- 
companying me — but he seemed bent upon 
going, and even pleased himself with the 
notion, that it might lie within his ability to 
do the unhappy man some service. So he 
went with me. 

When we came to the house, which was 
in Soho-square, we discovered that it was 
indeed the man — the identical Matravis, who 
had done all that mischief in times past — but 
not in a condition to excite any other sensa- 
tion than pity in a heart more hard than 
Allan's, 

Intense pain had brought on a delirium — 
we perceived this on first entering the room 
— for the wretched man was raving to him- 
self — talking idly in mad unconnected sen- 
tences — that yet seemed, at times, to have a 
reference to past facts. 

One while he told us his dream. "He 
had lost his way on a great heath, to which 
there seemed no end — it was cold, cold, cold, 
— and dark, very dark — an old woman in 
leading-strings, blind, was groping about for 
a guide " — and then he frightened me, — 
for he seemed disposed to be jocular, and 
sang a song about " an old woman clothed 
in grey," and said " he did not believe in a 
devil." 

Presently he bid us " not tell Allan Clare." 
— Allan was hanging over him at that very 
moment, sobbing. — I could not resist the 
impulse, but cried out, " This is Allan Clare 
— Allan Clare is come to see you, my dear 
Sir." — The wretched man did not hear me, I 
believe, for he turned his head away, and 
began talking of charnel-houses, and dead 
men, and " whether they knew anything that 
passed in their coffins." 

Matravis died that night. 



ESSAYS. 



EECOLLECTIONS OF CHEIST'S HOSPITAL. 



To comfort the desponding parent with 
the thought that, without diminishing the 
stock which is imperiously demanded to fur- 
nish the more pressing and homely wants of 
our nature, he has disposed of one or more 
perhaps out of a numerous offspring, under 
the shelter of a care scarce less tender than 
the paternal, where not only their bodily 
cravings shall be supplied, but that mental 
pabulum is also dispensed, which He hath 
declared to be no less necessary to our sus- 
tenance, who said, that, " not by bread alone 
man can live : " for this Christ's Hospital 
unfolds her bounty. Here neither, on the 
one hand, are the youth lifted up above 
their family, which we must suppose liberal, 
though reduced ; nor on the other hand, are 
they liable to be depressed below its level 
by the mean habits and sentiments which a 
common charity-school generates. It is, in 
a word, an Institution to keep those who 
have yet held up their heads in the world 
from sinking ; to keep alive the spirit of a 
decent household, when poverty was in dan- 
ger of crushing it ; to assist those who are 
the most willing, but not always the most 
able, to assist themselves ; to separate a 
child from his family for a season, in order 
to render him back hereafter, with feelings 
and habits more congenial to it, than he 
could even have attained by remaining at 
home in the bosom of it. It is a preserving 
and renovating principle, an antidote for the 
res angusta domi, when it presses, as it always 
does, most heavily upon the most ingenuous 
natures. 

This is Christ's Hospital ; and whether 
its character would be improved by con- 



fining its advantages to the very lowest of 
the people, let those judge who have wit- 
nessed the looks, the gestures, the behaviour, 
the manner of their play with one another, 
their deportment towards strangers, the 
whole aspect and physiognomy of that vast 
assemblage of boys on the London founda- 
tion, who freshen and make alive again with 
their sports the else mouldering cloisters 
of the old Grey Friars — which strangers 
who have never witnessed, if they pass 
through Newgate-street, or by Smithfield, 
would do well to go a little out of their 
way to see. 

For the Christ's Hospital boy feels that 
he is no charity-boy ; he feels it in the anti- 
quity and regality of the foundation to which 
he belongs ; in the usage which he meets 
with at school, and the treatment he is ac- 
customed to out of its bounds ; in the 
respect and even kindness, which his well- 
known garb never fails to procure him in 
the streets of the metropolis ; he feels it in 
his education, in that measure of classical 
attainments, which every individual at that 
school, though not destined to a learned pro- 
fession, has it in his power to procure, at- 
tainments which it would be worse than 
folly to put it in the reach of the labouring 
classes to acquire : he feels it in the number- 
less comforts, and even magnificences, which 
surround him ; in his old and awful cloisters, 
with their traditions ; in his spacious school- 
rooms, and in the well-ordered, airy, and 
lofty rooms where he sleeps ; in his stately 
dining-hall, hung round with pictures, by 
Verrio, Lely, and others, one of them sur- 
passing in size and grandeur almost any 



512 



RECOLLECTIONS OF CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 



other in the kingdom ; * above all, in the 
very extent and magnitude of the body to 
which he belongs, and the consequent spirit, 
the intelligence, and public conscience, which 
is the result of so many various yet wonder- 
fully combining members. Compared with 
this last-named advantage, what is the stock 
of information, (I do not here speak of book- 
learning, but of that knowledge which boy 
receives from boy,) the mass of collected 
opinions, the intelligence in common, among 
the few and narrow members of an ordinary 
boarding-school 1 

The Christ's Hospital or Blue-coat boy, 
has a distinctive character of his own, as far 
removed from the abject qualities of a 
common charity-boy as it is from the dis- 
gusting forwardness of a lad brought up at 
some other of the public schools. There is 
pride in it, accumulated from the circum- 
stances which I have described, as differ- 
encing him from the former ; and there 
is a restraining modesty from a sense of 
obligation and dependence, which must ever 
keep his deportment from assimilating to 
that of the latter. His very garb, as it is 
antique and venerable, feeds his self-respect ; 
as it is a badge of dependence, it restrains 
the natural petulance of that age from 
breaking out into overt acts of insolence. 
This produces silence and a reserve before 
strangers, yet not that cowardly shyness 
which boys mewed up at home will feel ; 
he will speak up when spoken to, but the 
stranger must begin the conversation with 
him. Within his bounds he is all fire 
and play ; but in the streets he steals 
along with all the self-concentration of a 
young monk. He is never known to mix 
with other boys, they are a sort of laity to 
him. All this proceeds, I have no doubt, 
from the continual consciousness which he 
carries about him of the difference of his 
dress from that of the rest of the world ; 
with a modest jealousy over himself, lest, by 
over-hastily mixing with common and secular 
playfellows, he should commit the dignity of 
his cloth. Nor let any one laugh at this ; 
for, considering the propensity of the 



* By Verrio, representing James the Second on his 
throne, surrounded hy his courtiers, (all curious por- 
traits,) receiving the mathematical pupils at their annual 
presentation : a custom still kept up on New-year's-day 
at Court. 



multitude, and especially of the small 
multitude, to ridicule anything unusual in 
dress — above all, where such peculiarity 
may be construed by malice into a mark of 
disparagement — this reserve will appear to 
be nothing more than a wise instinct in the 
Blue-coat boy. That it is neither pride nor 
rusticity, at least that it has none of the 
offensive qualities of either, a stranger may 
soon satisfy himself by putting a question to 
any of these boys : he may be sure of an 
answer couched in terms of plain civility, 
neither loquacious nor embarrassed. Let 
him put the same question to a parish-boy, 
or to one of the trencher-caps in the — — 
cloisters, and the impudent reply of the one 
shall not fail to exasperate any more than 
the certain servility, and mercenary eye to 
reward, which he will meet with in the 
other, can fail to depress and sadden him. 

The Christ's Hospital boy is a religious 
character. His school is eminently a religious 
foundation ; it has its peculiar prayers, its 
services at set times, its graces, hymns, and 
anthems, following each other in an almost 
monastic closeness of succession. This 
religious character in him is not always 
untinged with superstition. That is not 
wonderful, when we consider the thousand 
tales and traditions which must circulate, 
with undisturbed credulity, amongst so many 
boys, that have so few checks to their belief 
from any intercourse with the world at 
large ; upon whom their equals in age must 
work so much, their elders so little. With 
this leaning towards an over-belief in matters 
of religion, which will soon correct itself 
when he comes out into society, may be 
classed a turn for romance above most other 
boys. This is to be traced in the same 
manner to their excess of society with each 
other, and defect of mingling with the world. 
Hence the peculiar avidity with which such 
books as the Arabian Nights' Entertain- 
ments, and others of a still wilder cast, are, 
or at least were in my time, sought for 
by the boys. I remember when some half- 
dozen of them set off from school, without 
map, card, or compass, on a serious expedition 
to find out Philip QuarlVs Island. 

The Christ's Hospital boy's sense of right 
and wrong is peculiarly tender and appre- 
hensive. It is even apt to run out into 
ceremonial observances, and to impose a 



RECOLLECTIONS OF CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 



513 



yoke upon itself beyond the strict obligations 
of the moral law. Those who were con- 
temporaries with me at that school thirty 
years ago, will remember with what more 
than Judaic rigour the eating of the fat of 
certain boiled meats* was interdicted. A 
boy would have blushed as at the exposure 
of some, heinous immorality, to .have been 
detected eating that forbidden portion of his 
allowance of animal food, the whole of which, 
while he was in health, was little more than 
sufficient to allay his hunger. The same, or 
even greater, refinement was shown in the 
rejection of certain kinds of sweet-cake. 
What gave rise to these supererogatory 
penances, these self-denying ordinances, I 
could never learn ; t they certainly argue no 
defect of the conscientious principle. A 
little excess in that article is not undesirable 
in youth, to make allowance for the inevitable 
waste which comes in maturer years. But 
in the less ambiguous line of duty, in those 
directions of the moral feelings which cannot 
be mistaken or depreciated, I will relate 
what took place in the year 1785, when 
Mr. Perry, the steward, died. I must be 
pardoned for taking my instances from my 
own times. Indeed, the vividness of my 
recollections, while I am upon this subject, 
almost bring back those times ; they are 
present to me still. But I believe that in the 
years which have elapsed since the period 
which I speak of, the character of the 
Christ's Hospital boy is very little changed. 
Their situation in point of many comforts is 
improved ; but that which I ventured before 
to term the public conscience of the school, 
the pervading moral sense, of which every 
mind partakes and to which so many 
individual minds contribute, remains, I 
believe, pretty much the same as when I 
left it. I have seen, within this twelvemonth 
almost, the change which has been produced 
upon a boy of eight or nine years of age, 
upon being admitted into that school ; how, 
from a pert young coxcomb, who thought 

* Under the denomination of gags. 

+ lam told that the late steward [Mr. Hathaway] who 
evinced on many occasions a most praiseworthy anxiety 
to promote the comfort of the boys, had occasion for all 
his address and perseverance to eradicate the first of 
these unfortunate prejudices, in which he at length happily 
succeeded, and thereby restored to one-half of the animal 
nutrition of the school those honours which painful 
superstition and blind zeal had so long conspired to with- 
hold from it. 



that all knowledge was comprehended within 
his shallow brains, because a smattering of 
two or three languages and one or two 
sciences were stuffed into him by injudicious 
treatment at home, by a mixture with the 
wholesome society of so many schoolfellows, 
in less time than I have spoken of, he has 
sunk to his own level, and is contented to be 
carried on in the quiet orbit of modest 
self-knowledge in which the common mass of 
that unpresumptuous assemblage of boys 
seem to move : from being a little unfeeling 
mortal, he has got to feel and reflect. Nor 
would it be a difficult matter to show how, 
at a school like this, where the boy is neither 
entirely separated from home, nor yet 
exclusively under its influence, the best 
feelings, the filial for instance, are brought 
to a maturity which they could not have 
attained under a completely domestic edu- 
cation ; how the relation of a parent is 
rendered less tender by unremitted associa- 
tion, and the very awfulness of age is best 
apprehended by some sojourning amidst 
the comparative levity of youth ; how 
absence, not drawn out by too great exten- 
sion into alienation or forgetfulness, puts an 
edge upon the relish of occasional intercourse, 
and the boy is made the better child by that 
which keeps the force of that relation from 
being felt as perpetually pressing on him ; 
how the substituted paternity, into the care 
of which he is adopted, while in everything 
substantial it makes up for the natural, in 
the necessary omission of individual fond- 
nesses and partialities, directs the mind 
only the more strongly to appreciate that 
natural and first tie, in which such weak- 
nesses are the bond of strength, and the 
appetite which craves after them betrays no 
perverse palate. But these speculations 
rather belong to the question of the com- 
parative advantages of a public over a 
private education in general. I must get 
back to my favourite school; and to that 
which took place when our old and good 
steward died. 

And I will say, that when I think of the 
frequent instances which I have met with in 
children, of a hard-heartedness, a callousness, 
and insensibility to the loss of relations, even 
of those who have begot and nourished them, 
I cannot but consider it as a proof of some- 
thing in the peculiar conformation of that 



L L 



5H 



RECOLLECTIONS OF CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 



school, favourable to the expansion of the 
best feelings of our nature, that, at the 
period which I am noticing, out of five 
hundred boys there was not a dry eye to be 
found among them, nor a heart that did not 
beat with genuine emotion. Every impulse 
to play, until the funeral day was past, 
seemed suspended throughout the school ; 
and the boys, lately so mirthful and sprightly, 
were seen pacing their cloisters alone, or in 
sad groups standing about, few of them 
without some token, such as their slender 
means could provide, a black riband or 
something, to denote respect and a sense of 
their loss. The time itself was a time of 
anarchy, a time in which all authority (out 
of school hours) was abandoned. The ordi- 
nary restraints were for those days super- 
seded ; and the gates, which at other times 
kept us in, were left without watchers. Yet, 
with the exception of one or two graceless 
boys at most, who took advantage of that 
suspension of authorities to skulk out, as it 
was called, the whole body of that great 
school kept rigorously within their bounds, 
by a voluntary self-imprisonment ; and they 
who broke bounds, though they escaped 
punishment from any master, fell into a 
general disrepute among us, and, for that 
which at any other time would have been 
applauded and admired as a mark of spirit, 
were consigned to infamy and reprobation ; 
so much natural government have gratitude 
and the principles of reverence and love, and 
so much did a respect to their dead friend 
prevail with these Christ's Hospital boys, 
above any fear which his presence among 
them when living could ever produce. And 
if the impressions which were made on my 
mind so long ago are to be trusted, very 
richly did their steward deserve this tribute. 
It is a pleasure to me even now to call to 
mind his portly form, the regal awe which 
he always contrived to inspire, in spite of a 
tenderness and even weakness of nature that 
would have enfeebled the reins of discipline 
in any other master ; a yearning of tender- 
ness towards those under his protection, 
which could make five hundred boys at once 
feel towards him each as to their individual 
father. He had faults, with which we had 
nothing to do ; but, with all his faults, in- 
deed, Mr. Perry was a most extraordinary 
creature. Contemporary with him and 



still living, though he has long since resigned 
his occupation, will it be impertinent to 
mention the name of our excellent upper 
grammar -master, the Rev. James Boyer ? 
He was a disciplinarian, indeed, of a different 
stamp from him whom I have just described ; 
but, now the terrors of the rod, and of a 
temper a little too hasty to leave the more 
nervous of us quite at our ease to do justice 
to his merits in those days, are long since 
over, ungrateful were we if we should refuse 
our testimony to that unwearied assiduity 
with which he attended to the particular 
improvement of each of us. Had we been 
the offspring of the first gentry in the land, 
he could not have been instigated by the 
strongest views of recompense and reward 
to have made himself a greater slave to the 
most laborious of all occupations than he 
did for us sons of charity, from whom, or 
from our parents, he could expect nothing. 
He has had his reward in the satisfaction of 
having discharged his duty, in the pleasurable 
consciousness of having advanced the respect- 
ability of that institution to which, both man 
and boy, he was attached ; in the honours to 
which so many of his pupils have success- 
fully aspired at both our Universities ; and 
in the staff with which the Governors of the 
Hospital, at the close of his hard labours, 
with the highest expressions of the obliga- 
tions the school lay under to him, unani- 
mously voted to present him. 

I have often considered it among the 
felicities of the constitution of this school, 
that the offices of steward and schoolmaster 
are kept distinct ; the strict business of 
education alone devolving upon the latter, 
while the former has the charge of all 
things out of school, the control of the pro- 
visions, the regulation of meals, of dress, of 
play, and the ordinary intercourse of the 
boys. By this division of management, a 
superior respectability must attach to the 
teacher while his office is unmixed with any 
of these lower concerns. A still greater 
advantage over the construction of common 
boarding-schools is to be found in the settled 
salaries of the masters, rendering them 
totally free of obligation to any individual 
pupil or his parents. This never fails to 
have its effect at schools where each boy can 
reckon up to a hair what profit the master 
derives from him, where he views him every 



RECOLLECTIONS OF CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 



.15 



day in the light of a caterer, a provider for 
the family, who is to get so much by him in 
each of his meals. Boys will see and con- 
sider these things ; and how much must the 
sacred character of preceptor suffer in their 
minds by these degrading associations ! The 
very bill which the pupil carries home with 
him at Christmas, eked out, perhaps, with 
elaborate though necessary minuteness, in- 
structs him that his teachers have other 
ends than the mere love to learning, in the 
lessons which they give him ; and though 
they put into his hands the fine sayings of 
Seneca or Epictetus, yet they themselves are 
none of those disinterested pedagogues to 
teach philosophy gratis. The master, too, is 
sensible that he is seen in this light ; and 
how much this must lessen that affectionate 
regard to the learners which alone can 
sweeten the bitter labour of instruction, and 
convert the whole business into unwelcome 
and uninteresting task-work, many precep- 
tors that I have conversed with on the sub- 
ject are ready, with a sad heart, to acknow- 
ledge. From this inconvenience the settled 
salaries of the masters of this school in great 
measure exempt them ; while the happy 
custom of choosing masters (indeed every 
officer of the establishment) from those who 
have received their education there, gives 
them an interest in advancing the character 
of the school, and binds them to observe a 
tenderness and a respect to the children, in 
which a stranger, feeling that independence 
which I have spoken of, might well be 
expected to fail. 

In affectionate recollections of the place 
where he was bred up, in hearty recognitions 
of old schoolfellows met with again after the 
lapse of years, or in foreign countries, the 
Christ's Hospital boy yields to none ; I 
might almost say, he goes beyond most other 
boys. The very compass and magnitude of 
the school, its thousand bearings, the space 
it takes up in the imagination beyond the 
ordinary schools, impresses a remembrance, 
accompanied with an elevation of mind, that 
attends him through life. It is too big, too 
affecting an object, to pass away quickly 
from his mind. The Christ's Hospital boy's 
friends at school are commonly his intimates 
through life. For me, I do not know whether 
a constitutional imbecility does not incline 
me too obstinately to cling to the remem- 



brances of childhood ; in an inverted ratio 
to the usual sentiments of mankind, nothing 
that I have been engaged in since seems of 
any value or importance, compared to the 
colours which imagination gave to everything 
then. I belong to no body corporate such as 
I then made a part of. — And here, before I 
close, taking leave of the general reader, 
and addressing myself solely to my old 
school-fellows, that were contemporaries with 
me from the year 1782 to 1789, let me have 
leave to remember some of those circum- 
stances of our school, which they will not 
be unwilling to have brought back to their 
minds. 

And first, let us remember, as first in 
importance in our childish eyes, the young 
men (as they almost were) who, under the 
denomination of Grecians, were waiting the 
expiration of the period when they should 
be sent, at the charges of the Hospital, to 
one or other of our universities, but more 
frequently to Cambridge. These youths, 
from their superior acquirements, their 
superior age and stature, and the fewness of 
their numbers, (for seldom above two or 
three at a time were inaugurated into that 
high order,) drew the eyes of all, and espe- 
cially of the younger boys, into a reverent 
observance and admiration. How tall they 
used to seem to us ! how stately would they 
pace along the cloisters ! while the play of 
the lesser boys was absolutely suspended, or 
its boisterousness at least allayed, at their 
presence ! Not that they ever beat or 
struck the boys — that would have been to 
have demeaned themselves — the dignity of 
their persons alone insured them all respect. 
The task of blows, of corporal chastisement, 
they left to the common monitors, or heads 
of wards, who, it must be confessed, in our 
time had rather too much licence allowed 
them to oppress and misuse their inferiors ; 
and the interference of the Grecian, who 
may be considered as the spiritual power, 
was not unfrequently called for, to mitigate 
by its mediation the heavy unrelenting arm 
of this temporal power, or monitor. In fine, 
the Grecians were the solemn Muftis of the 
school. iEras were computed from their 
time ; — it used to be said, such or such a 

thing was done when S or T was 

Grecian. 

As I ventured to call the Grecians, the 



l l 2 



516 



RECOLLECTIONS OF CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 



Muftis of the school, the King's boys,* as 
their character then was, may well pass for 
the Janissaries. They were the terror of all 
the other boys ; bred up under that hardy 
sailor, as well as excellent mathematician, 
and co-navigator with Captain Cook, William 
Wales. All his systems were adapted to fit 
them for the rough element which they were 
destined to encounter. Frequent and severe 
punishments, which were expected to be 
borne with more than Spartan fortitude, 
came to be considered less as inflictions of 
disgrace than as trials of obstinate endurance. 
To make his boys hardy, and to give them 
early sailor-habits, seemed to be his only 
aim ; to this every thing was subordinate. 
Moral obliquities, indeed, were sure of 
receiving their full recompense, for no occa- 
sion of laying on the lash was ever let slip ; 
but the effects expected to be produced from 
it were something very different from con- 
trition or mortification.. There was in 
William Wales a perpetual fund of humour, 
a constant glee about him, which heightened 
by an inveterate provincialism of north- 
country dialect, absolutely took away the 
sting from his severities. His punishments 
were a game at patience, in which the 
master was not always worst contented when 
he found himself at times overcome by his 
pupil. What success this discipline had, or 
how the effects of it operated upon the after- 
lives of these King's boys, I cannot say : but 
I am sure that, for the time, they were abso- 
lute nuisances to the rest of the school. 
Hardy, brutal, and often wicked, they were 
the most graceless lump in the whole mass ; 
older and bigger than the other boys, (for, 
by the system of their education they were 
kept longer at school by two or three years 
than any of the rest, except the Grecians,) 
they were a constant terror to the younger 
part of the school ; and some who may read 
this, I doubt not, will remember the conster- 
nation into which the juvenile fry of us were 
thrown, when the cry was raised in the 
cloisters, that the First Order was coming — 
for so they termed the first form or class of 
those boys. Still these sea-boys answered 
some good purposes, in the school. They 
were the military class among the boys, 
foremost in athletic exercises, who extended 

• The mathematical pupils, hred up to the sea, on the 
foundation of Charles the Second. 



the fame of the prowess of the school far 
and near; and the apprentices in the vicinage, 
and sometimes the butchers' boys in the 
neighbouring market, had sad occasion to 
attest their valour. 

The time would fail me if I were to 
attempt to enumerate all those circum- 
stances, some pleasant, some attended with 
some pain, which, seen through the mist of 
distance, come sweetly softened to the 
memory. But I must crave leave to re- 
member our transcending superiority in 
those invigorating sports, leap-frog, and 
basting the bear ; our delightful excursions 
in the summer holidays to the New Eiver, 
near Newington, where, like otters, we 
would live the long day in the water, never 
caring for dressing ourselves, when we had 
once stripped ; our savoury meals afterwards, 
when we came home almost famished with 
staying out all day without our dinners ; our 
visits at other times to the Tower, where, 
by ancient privilege, we had free access to 
all the curiosities ; our solemn processions 
through the City at Easter, with the Lord 
Mayor's largess of buns, wine, and a shilling, 
with the festive questions and civic plea- 
santries of the dispensing Aldermen, which 
were more to us than all the rest of the 
banquet ; our stately suppings in public, 
where the well-lighted hall, and the conflu- 
ence of well-dressed company who came to 
see us, made the whole look more like a 
concert or assembly, than a scene of a plain 
bread and cheese collation; the annual 
orations upon St. Matthew's day, in which 
the senior scholar, before he had done, 
seldom failed to reckon up, among those 
who had done honour to our school by being 
educated in it, the names of those accom- 
plished critics and Greek scholars, Joshua 
Barnes and Jeremiah Markland (I marvel 
they left out Camden while they were about 
it). Let me have leave to remember our 
hymns and anthems, and well-toned organ ; 
the doleful tune of the burial anthem 
chaunted in the solemn cloisters, upon the 
seldom-occurring funeral of some school- 
fellow ; the festivities at Christmas, when 
the richest of us would club our stock to 
have a gaudy day, sitting round the fire, 
replenished to the height with logs, and the 
pennyless, and he that could contribute 
nothing, -partook in all the mirth, and in 



ON THE TRAGEDIES OP SHAKSPEARE. 



517 



some of the substantialities of the feasting ; 
the carol sung by night at that time of the 
year, which, when a young boy, I have so 
often lain awake to hear from seven (the 
hour of going to bed) till ten, when it was 
sung by the older boys and monitors, and 
have listened to it, in their rude chaunting, 
till I have been transported in fancy to the 
fields of Bethlehem, and the song which was 
sung at that season, by angels' voices to the 
shepherds. 

Nor would I willingly forget any of those 
things which administered to our vanity. 
The hem-stitched bands and town-made 
shirts, which # some of the most fashionable 
among us wore ; the town-girdles, with 
buckles of silver, or shining stone ; the 
badges of the sea-boys ; the cots, or superior 
shoe-strings, of the monitors ; the medals of 
the markers ; (those who were appointed to 
hear the Bible read in the war€s on Sunday 
morning and evening,) which bore on their 
obverse in silver, as certain parts of our 



garments carried, in meaner metal, the coun- 
tenance of our Founder, that godly and royal 
child, King Edward the Sixth, the flower of 
the Tudor name — the young flower that was 
untimely cropt, as it began to fill our land 
with its early odours — the boy- patron of 
boys — the serious and holy child who walked 
with Cranmer and Ridley — fit associate, in 
those tender years, for the bishops, and 
future martyrs of our Church, to receive, or, 
(as occasion sometimes proved,) to give in- 
struction. 

" But, ah ! what means the silent tear? 
Why, e'en 'mid joy, my bosom heave 1 
Ye long-lost scenes, enchantments dear ! 
Lo ! now I linger o'er your grave. 

" — Fly, then, ye hours of rosy hue, 

And bear away the bloom of years ! 
And quick succeed, ye sickly crew 
. Of doubts and sorrows, pains and fears ! 

" Still will I ponder Fate's unaltered plan, 

Nor, tracing back the child, forget that I am man." * 



* Lines meditated in the cloisters of Christ's Hospital, 
in the " Poetics" of Mr. George Dyer. 



ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKSPEARE. 

CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO THEIR FITNESS FOR STAGE-REPRESENTATION. 



Taking a turn the other day in the Abbey, 
I was struck with the affected attitude of a 
figure, which I do not remember to have 
seen before, and which upon examination 
proved to be a whole-length of the celebrated 
Mr. Garrick. Though I would not go so far 
with some good Catholics abroad as to shut 
players altogether out of consecrated ground, 
yet I own I was not a little scandalised at 
the introduction of theatrical airs and ges- 
tures into a place set apart to remind us of 
the saddest realities. Going nearer, I found 
inscribed under this harlequin figure the 
following lines : — 

" To paint, fair Nature, by divine command 
Her magic pencil in his glowing hand, 
A Shakspeare rose ; then, to expand his fame 
Wide o'er this breathing world, a Garrick came. 
Though sunk in death the forms the Poet drew, 
The Actor's genius bade them breathe anew ; 
Though, like the bard himself,' in night they lay, 
Immortal Garrick called them back to day : 
And till Eternity with power sublime 
Shall mark the mortal hour of hoary Time, 
Shakspeare and Garrick like twin-stars shall shine, 
And earth irradiate with a beam divine." 



It would be an insult to my readers' 
understandings to attempt anything like a 
criticism on this farrago of false thoughts 
and nonsense. But the reflection it led me 
into was a kind of wonder, how, from the 
days of the actor here celebrated to our own, 
it should have been the fashion to compli- 
ment every performer in his turn, that has 
had the luck to please the Town in any of 
the great characters of Shakspeare, with the 
notion of possessing a mind congenial with 
the poet's : how people should come thus un- 
accountably to confound the power of origi- 
nating poetical images and conceptions with 
the faculty of being able to read or recite 
the same when put into words ;* or what 

* It is observable that we fall into this confusion only 
in dramatic recitations. We never dream that the gen- 
tleman who reads Lucretius in public with great applause, 
is therefore a great poet and philosopher ; nor do we 
find that Tom Davis, the bookseller, who is recorded to 
have recited the Paradise Lost better than any man in 
England in his day (though I cannot help thinking there 
must be some mistake in this tradition) was therefore, 
by his intimate friends, set upon a level with Milton. 



518 



ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKSPEARE. 



connection that absolute mastery over the 
heart and soul of man, which a great dra- 
matic poet possesses, has with those low 
tricks upon the eye and ear, which a player 
by observing a few general effects, which 
some common passion, as grief, anger, &c, 
usually has upon the gestures and exterior, 
can so easily compass. To know the internal 
workings and movements of a great mind, 
of an Othello or a Hamlet for instance, the 
when and the why and the how far they 
should be moved ; to what pitch a passion is 
becoming ; to give the reins and to pull in 
the curb exactly at the moment when the 
drawing in or the slackening is most grace- 
ful ; seems to demand a reach of intellect of 
a vastly different extent from that which is 
employed upon the bare imitation of the 
signs of these passions in the countenance or 
gesture, which signs are usually observed to 
be most lively and emphatic in the weaker 
sort of minds, and which signs can after all 
but indicate some passion, as I said before, 
anger, or grief, generally ; but of the motives 
and grounds of the passion, wherein it differs 
from the same passion in low and vulgar 
natures, of these the actor can give no more 
idea by his face or gesture than the eye 
(without a metaphor) can speak, or the 
muscles utter intelligible sounds. But such is 
the instantaneous nature of the impressions 
which we take in at the eye and ear at a 
play-house, compared with the slow appre- 
hension oftentimes of the understanding in 
reading, that we are apt not only to sink the 
play-writer in the consideration which we 
pay to the actor, but even to identify in our 
minds, in a perverse manner, the actor with 
the character which he represents, (it is 
difficult for a frequent play-goer to disem- 
barrass the idea of Hamlet from the person 
and voice of Mr. K. We speak of Lady 
Macbeth, while we are in reality thinking of 
Mrs. S. ) Nor is this confusion incidental 
alone to unlettered persons, who, not possess- 
ing the advantage of reading, are necessarily 
dependent upon the stage-player for all the 
pleasure which they can receive from the 
drama, and to whom the very idea of what 
an author is cannot be made comprehensible 
without some pain and perplexity of mind : 
the error is one from which persons other- 
wise not meanly lettered, find it almost im- 
possible to extricate themselves. 



(Never let me be so ungrateful as to forget 
the very high degree of satisfaction which I 
received some years back from seeing for the 
first time a tragedy of Shakspeare performed, 
in which those two great performers sus- 
tained the principal parts. It seemed to 
embody and realise conceptions which had 
hitherto assumed no distinct shape. But 
dearly do we pay all our life after for this 
juvenile pleasure, this sense of distinctness. 
When the novelty is past, we find to our 
cost that instead of realising an idea, we 
have only materialised and brought down a 
fine vision to the standard of flesh and blood. 
We have let go a dream, in quest, of an 
unattainable substance. \ 

How cruelly this operates upon the mind, 
to have its free conceptions thus cramped and 
pressed down to the measure of a strait- 
lacing actuality, may be judged from that 
delightful sensation of freshness, with which 
we turn to those plays of Shakspeare which 
have escaped being performed, and to those 
passages in the acting plays of the same 
writer which have happily been left out in 
the performance. How far the very custom 
of hearing anything spouted, withers and 
blows upon a fine passage, may be seen in 
those speeches from Henry the Fifth, &c. 
which are current in the mouths of school- 
boys, from their being to be found in Enfield's 
Speaker, and such kind of books ! I confess 
myself utterly unable to appreciate that 
celebrated soliloquy in Hamlet, beginning 
" To be or not to be," or to tell whether it be 
good, bad or indifferent, it has been so 
handled and pawed about by declamatory 
boys and men, and torn so inhumanly from 
its living place and principle of continuity in 
the play, till it is become to me a perfect 
dead member. 

It may seem a paradox, but I cannot help 
being of opinion that the plays of Shakspeare 
are less calculated for performance on a 
stage, than those of almost any other dramatist 
whatever. Their distinguishing excellence is 
a reason that they should be so. There is 
so much in them, which comes not under 
the province of acting, with which eye, and 
tone, and gesture, have nothing to do. 

The glory of the scenic art is to personate 
passion, and the turns of passion ; and the 
more coarse and palpable the passion is, the 
more hold upon the eyes and ears of the 



ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKSPEARE. 



spectators the performer obviously possesses. 
For this reason, scolding scenes, scenes where 
two persona talk themselves into a fit of fury, 
and then in a surprising manner talk them- 
selves out of it again, have always been the 
most popular upon our stage. And the 
reason is plain, because the spectators are 
here most, palpably appealed to, they are the 
proper judges in this war of words, they are 
the legitimate ring that should be formed 
round such "intellectual prize-fighters." 
Talking is the direct object of the imitation 
here. But in all the best dramas, and in 
Shakspeare above all, how obvious it is, that 
the form of speaking, whether it be in 
soliloquy or dialogue, is only a medium, and 
often a highly artificial one, for putting the 
reader or spectator into possession of that 
knowledge of the inner structure and work- 
ings of mind in a character, which he could 
otherwise never have arrived at in that form 
of composition by any gift short of intuition. 
We do here as we do with novels written in 
the epistolary form. How many improprieties, 
perfect solecisms in letter-writing, do we put 
up with in Clarissa and other books, for the 
sake of the delight which that form upon the 
whole gives us ! 

But the practice of stage representation 
reduces everything to a controversy of 
elocution. Every character, from the bois- 
terous blasphemings of Bajazetto the shrink- 
ing timidity of womanhood, must play the 
orator. The love dialogues of Romeo and 
Juliet, those silver-sweet sounds of lovers' 
tongues by night ! the more intimate and 
sacred sweetness of nuptial colloquy between 
an Othello or a Posthumus with their 
married wives, all those delicacies which are 
so delightful in the reading, as when we read 
of those youthful dalliances in Paradise — 

" As beseem'd 
Fair couple link'd in happy nuptial league, 
Alone ; " 

by the inherent fault of stage representation, 
how are these things sullied and turned from 
their very nature by being exposed to a large 
assembly ; when such speeches as Imogen 
addresses to her lord, come drawling out of 
the mouth of a hired actress, whose court- 
ship, though nominally addressed to the 
personated Posthumus, is manifestly aimed 
at the spectators, who are to judge of her 
endearments and her returns of love ! 



The character of Hamlet is perhaps that 
by which, since the days of Betterton, a 
succession of popular performers have had 
the greatest ambition to distinguish them- 
selves. The lengthy of the part may be one 
of their reasons. But for the character itself, 
we find it in a play, and therefore we judge 
it a fit subject of dramatic representation. 
The play itself abounds in maxims and 
reflections beyond any other, and therefore 
we consider it as a proper vehicle for con- 
veying moral instruction. But Hamlet him- 
self — what does he suffer meanwhile by being 
dragged forth as the public schoolmaster, to 
give lectures to the crowd ! Why, nine parts 
in ten of what Hamlet does, are transactions 
between himself and his moral sense ; they 
are the effusions of his solitary musings, 
which he retires to holes and corners and the 
most sequestered parts of the palace to pour 
forth ; or rather, they are the silent -medita- 
tions with which his bosom is bursting, 
reduced to words for the sake of the reader, 
who must else remain ignorant of what is 
passing there. These profound sorrows, these 
light-and-noise-abhorring ruminations, which 
the tongue scarce dares utter to deaf walls 
and chambers, how can they be represented 
by a gesticulating actor, who comes and 
mouths them out before an audience, making 
four hundred people his confidants at once 1 
I say not that it is the fault of the actor so 
to do ; he must pronounce them ore rotundo; 
! he must accompany them with his eye ; he 
j must insinuate them into his auditory by 
| some trick of eye, tone or gesture, or he fails. 
He must be thinking all the while of his appear- 
I ance, because he knows that all the while the 
spectators are judging of it. And this is the 
way to represent the shy, negligent, retiring 
Hamlet ! 

It is true that there is no other mode of 
conveying a vast quantity of thought and 
feeling to a great portion of the audience, 
who otherwise would never earn it for them- 
selves by reading, and the intellectuaracqui- 
sition gained this way may, for aught I know, 
be inestimable ; but I am not arguing that 
Hamlet should not be acted, but how much 
Hamlet is made another thing by being 
acted. I have heard much of the wonders 
which Garrick performed in this part ; but 
as I never saw him, I must have leave to 
doubt whether the representation of such a 



ON THE TRAGEDIES OP SHAKSPEARE. 



character came within the province of his 
art. Those who tell me of him, speak of 
his eye, of the magic of his eye, and of his 
commanding voice : physical properties, 
vastly desirable in an actor, and without 
which he can never insinuate meaning into 
an auditory, — but what have they to do with 
Hamlet ; what have they to do with intellect 1 
In fact, the things aimed at in theatrical 
representation, are to arrest the spectator's 
eye upon the form and the gesture, and so to 
gain a more favourable hearing to what is 
spoken : it is not what the character is, but 
how he looks ; not what he says, but how he 
speaks it. I see no reason to think that if 
the play of Hamlet were written over again 
by some such writer as Banks or Lillo, 
retaining the process of the story, but totally 
omitting all the poetry of it, all the divine 
features of Shakspeare, his stupendous intel- 
lect ; and only taking care to give us enough 
of passionate dialogue, which Banks or 
Lillo were never at a loss to furnish ; I see 
not how the effect could be much different 
upon an audience, nor how the actor has 
it in his power to represent Shakspeare 
to us differently from his representation 
of Banks or Lillo. Hamlet would still 
be a youthful accomplished prince, and 
must be gracefully personated ; he might be 
puzzled in his mind, wavering in his conduct, 
seemingly cruel to Ophelia ; he might see a 
ghost, and start at it, and address it kindly 
when he found it to be his father ; all this in 
the poorest and most homely language of the 
servilest creeper after nature that ever con- 
sulted the palate of an audience ; without 
troubling Shakspeare for the matter : and I 
see not but there would be room for all the 
power which an actor has, to display itself. 
All the passions and changes of passion 
might remain : for those are much less 
difficult to write or act than is thought ; it 
is a trick easy to be attained, it is but rising 
or falling a note or two in the voice, a 
whisper with a significant foreboding look 
to announce its approach, and so contagious 
the counterfeit appearance of any emotion is, 
that let the words be what they will, the 
look and tone shall carry it off and make it 
pass for deep skill in the passions. 

It is common for people to talk of 
Shakspeare's plays being so natural; that 
everybody can understand him. They are 



natural indeed, they are grounded deep in 
nature, so deep that the depth of them lies 
out of the reach of most of us. You shall 
hear the same persons say that George 
Barnwell is very natural, and Othello is 
very natural, that they are both very deep ; 
and to them they are the same kind of thing. 
At the one they sit and shed tears, because 
a good sort of young man is tempted by a 
naughty woman to commit a trifling pecca- 
dillo, the murder of an uncle or so,* that is 
all, and so comes to an untimely end, which 
is so moving ; and at the other, because a 
blackamoor in a fit of jealousy kills his 
innocent white wife ; and the odds are that 
ninety-nine out of a hundred would willingly 
behold the same catastrophe happen to both 
the heroes, and have thought the rope more 
due to Othello than to Barnwell. For of 
the texture of Othello's mind, the inward 
construction marvellously laid open with all 
its strengths and weaknesses, its heroic 
confidences and its human misgivings, its 
agonies of hate springing from the depths 
of love, they see no more than the spectators 
at a cheaper rate, ' who pay their pennies 
a-piece to look through the man's telescope 
in Leicester-fields, see into the inward plot 
and topography of the moon. Some dim 
thing or other they see ; they see an actor 
personating a passion, of grief, or anger, for 
instance, and they recognise it as a copy of 
the usual external effects of such passions ; 
or at least as being true to that symbol of the 
emotion which passes current at the theatre for 
it, for it is often no more than that : but of 
the grounds of the passion, its correspondence 
to a great or heroic nature, which is the only 
worthy object of tragedy, — that common 
auditors know anything of this, or can have 

* If this note could hope to meet the eye of any of the 
Managers, I would entreat and beg of them, in the name 
of both the Galleries, that this insult upon the morality 
of the common people of London should cease to be 
eternally repeated in the holiday weeks. Why are the 
'Prentices of this famous and well-governed city, instead 
of an amusement, to be treated over and over again with 
a nauseous sermon of George Barnwell ? Why at the 
end of their vistas are we to place the gallows ! Were 
I an uncle, I should not much like a nephew of mine to 
have such an example placed before his eyes. It is 
really making uncle-murder too trivial to exhibit it as 
done upon such slight motives ; — it is attributing too 
much to such characters as Millwood ; — it is putting 
things into the heads of good young men, which they 
would never otherwise have dreamed of. Uncles that 
think anything of their lives, should fairly petition the 
Chamberlain against it. 



ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKSPEARE. 



521 



any such notions dinned into them by the 
mere strength of an actor's lungs, — that appre- 
hensions foreign to them should be thus 
infused into them by storm, I can neither 
believe, nor understand how it can be possible. 

"We talk of Shakspeare's admirable ob- 
servation of life, when' we should feel, that 
not from a petty inquisition into those cheap 
and every-day characters which surrounded 
him, as they surround us, but from his own 
mind, which was, to borrow a phrase of 
Ben Jonson's, the very " sphere of hu- 
manity," he fetched those images of virtue 
and of knowledge, of which every one of us 
recognising a part, think we comprehend in 
our natures the whole ; and oftentimes 
mistake the powers which he positively 
creates in us, for nothing more than indi- 
genous faculties of our own minds, which 
only waited the application of corresponding 
virtues in him to return a full and clear echo 
of the same. 

To return to Hamlet. — Among the dis- 
tinguishing features of that wonderful cha- 
racter, one of the most interesting (yet 
painful) is that soreness of mind which 
makes him treat the intrusions of Polonius 
with harshness, and that asperity which he 
puts on in his interviews with Ophelia. 
These tokens of an unhinged mind (if they 
be not mixed in the latter case with a 
profound artifice of love, to alienate Ophelia 
by affected discourtesies, so to prepare her 
mind for the breaking off of that loving 
intercourse, which can no longer find a place 
amidst business so serious as that which he 
has to do) are parts of his character, which 
to reconcile with our admiration of Hamlet, 
the most patient consideration of his situation 
is no more than necessary ; they are what 
we forgive afterwards, and explain by the 
whole of his character, but at the time they 
are harsh and unpleasant. Yet such is the 
actor's necessity of giving strong blows to 
the audience, that I have never seen a player 
in this character, who did not exaggerate 
and strain to the utmost these ambiguous 
features, — these temporary deformities in 
the character. They make him express a 
vulgar scorn at Polonius which utterly 
degrades his gentility, and which no ex- 
planation can render palatable ; they make 
him show contempt, and curl up the nose 
at Ophelia's father, — contempt in its very 



grossest and most hateful form ; but they 
get applause by it : it is natural, people say ; 
that is, the words are scornful, and the actor 
expresses scorn, and that they can judge of: 
but why so much scorn, and of that sort, 
they never think of asking. 

So to Ophelia.— All the Hamlets that T 
have ever seen, rant and rave at her as if 
she had committed some great crime, and 
the audience are highly pleased, because the 
words of the part are satirical, and they are 
enforced by the strongest expression of 
satirical indignation of which the face and 
voice are capable. But then, whether 
Hamlet is likely to have put on such brutal 
appearances to a lady whom he loved so 
dearly, is never thought on. The truth is, 
that in all such deep affections as had 
subsisted between Hamlet and Ophelia, 
there is a stock of supererogatory love, (if I 
may venture to use the expression,) which 
in any great grief of heart, especially where 
that which preys upon the mind cannot be 
communicated, confers a kind of indulgence 
upon the grieved party to express itself, 
even to its heart's dearest object, in the 
language of a temporary alienation ; but it 
is not alienation, it is a distraction purely, 
and so it always makes itself to be felt by 
that object : it is not anger, but grief 
assuming the appearance of anger, — love 
awkwardly counterfeiting hate, as sweet 
countenances when they try to frown : but 
such sternness and fierce disgust as Hamlet 
is made to show, is no counterfeit, but the 
real face of absolute aversion, — of irrecon- 
cilable alienation. It may be said he puts 
on the madman ; but then he should only so 
far put on this counterfeit lunacy as his own 
real distraction will give him leave ; that is, 
incompletely, imperfectly ; not in that con- 
firmed, practised way, like a master of his 
art, or as Dame Quickly would say, " like 
one of those harlotry players." 

I mean no disrespect to any actor, but the 
sort of pleasure which Shakspeare's plays 
give in the acting seems to me not at all to 
differ from that which the audience receive 
from those of other writers ; and, they being 
in themselves essentially so different from all 
others, I must conclude that there is some- 
thing in the nature of acting which levels 
all distinctions. And, in fact, who does not 
speak indifferently of the Gamester and of 



522 



ON" THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKSPEARE. 



Macbeth as fine stage performances, and 
praise the Mrs. Beverley in the same way 
as the Lady Macbeth of Mrs. S. 1 Belvidera, 
and Calista, and Isabella, and Euphrasia, 
are they less liked than Imogen, or than 
Juliet, or than Desdemona ? Are they not 
spoken of and remembered in the same way 1 
Is not the female performer as great (as they 
call it) in one as in the other ? Did not 
Garrick shine, and was he not ambitious of 
shining, in every drawling tragedy that his 
wretched day produced, — the productions of 
the Hills, and the Murphys, and the Browns, 
— and shall he have that honour to dwell in 
our minds for ever as an inseparable con- 
comitant with Shakspeare ? A kindred 
mind ! O who can read that affecting sonnet 
of Shakspeare which alludes to his profession 
as a player : — 

" Oh for my sake do you with Fortune chide, 
The guilty goddess of my harmless deeds, 
That did not better for my life provide 
Than public means which public custom breeds — 
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand ; 
And almost thence my nature is subdued 
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand." — 

Or that other confession : — 

" Alas ! 'tis true, I have gone here and there, 
And made myself a motley to thy view, 
Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most 
dear — " 

Who can read these instances of jealous 
self-watchfulness in our sweet Shakspeare, 
and dream of any congeniality between him 
and one that, by every tradition of him, 
appears to have been as mere a player as 
ever existed ; to have had his mind tainted 
with the lowest players' vices, — envy and 
jealousy, and miserable cravings after 
applause ; one who in the exercise of his 
profession was jealous even of the women- 
performers that stood in his way ; a manager 
full of managerial tricks and stratagems 
and finesse ; that any resemblance should be 
dreamed of between him and Shakspeare, — 
Shakspeare who, in the plenitude and con- 
sciousness of his own powers, could with 
that noble modesty, which we can neither 
imitate nor appreciate, express himself thus 
of his own sense of his own defects : — 

" Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, 

Featured like him, like him with friends possest ; 
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope." 

I am almost disposed to deny to Garrick 



the merit of being an admirer of Shakspeare ? 
A true lover of his excellences he certainly 
was not ; for would any true lover of them 
have admitted into his matchless scenes such 
ribald trash as Tate and Cibber, and the 
rest of them, that 

" With their darkness durst affront his light," 

have foisted into the acting plays of 
Shakspeare 1 I believe it impossible that he 
could have had a proper reverence for 
Shakspeare, and have condescended to go 
through that interpolated scene in Eichard 
the Third, in which Eichard tries to break 
his wife's heart by telling her he loves 
another woman, and says, " if she survives 
this she is immortal." Yet I doubt not he 
delivered this vulgar stuff with as much 
anxiety of emphasis as any of the genuine 
parts : and for acting, it is as well calculated 
as any. But we have seen the part of 
Eichard lately produce great fame to an 
actor by his manner of playing it, and it lets 
us into the secret of acting, and of popular 
judgments of Shakspeare derived from 
acting. Not one of the spectators who have 
witnessed Mr. C.'s exertions in that part, 
but has come away with a proper conviction 
that Eichard is a very wicked man, and kills 
little children in their beds, with something 
like the pleasure which the giants and ogres 
in children's books are represented to have 
taken in that practice ; moreover, that he is 
very close and shrewd, and devilish cunning, 
for you could see that by his eye. 

But is, in fact, this the impression we have 
in reading the Eichard of Shakspeare 1 Do 
we feel anything like disgust, as we do at 
that butcher-like representation of him that 
passes for him on the stage 1 A horror at 
his crimes blends with the effect which we 
feel, but how is it qualified, how is it carried 
off, by the rich intellect which he displays, 
his resources, his wit, his buoyant spirits, 
his vast knowledge and insight into cha- 
racters, the poetry of his part, — not an atom 
of all which is made perceivable in Mr. C.'s 
way of acting it. Nothing but his crimes, 
his actions, is visible ; they are prominent 
and staring ; the murderer stands out, but 
where is the lofty genius, the man of vast 
capacity, — the profound, the witty, accom- 
plished Eichard 1 

The truth is, the characters of Shakspeare 



ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKSPEARE. 



>23 



are so much the objects of meditation rather 
than of interest or curiosity as to their 
actions, that while we are reading any of 
his great criminal characters, — Macbeth, 
Bichard, even Iago, — we think not so much 
of the crimes which they commit, as of the 
ambition, the aspiring spirit, the intellectual 
activity, which prompts them to overleap 
these moral fences. Barnwell is a wretched 
murderer ; there is a certain fitness between 
his neck and the rope ; he is the legitimate 
heir to the gallows ; nobody who thinks at 
all can think of any alleviating circum- 
stances in his case to make him a fit object 
of mercy. Or to take an instance from the 
higher tragedy, what else but a mere assassin 
is Glenalvon 1 Do we think of anything but 
of the crime which he commits, and the rack 
which he deserves 1 That is all which we 
really think about him. Whereas in corre- 
sponding characters in Shakspeare, so little 
do the actions comparatively affect us, that 
while the impulses, the inner mind in all its 
perverted greatness, solely seems real and is 
exclusively attended to, the crime is compa- 
ratively nothing. But when we see these 
things represented, the acts which they do 
are comparatively everything, their impulses 
nothing. The state of sublime emotion into 
which we are elevated by those images of 
night and horror which Macbeth is made to 
utter, that solemn prelude with which he 
entertains the time till the bell shall strike 
which is to call him to murder Duncan, — 
when we no longer read it in a book, when 
we have given up that vantage ground of 
abstraction which reading possesses over 
seeing, and come to see a man in his bodily 
shape before our eyes actually preparing to 
commit a murder, if the acting be true and 
impressive, as I have witnessed it in Mr. K.'s 
performance of that part, the painful anxiety 
about the act, the natural longing to prevent 
it while it yet seems unperpetrated, the too 
close pressing semblance of reality, give a 
pain and an uneasiness which totally destroy 
all the delight which the words in the book 
convey, where the deed doing never presses 
upon us with the painful sense of presence : it 
rather seems to belong to history, — to some- 
thing past and inevitable, if it has anything 
to do with time at all. The sublime images, 
the poetry alone, is that which is present to 
our minds in the reading. 



So to see Lear acted, — to see an old man 
tottering about the stage with a walking- 
stick, turned out of doors by his daughters 
in a rainy night, has nothing in it but what 
is painful and disgusting. We want to take 
him into shelter and relieve him. That is 
all the feeling which the acting of Lear ever 
produced in me. But the Lear of Shakspeare 
cannot be acted. The contemptible machi- 
nery by which they mimic the storm which 
he goes out in, is not more inadequate to 
represent the horrors of the real elements, 
than any actor can be to represent Lear ; 
they might more easily propose to personate 
the Satan of Milton upon a stage, or one of 
Michael Angelo's terrible figures. The great- 
ness of Lear is not in corporal dimension, 
but in intellectual : the explosions of his 
passion are terrible as a volcano ; they are 
storms turning up and disclosing to the 
bottom that sea, his mind, with all its vast 
riches. It is his mind which is laid bare. 
This case of flesh and blood seems too insig- 
nificant to be thought on ; even as he himself 
neglects it. On the stage we see nothing 
but corporal infirmities and weakness, the 
impotence of rage ; while we read it, we see 
not Lear, but we are Lear, — we are in his 
mind, we are sustained by a grandeur which 
baffles the malice of daughters and storms ; 
in the aberrations of his reason, we discover 
a mighty irregular power of reasoning, 
immethodised from the ordinary purposes of 
life, but exerting its powers, as the wind 
blows where it listeth, at will upon the 
corruptions and abuses of mankind. What 
have looks, or tones, to do with that sublime 
identification of his age with that of the 
heavens themselves, when, in his reproaches to 
them for conniving at the injustice of his 
children, he reminds them that " they them- 
selves are old?" What gesture shall we 
appropriate to this 1 What has the voice or 
the eye to do with such things ? But the 
play is beyond all art, as the tamperings with 
it show : it is too hard and stony ; it must 
have love-scenes, and a happy ending. It is 
not enough that Cordelia is a daughter, she 
must shine as a lover too. Tate has put his 
hook in the nostrils of this Leviathan, for 
Garrick and his followers, the show-men of 
the scene, to draw the mighty beast about 
more easily. A happy ending ! — as if the 
living martyrdom that Lear had gone 



524 



ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKSPEARE. 



through, — the flaying of his feelings alive, 
did not make a fair dismissal from the stage 
of life the only decorous thing for him. If 
he is to live and be happy after, if he could 
sustain this world's burden after, why all 
this pudder and preparation, — why torment 
us with all this unnecessary sympathy % As 
if the childish pleasure of getting his gilt 
robes and sceptre again could tempt him to 
act over again his misused station — as if, at 
his years and with his experience, anything 
was left but to die. 

Lear is essentially impossible to be repre- 
sented on a stage. But how many dramatic 
personages are there in Shakspeare, which 
though more tractable and feasible (if I may 
so speak) than Lear, yet from some circum- 
stance, some adjunct to their character, are 
improper to be shown to our bodily eye ! 
Othello for instance. Nothing can be more 
soothing, more flattering to the nobler parts 
of our natures, than to read of a young 
Venetian lady of the highest extraction, 
through the force of love and from a sense of 
merit in him whom she loved, laying aside 
every consideration of kindred, and country, 
and colour, and wedding with a coal-black 
Moor — (for such he is represented, in the 
imperfect state of knowledge respecting 
foreign countries in those days, compared 
with our own, or in compliance with popular 
notions, though the Moors are now well 
enough known to be by many shades less 
unworthy of a white woman's fancy) — it is 
the perfect triumph of virtue over accidents, 
of the imagination over the senses. She sees 
Othello's colour in his mind. But upon the 
stage, when the imagination is no longer the 
ruling faculty, but we are left to our poor 
unassisted senses, I appeal to every one that 
has seen Othello played, whether he did not, 
on the contrary, sink Othello's mind in his 
colour ; whether he did not find something 
extremely revolting in the courtship and 
wedded caresses of Othello and Desdemona ; 
and whether the actual sight of the thing did 
not over-weigh all that beautiful compromise 
which we make in reading ; — and the reason 
it should do so is obvious, because there is 
just so much reality presented to our senses 
as to give a perception of disagreement, with 
not enough of belief in the internal motives, 
— all that which is unseen, — to overpower 
and reconcile the first and obvious preju- 



dices. * What we see upon a stage is body 
and bodily action ; what we are conscious of 
in reading is almost exclusively the mind, 
and its movements ; and this I think may 
sufficiently account for the very different sort 
of delight with which the same play so often 
affects us in the reading and the seeing. 

It requires little reflection to perceive, that 
if those characters in Shakspeare which are 
within the precincts of nature, have yet 
something in them which appeals too exclu- 
sively to the imagination, to admit of their 
being made objects to the senses without 
suffering a change and a diminution, — that 
still stronger the objection must lie against 
representing another line of characters, 
which Shakspeare has introduced to give a 
wildness and a supernatural elevation to his 
scenes, as if to remove them still farther from 
that assimilation to common life in which 
their excellence is vulgarly supposed to 
consist. When we read the incantations of 
those terrible beings the Witches in Macbeth, 
though some of the ingredients of their 
hellish composition savour of the grotesque, 
yet is the effect upon us other than the most 
serious and appalling that can be imagined 1 
Do we not feel spell-bound as Macbeth was ? 
Can any mirth accompany a sense of their 
presence ? We might as well laugh under 
a consciousness of the principle of Evil 
himself being truly and really present with 
us. But attempt to bring these things on to 
a stage, and you turn them instantly into so 
many old women, that men and children are 
to laugh at. Contrary to the old saying, that 
" seeing is believing," the sight actually 
destroys the faith ; and the mirth in which 
we indulge at their expense, when we see 
these creatures upon a stage, seems to be a 
sort of indemnification which we make to 
ourselves for the terror which they put us in 
when reading made them an object of belief, 

* The error of supposing that because Othello's colour 
does not offend us in the reading, it should also not 
offend us in the seeing, is just such a fallacy as sup- 
posing that an Adam and Eve in a picture shall affect us 
just as they do in the poem. But in the poem we for a 
while have Paradisaical senses given us, which vanish 
when we see a man and his wife without clothes in the 
picture. The painters themselves feel this, as is appa- 
rent by the awkward shifts they have recourse to, to 
make them look not quite naked ; by a sort of prophetic 
anachronism, antedating the invention of fig-leaves. So 
in the reading of the play, we see with Desdemona's 
eyes : in the seeing of it, we are forced to look with 
our own. 



ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKSPEARE. 



525 



— when we surrendered up our reason to the 
poet, as children to their nurses and their 
elders ; and we laugh at our fears as children, 
who thought they saw something in the dark, 
triumph when the bringing in of a candle 
discovers the vanity of their fears. For this 
exposure of supernatural agents upon a stage 
is truly bringing in a candle to expose their 
own delusiveness. It is the solitary taper 
and the book that generates a faith in these 
terrors : a ghost by chandelier light, and in 
good company, deceives no spectators, — a 
ghost that can be measured by the eye, and 
his human dimensions made out at leisure. 
The sight of a well-lighted house, and a well- 
dressed audience, shall arm the most nervous 
child against any apprehensions : as Tom 
Brown says of the impenetrable skin of 
Achilles with his impenetrable armour over 
it, " Bully Dawson would have fought the 
devil with such advantages." 

Much has been said, and deservedly, in 
reprobation of the vile mixture which Dryden 
has thrown into the Tempest: doubtless 
without some such vicious alloy, the impure 
ears of that age would never have sate out 
to hear so much innocence of love as is 
contained in the sweet courtship of Ferdinand 
and Miranda. But is the Tempest of 
Shakspeare at all a subject for stage repre- 
sentation ? It is one thing to read of an 
enchanter, and to believe the wondrous tale 
while we are reading it ; but to have a 
conjuror brought before us in his conjuring- 
gown, with his spirits about him, which none 
but himself and some hundred of favoured 
spectators before the curtain are supposed to 
see, involves such a quantity of the hateful 
incredible, that all our reverence for the 
author cannot hinder us from perceiving 
such gross attempts upon the senses to be in 
the highest degree childish and inefficient. 
Spirits and fairies cannot be represented, 
they cannot even be painted, — they can only 
be believed. \ But the elaborate and anxious 



provision of 
age demands 



enery, which the luxury of the 
in these cases works a quite 



contrary effect to what is intended. That 
which in corrtedy, or plays of familiar life, 
adds so much to the life of the imitation, in 
plays which /appeal to the higher faculties 
positively destroys the illusion which it is 
introduced to aid. A parlour or a drawing- 
room, — a library opening into a garden — a 



garden with an alcove in it, — a street, or the 
piazza of Covent-garden, does well enough 
in a scene ; we are content to give as much 
credit to it as it demands ; or rather, we 
think little about it, — it is little more than 
reading at the top of a page, " Scene, a 
garden ;" we do not imagine ourselves there, 
but we readily admit the imitation of familiar 
objects. But to think by the help of painted 
trees and caverns, which we know to be 
painted, to transport our minds to Prospero, 
and his island and his lonely cell ; * or by 
the aid of a fiddle dexterously thrown in, in 
an interval of speaking, to make us believe 
that we hear those supernatural noises of 
which the isle was full : the Orrery Lecturer 
at the Haymarket might as well hope, by 
his musical glasses cleverly stationed out of 
sight behind his apparatus, to make us 
believe that we do indeed hear the crystal 
spheres ring out that chime, which if it were 
to enwrap our fancy long, Milton thinks, 

■ " Time would run back and fetch the age of gold, 
And speckled Vanity 
Would sicken soon and die, 

And leprous Sin would melt from earthly mould ; 
Yea, Hell itself would pass away, 
And leave its dolorous mansions to the peering day." 

The garden of Eden, with our first parents 
in it, is not more impossible to be shown 
on a stage, than the Enchanted isle, with 
its no less interesting and innocent first 
settlers. 

The subject of Scenery is closely con- 
nected with that of the Dresses, which are 
so anxiously attended to on our stage. I 
remember the last time I saw Macbeth 
played, the discrepancy I felt at the changes 
of garment which he varied, the shiftings 
and re-shiftings, like a Romish priest at mass. 
The luxury of stage-improvements, and the 
importunity of the public eye, require this. 
The coronation robe of the Scottish monarch 
was fairly a counterpart to that which our 
King wears when he goes to the Parliament- 
house, just so full and cumbersome, and set 
out with ermine and pearls. And if things 
must be represented, I see not what to find 
fault with in this. But in reading, what 

* It will be said these things are done in pictures. 
But pictures and scenes are very different things. 
Painting is a world of itself, but in scene-painting there 
is the attempt to deceive : and there is the discordancy, 
never to be got over, between painted scenes and real 
people. 



>26 



CHARACTERS OF DRAMATIC WRITERS. 



robe are we conscious of 1 Some dim images 
of royalty — a crown and sceptre may float 
before our eyes, but who shall describe the 
fashion of it 1 Do we see in our mind's eye 
what Webb or any other robe-maker could 
pattern 1 This is the inevitable consequence 
of imitating everything, to make all things 
natural. Whereas the reading of a tragedy 
is a fine abstraction. It presents to the 
fancy just so much of external appearances 
as to make us feel that we are among 
flesh and blood, while by far the greater 
and better part of our imagination is 
employed upon the thoughts and internal 
machinery of the character. But in act- 
ing, scenery, dress, the most contemptible 
things, call upon us to judge of their 
naturalness. 

Perhaps it would be no bad similitude, to 
liken the pleasure which we take in seeing 
one of these fine plays acted, compared with 
that quiet delight which we find in the read- 
ing of it, to the different feelings with which 
a reviewer, and a man that is not a reviewer, 
reads a fine poem. The accursed critical 
habit — the being called upon to judge and 
pronounce, must make it quite a different 
thing to the former. In seeing these plays 
acted, we are affected just as judges. 
When Hamlet compares the two pictures of 
Gertrude's first and second husband, who 



wants to see the pictures ? But in the acting, 
a miniature must be lugged out ; which we 
know not to be the picture, but only to show 
how finely a miniature may be represented. 
This showing of everything levels all things : 
it makes tricks, bows, and curtseys, of im- 
portance. Mrs. S. never got more fame by 
anything than by the manner in which she 
dismisses the guests in the banquet-scene in 
Macbeth : it is as much remembered as any 
of her thrilling tones or impressive looks. 
But does such a trifle as this enter into the 
imaginations of the readers of that wild and 
wonderful scene 1 Does not the mind dis- 
miss the feasters as rapidly as it can ? Does 
it care about the gracefulness of the doing 
it 1 But by acting, and judging of acting, 
all these non-essentials are raised into an 
importance, injurious to the main interest of 
the play. 

I have confined my observations to the 
tragic parts of Shakspeare. It would be no 
very difficult task to extend the inquiry to 
his ..comedies ; and to show why Falstaff, 
Shallow, Sir Hugh Evans, and the rest, are 
equally incompatible with stage representa- 
tion. The length to which this Essay has 
run will make it, I am afraid, sufficiently 
distasteful to the Amateurs of the Theatre, 
without going any deeper into the subject at 
present. 



CHAEACTEES OF DEAMATIC WEITEES, 



CONTEMPORARY WITH SHAKSPEARE. 



When I selected for publication, in 1808, 
Specimens of English Dramatic Poets who 
lived about the time of Shakspeare, the kind 
of extracts which I was anxious to give 
were not so much passages of wit and 
humour, though the old plays are rich in 
such, as scenes of passion, sometimes of the 
deepest quality, interesting situations, seri- 
ous descriptions, that which is more nearly 
allied to poetry than to wit, and to tragic 
rather than to comic poetry. The plays 
which I made choice of were, with few 
exceptions, such as treat of human life and 
manners, rather than masques and Arcadian 
pastorals, with their train of abstractions, 



unimpassioned deities, passionate mortals 
— Claius, and Medorus, and Amintas, and 
Amaryllis. My leading design was to illus- 
trate what may be called the moral sense of 
our ancestors. To show in what manner 
they felt, when they placed themselves by 
the power of imagination in trying circum- 
stances, in the conflicts of duty and passion, 
or the strife of contending duties ; what 
sort of loves and enmities theirs were ; how 
their griefs were tempered, and their full- 
swoln joys abated : how much of Shakspeare 
shines in the great men his contemporaries, 
and how far in his divine mind and manners 
he surpassed them and all mankind. I was 



CHARACTERS OF DRAMATIC WRITERS. 



527 



also desirous to bring together some of 
the most admired scenes of Fletcher and 
Massinger, in the estimation of the world 
the only dramatic poets of that age entitled 
to be considered after Shakspeare, and, by- 
exhibiting them in the same volume with 
the more impressive scenes of old Marlowe, 
Heywood, . Tourneur, Webster, Ford, and 
others, to show what we had slighted, while 
beyond all proportion we had been crying 
up one or two favourite names. From the 
desultory criticisms which accompanied that 
publication, I have selected a few which 
I thought would best stand by themselves, 
as requiring least immediate reference to 
the play or passage by which they .were 
suggested. 

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE. 

Lusfs Dominion, or the Lascivious Queen. 
— This tragedy is in King Cambyses' vein ; 
rape, and murder, and superlatives ; " huffing 
braggart puft lines," such as the play- writers 
anterior to Shakspeare are full of, and Pistol 
but coldly imitates. 

Tamburlaine the Great, or the Scythian 
Shepherd. — The lunes of Tamburlaine are 
perfect midsummer madness. Nebuchad- 
nezzar's are mere modest pretensions com- 
pared with the thundering vaunts of this 
Scythian Shepherd. He comes in drawn by 
conquered kings, and reproaches these pam- 
pered jades of Asia that they can draw but 
twenty miles a day. Till I saw this passage 
with my own eyes, I never believed that it 
was anything more than a pleasant burlesque 
of mine Ancient's. But I can assure my 
readers that it is soberly set down in a play, 
which their ancestors took to be serious. 

Edward the Second. — In a very different 
style from mighty Tamburlaine is the Tragedy 
of Edward the Second. The reluctant pangs 
of abdicating royalty in Edward furnished 
hints, which Shakspeare scarcely improved 
in his Eichard the Second ; and the death- 
scene of Marlowe's king moves pity and 
terror beyond any scene ancient or modern 
with which I am acquainted. 

The Rich Jew of Malta. — Marlowe's Jew 
does not approach so near to Shakspeare's, 
as his Edward the Second does to Eichard 
the Second. Barabas is a mere monster 
brought in with a large painted nose to 
please the rabble. He kills in sport, poisons 



whole nunneries, invents infernal machines. 
He is just such an exhibition as a century or 
two earlier might have been played before 
the Londoners " by the royal command," 
when a general pillage and massacre of the 
Hebrews had been previously resolved on in 
the cabinet. It is curious to see a super- 
stition wearing out. The idea of a Jew, 
which our pious ancestors contemplated with 
so much horror, has nothing in it now revolt- 
ing. We have tamed the claws of the beast, 
and pared its nails, and now we take it to 
our arms, fondle it, write plays to flatter it \ 
it is visited by princes, affects a taste, patron- 
ises the arts, and is the only liberal and 
gentlemanlike thing in Christendom. 

Doctor Faustus. — The growing horrors of 
Faustus's last scene are awfully marked by 
the hours and half hours as they expire, and 
bring him nearer and nearer to the exact- 
ment of his dire compact. It is indeed an 
agony and a fearful colluctation. Marlowe 
is said to have been tainted with atheistical 
positions, to have denied God and the Trinity. 
To such a genius the history of Faustus must 
have been delectable food : to wander in 
fields where curiosity is forbidden to go, to 
approach the dark gulf, near enough to look 
in, to be busied in speculations which are 
the rottenest part of the core of the fruit that 
fell from the tree of knowledge.* Barabas 
the Jew, and Faustus the conjuror, are off- 
springs of a mind which at least delighted to 
dally with interdicted subjects. They both 
talk a language which a believer would have 
been tender of putting into the mouth of a 
character though but in fiction. But the 
holiest minds have sometimes not thought it 
reprehensible to counterfeit impiety in the 
person of another, to bring Vice upon the 
stage speaking her own dialect ; and, them- 
selves being armed with an unction of self- 
confident impunity, have not scrupled to 
handle and touch that familiarly which 
would be death to others. Milton, in the 
person of Satan, has started speculations 
hardier than any which the feeble armoury 
of the atheist ever furnished ; and the precise, 
strait-laced Eichardson has strengthened 
Vice, from the mouth of Lovelace, with 



* Error, entering into the world with Sin among us 
poor Adamites, may be said to spring from the tree of 
knowledge itself, and from the rotten kernels of that 
fatal apple. — Howell's Letters. 



528 



CHARACTERS OF DRAMATIC WRITERS. 



entangling sophistries and abstruse pleas 
against her adversary Virtue, which Sedley, 
Villiers, and Rochester wanted depth of 
libertinism enough to have invented. 



THOMAS DECKER. 

Old I ortunatus. — The humour of a frantic 
lover in the scene where Orleans to his 
friend Galloway defends the passion with 
which himself, being a prisoner in the English 
king's court, is enamoured to frenzy of the 
king's daughter Agripyna, is done to the life. 
Orleans is as passionate an innamorato as 
any which Shakspeare ever drew. He is 
just such another adept in Love's reasons. 
The sober people of the world are with him, 

" A swarm of fools 
Crowding together to be counted wise." 

He talks " pure Biron and Eomeo ;" he is 
almost as poetical as they, quite as philoso- 
phical, only a little madder. After all, 
Love's sectaries are a reason unto them- 
selves. We have gone retrograde to the 
noble heresy, since the days when Sidney 
proselyted our nation to this mixed health 
and disease : the kindliest symptom, yet the 
most alarming crisis, in the ticklish state of 
youth ; the nourisher and the destroyer of 
hopeful wits ; the mother of twin births, 
wisdom and folly, valour and weakness ; the 
servitude above freedom ; the gentle mind's 
religion ; the liberal superstition. 

The Honest Whore. — There is in the second 
part of this play, where Bellafront, a re- 
claimed harlot, recounts some of the miseries 
of her profession, a simple picture of honour 
and shame, contrasted without violence, and 
expressed without immodesty ; which is 
worth all the strong lines against the harlot's 
profession, with which both parts of this 
play are offensively crowded. A satirist is 
always to be suspected, who, to make vice 
odious, dwells upon all its acts and minutest 
circumstances with a sort of relish and re- 
trospective fondness. But so near are the 
boundaries of panegyric and invective, that 
a worn-out sinner is sometimes found to 
make the best declaimer against sin. The 
same high-seasoned descriptions, which in 
his unregenerate state served but to inflame 
his appetites, in his new province of a 
moralist will serve him, a little turned, to 



expose the enormity of those appetites in 
other men. When Cervantes, with such 
proficiency of fondness dwells upon the Don's 
library, who sees not that he has been a 
great reader of books of knight-errantry — 
perhaps was at some time of his life in danger 
of falling into those very extravagances 
which he ridiculed so happily in his hero ! 

JOHN MARSTON. 

Antonio and Mellida. — The situation of 
Andrugio and Lucio, in the first part of this 
tragedy, — where Andrugio, Duke of Genoa, 
banished his country, with the loss of a son 
supposed drowned, is cast upon the territory 
of his mortal enemy the Duke of Venice, 
with no attendants but Lucio an old noble- 
man, and a page — resembles that of Lear 
and Kent, in that king's distresses. An- 
drugio, like Lear, manifests a king-like 
impatience, a turbulent greatness, an affected 
resignation. The enemies which he enters 
lists to combat, " Despair and mighty Grief 
and sharp Impatience," and the forces which 
he brings to vanquish them, " cornets of 
horse," &c, are in the boldest style of allegory. 
They are such a " race of mourners " as the 
" infection of sorrows loud " in the intellect 
might beget on some " pregnant cloud " in 
the imagination. The prologue to the second 
part, for its passionate earnestness, and for 
the tragic note of preparation which it 
sounds, might have preceded one of those old 
tales of Thebes or Pelops' line, which Milton 
has so highly commended, as free from the 
common error of the poets in his day, of 
" intermixing comic stuff with tragic sadness 
and gravity, brought in without discretion 
corruptly to gratify the people." It is as 
solemn a preparative as the " warning voice 
which he who saw the Apocalypse heard 
cry." 

What You Will. — I shall ne'er forget how 
he went cloaUCd. Act I. Scene 1. — To judge 
of the liberality of these notions of dress, we 
must advert to the days of Gresham, and 
the consternation which a phenomenon 
habited like the merchant here described 
would have excited among the flat round 
caps and cloth stockings upon 'Change, when 
those "original arguments or tokens of a 
citizen's vocation were in fashion, not more 
for thrift and usefulness than for distinction 



CHARACTERS OF DRAMATIC WRITERS. 



529 



and grace." The blank uniformity to which 
all professional distinctions in apparel have 
been long hastening, is one instance of the 
decay of symbols among us, which whether 
it has contributed or not to make us a more 
intellectual, has certainly made us a less 
imaginative people. Shakspeare knew the 
force of signs : a " malignant and a turbaned 
Turk." This " meal-cap miller," says the 
author of God's Eevenge against Murder, 
to express his indignation at an atrocious 
outrage committed by the miller Pierot upon 
the person of the fair Marieta. 

AUTHOR UNKNOWN. 

The Merry Devil of Edmonton. — The scene 
in this delightful comedy, in which Jern- 
ingham, " with the true feeling of a zealous 
friend," touches the griefs of Mounchensey, 
seems written to make the reader happy. 
Few of our dramatists or novelists have 
attended enough to this, They torture and 
wound us abundantly. They are economists 
only in delight. Nothing can be finer, more 
gentlemanlike, and nobler, than the conver- 
sation and compliments of these young men. 
How delicious is Eaymond Mounchensey's 
forgetting, in his fears, that Jerningham has 
a " Saint in Essex ; " and how sweetly his 
friend reminds him ! I wish it could be 
ascertained, which there is some grounds for 
believing, that Michael Drayton was the 
author of this piece. It would add a worthy 
appendage to the renown of that Panegyrist 
of my native Earth ; who has gone over her 
soil, in his Polyolbion, with the fidelity of a 
herald, and the painful love of a son ; who 
has not left a rivulet, so narrow that it may 
be stepped over, without honourable men- 
tion ; and has animated hills and streams 
with life and passion beyond the dreams of 
old mythology. 

THOMAS HEYWOOD. 

A Woman Killed ivith Kindness. — Heywood 
is a sort of prose Shakspeare. His scenes are 
to the full as natural and affecting. But we 
miss the poet, that which in Shakspeare 
always appears out and above the surface of 
the nature. Heywood's characters, in this 
play, for instance, his country gentlemen, &c. 
are exactly what we see, but of the best kind 



of what we see in life. Shakspeare makes 
us believe, while we are among his lovely 
creations, that they are nothing but what we 
are familiar with, as in dreams new things 
seem old ; but we awake, and sigh for the 
difference. 

The English Traveller. — Heywood's preface 
to this play is interesting, as it shows the 
heroic indifference about the opinion of pos- 
terity, which some of these great writers seem 
to have felt. There is a magnanimity in 
authorship, as in everything else. His ambi- 
tion seems to have been confined to the 
pleasure of hearing the players speak his 
lines while he lived. It does not appear that 
he ever contemplated the possibility of being 
read by after ages. "What a slender pittance of 
fame was motive sufficient to the production 
of such plays as the English Traveller, the 
Challenge for Beauty, and the Woman Killed 
with Kindness ! Posterity is bound to take 
care that a writer loses nothing by such a 
noble modesty. 

THOMAS MIDDLETON AND WILLIAM EOWLEY. 

A Fair Quarrel. — The insipid levelling 
morality to which the modern stage is tied 
down, would not admit of such admirable 
passions as these scenes are filled with. A 
puritanical obtuseness of sentiment, a stupid 
infantile goodness, is creeping among us, 
instead of the vigorous passions, and virtues 
clad in flesh and blood, with which the old 
dramatists present us. Those noble and 
liberal casuists could discern in the dif- 
ferences, the quarrels, the animosities of 
men, a beauty and truth of moral feeling, no 
less than in the everlastingly inculcated 
duties of forgiveness and atonement. With 
us, all is hypocritical meekness. A recon- 
ciliation scene, be the occasion never so 
absurd, never fails of applause. Our audiences 
come to the theatre to be complimented on 
their goodness. They compare notes with 
the amiable characters in the play, and find 
a wonderful sympathy of disposition between 
them. We have a common stock of dramatic 
morality, out of which a writer may be sup- 
plied without the trouble of copying it from 
originals within his own breast. To know 
the boundaries of honour, to be judiciously 
valiant, to have a temperance which shall 
beget a smoothness in the angry swellings of 



530 



CHARACTERS OF DRAMATIC WRITERS. 



youth, to esteem life as nothing when the 
sacred reputation of a parent is to be de- 
fended, yet to shake and tremble under a 
pious cowardice when that ark of an honest 
confidence is found to be frail and tottering, 
to feel the true blows of a real disgrace 
blunting that sword which the imaginary 
strokes of a supposed false imputation had 
put so keen an edge upon but lately ; to do, 
or to imagine this done, in a feigned story, 
asks something more of a moral sense, some- 
what a greater delicacy of perception in 
questions of right and wrong, than goes to 
the writing of two or three hacknied sentences 
about the laws of honour as opposed to the 
laws of the land, or a commonplace against 
duelling. Yet such things would stand a 
writer now-a-days in far better stead than 
Captain Agar and his conscientious honour ; 
and he would be considered as a far better 
teacher of morality than old Rowley or 
Middleton, if they were living. 

WILLIAM ROWLEY. 

A New Wonder ; a Woman never Vext. — 
The old play-writers are distinguished by an 
honest boldness of exhibition, — they show 
everything without being ashamed. If a 
reverse in fortune is to be exhibited, they 
fairly bring us to the prison-grate and the 
alms-basket. A poor man on our stage is 
always a gentleman ; he may be known by a 
peculiar neatness of apparel, and by wearing 
black. Our delicacy, in fact, forbids the 
dramatising of distress at all. It is never 
shown in its essential properties ; it appears 
but as the adjunct of some virtue, as some- 
thing which is to be relieved, from the appro- 
bation of which relief the spectators are to 
derive a certain soothing of self-referred 
satisfaction. We turn away from the real 
essences of things to hunt after their relative 
shadows, moral duties ; whereas, if the truth 
of things were fairly represented, the relative 
duties might be safely trusted to themselves, 
and moral philosophy lose the name of a 
science. 



THOMAS MIDDLETON. 

The Witch. — Though some resemblance 
may be traced between the charms in Mac- 
beth and the incantations in this play, which 



is supposed to have preceded it, this coinci- 
dence will not detract much from the origi- 
nality of Shakspeare. His Avitches are dis- 
tinguished from the witches of Middleton by 
essential differences. These are creatures to 
whom man or woman, plotting some dire mis- 
chief, might resort for occasional consulta- 
tion. Those originate deeds of blood, and 
begin bad impulses to men. From the moment 
that their eyes first meet with Macbeth's, he 
is spell-bound. That meeting sways his 
destiny. He can never break the fascina- 
tion. These witches can hurt the body ; 
those have power over the soul. Hecate in 
Middleton has a son, a low buffoon : the hags 
of Shakspeare have neither child of their 
own, nor seem to be descended from any 
parent. They are foul anomalies, of whom 
we know not whence they are sprung, nor 
whether they have beginning or ending. 
As they are without human passions, so they 
seem to be without human relations. They 
come with thunder and lightning, and vanish 
to airy music. This is all we know of them. 
Except Hecate, they have no names ; which 
heightens their mysteriousness. The names, 
and some of the properties which the other 
author has given to his hags, excite smiles. 
The Weird Sisters are serious things. Their 
presence cannot co-exist with mirth. But 
in a lesser degree, the witches of Middleton 
are fine creations. Their power, too, is, in 
some measure, over the mind. They raise 
jars, jealousies, strifes, " like a thick scurf" 
over life. 



WILLIAM ROWLEY,— THOMAS DECKER,— 
JOHN FORD, etc. 

The Witch of Edmonton. — Mother Sawyer, 
in this wild play, differs from the hags of 
both Middleton and Shakspeare. She is the 
plain, traditional, old-woman witch of our 
ancestors ; poor, deformed, and ignorant ; 
the terror of villages, herself amenable to 
a justice. That should be a hardy sheriff, 
with the power of the county at his heels, 
that would lay hands on the Weird Sisters. 
They are of another jurisdiction. But upon 
the common and received opinion, the author 
(or authors) have engrafted strong fancy. 
There is something frightfully earnest in her 
invocations to the Familiar. 



CHARACTERS OF DRAMATIC WRITERS. 



>31 



CYRIL TOURNEUR. 

The Revenger 1 a Tragedy. — The reality and 
life of the dialogue, in which Yindici and 
Hippolito first tempt their mother, and then 
threaten her with death for consenting to 
the dishonour of their sister, passes any 
scenical illusion I ever felt. I never read it 
but my ears tingle, and I feel a hot blush 
overspread my cheeks, as if I were presently 
about to proclaim such malefactions of myself, 
as the brothers here rebuke in their un- 
natural parent, in words more keen and 
dagger-like than those which Hamlet speaks 
to his mother. Such power has the passion 
of shame truly personated, not only to strike 
guilty creatures unto the soul, but to " appal" 
even those that are " free." 



JOHN WEBSTER. 

The Duchess of Malfy. — All the several 
parts of the dreadful apparatus with which 
the death of the Duchess is ushered in, the 
waxen images which counterfeit death, the 
wild masque of madmen, the tomb-maker, 
the bellman, the living person's dirge, the 
mortification by degrees, — are not more 
remote from the conceptions of ordinary 
vengeance, than the strange character of 
suffering which they seem to bring upon 
their victim is out of the imagination of ordi- 
nary poets. As they are not like inflictions 
of this life, so her language seems not of this 
world. She has lived among horrors till she 
is become " native and endowed unto that 
element." She speaks the dialect of despair ; 
her tongue has a smatch of Tartarus and the 
souls in bale. To move a horror skilfully, 
to touch a soul to the quick, to lay upon fear 
as much as it can bear, to wean and weary a 
life till it is ready to drop, and then step in 
with mortal instruments to take its last for- 
feit : this only a Webster can do. Inferior 
geniuses may " upon horror's head horrors 
accumulate," but they cannot do this. They 
mistake quantity for quality ; they " terrify 
babes with painted devils ; " but they know 
not how a soul is to be moved. Their terrors 
want dignity, their affrightments are without 
decorum. 

The White Devil, or Vittoria Corombona. — 
This White Devil of Italy sets off a bad cause 
so speciously, and pleads with such an 



innocence-resembling boldness, that we seem 
to see that matchless beauty of her face 
which inspires such gay confidence into her, 
and are ready to expect, when she has done 
her pleadings, that her very judges, her 
accusers, the grave ambassadors who sit as 
spectators, and all the court, will rise and 
make proffer to defend her, in spite of the 
utmost conviction of her guilt ; as the Shep- 
herds in Don Quixote make proffer to follow 
the beautiful Shepherdess Marcela, " without 
making any profit of her manifest resolution 
made there in their hearing." 



So sweet and lovely does she make the shame, 
Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose, 
Does spot the beauty of her budding name ! " 



I never saw anything like the funeral dirge 
in this play for the death of Marcello, except 
the ditty which reminds Ferdinand of his 
drowned father in the Tempest. As that is 
of the water, watery ; so this is of the earth, 
earthy. Both have that intenseness of feel- 
ing, which seems to resolve itself into the 
element which it contemplates. 

In a note on the Spanish Tragedy in the 
Specimens, I have said that there is nothing 
in the undoubted plays of Jonson which 
would authorise us to suppose that he could 
have supplied the additions to Hieronymo. 
I suspected the agency of some more potent 
spirit. I thought that Webster might have 
furnished them. They seemed full of that 
wild, solemn, preternatural cast of grief which 
bewilders us in the Duchess of Malfy. On 
second consideration, I think this a hasty 
criticism. They are more like the overflow- 
ing griefs and talking distraction of Titus 
Andronicus. The sorrows of the Duchess 
set inward ; if she talks, it is little more than 
soliloquy imitating conversation in a kind of 
bravery. 

JOHN FORD. 

The Broken Heart. — I do not know where 
to find, in any play, a catastrophe so grand, 
so solemn, and so surprising, as in this. This 
is indeed, according to Milton, to describe 
high passions and high actions. The forti- 
tude of the Spartan boy, who let a beast 
gnaw out his bowels till he died, without 
expressing a groan, is a faint bodily image of 
this dilaceration of the spirit, and exentera- 
tion of the inmost mind, which Calantha, 



M M 



532 



CHARACTERS OF DRAMATIC WRITERS. 



with a holy violence against her nature, 
keeps closely covered, till the last duties of a 
wife and a queen are fulfilled. Stories of 
martyrdom are but of chains and the stake ; 
a little bodily suffering. These torments 

" On the purest spirits prey, 

As on entrails, joints, and limbs, 

With answerable pains, but more intense." 

What a noble thing is the soul, in its 
strengths and in its weaknesses ! Who 
would be less weak than Calantha ? Who 
can be so strong? The expression of this 
transcendent scene almost bears us in imagi- 
nation to Calvary and the Cross ; and we 
seem to perceive some analogy between the 
scenical sufferings which we are here con- 
templating and the real agonies of that final 
completion to which we dare no more than 
hint a reference. Ford was of the first order 
of poets. He sought for sublimity, not by 
parcels, in metaphors or visible images, but 
directly where she has her full residence, in 
the heart of man ; in the actions and suffer- 
ings of the greatest minds. There is a gran- 
deur of the soul, above mountains, seas, and 
the elements. Even in the poor perverted 
reason of Giovanni and Annabella, in the 
play* which stands at the head of the modern 
collection of the works of this author, we 
discern traces of that fiery particle, which, 
in the irregular starting from out the road of 
beaten action, discovers something of a right 
line even in obliquity, and shows hints of an 
improvable greatness in the lowest descents 
and degradations of our nature. 



FULKE GREVILLE, LORD BROOKE. 

Alaham, Mustapha. — The two tragedies of 
Lord Brooke, printed among his poems, 
might with more propriety have been termed 
political treatises than plays. Their author 
has strangely contrived to make passion, 
character, and interest, of the highest order, 
subservient to the expression of state dog- 
mas and mysteries. He is nine parts 
Machiavel and Tacitus, for one part Sopho- 
cles or Seneca. In this writer's estimate of 
the powers of the mind, the understanding 
must have held a most tyrannical pre- 
eminence. Whether we look into his plays 

* 'Tis Pity she's a Whore. 



or his most passionate love-poems, we shall 
find all frozen and made rigid with intellect. 
The finest movements of the human heart, 
the utmost grandeur of which the soul is 
capable, are essentially comprised in the 
actions and speeches of Caelica and Camena. 
Shakspeare, who seems to have had a peculiar 
delight in contemplating womanly perfec- 
tion, whom for his many sweet images of 
female excellence all women are in an 
especial manner bound to love, has not raised 
the ideal of the female character higher than 
Lord Brooke, in these two women, has done. 
But it requires a study equivalent to the 
learning of a new language to understand 
their meaning when they speak. It is indeed 
hard to hit : 

" Much like thy riddle, Samson, in one day 
Or seven though one should musing sit." 

It is as if a being of pure intellect should 
take upon him to express the emotions of our 
sensitive natures. There would be all know- 
ledge, but sympathetic expressions would be 
wanting. 

BEN JONSON. 

The Case is Altered. — The passion for wealth 
has worn out much of its grossness in tract 
of time. Our ancestors certainly conceived 
of money as able to confer a distinct gratifi- 
cation in itself, not considered simply as a 
symbol of wealth. The old poets, when they 
introduce a miser, make him address his 
gold as his mistress ; as something to be seen, 
felt, and hugged ; as capable of satisfying 
two of the senses at least. The substitution 
of a thin, unsatisfying medium in the place 
of the good old tangible metal, has made 
avarice quite a Platonic affection in compa- 
rison with the seeing, touching, and handling 
pleasures of the old Chrysophilites. A bank- 
note can no more satisfy the touch of a true 
sensualist in this passion, than Creusa could 
return her husband's embrace in the shades. 
See the Cave of Mammon in Spenser ; Bara- 
bas's contemplation of his wealth, in the Eich 
Jew of Malta ; Luke's raptures in the City 
Madam ; the idolatry and absolute gold- 
worship of the miser Jaques in this early 
comic production of Ben Jonson's. Above 
all, hear Guzman, in that excellent old trans- 
lation of the Spanish Rogue, expatiate on the 
" ruddy cheeks of your golden ruddocks, 



CHARACTERS OP DRAMATIC WRITERS. 



533 



your Spanish pistolets, your plump and full- 
faced Portuguese, and your clear-skinned 
pieces-of-eight of Castile," which he and his 
fellows the beggars kept secret to themselves, 
and did privately enjoy in a plentiful manner. 
" For to have them to pay them away is not to 
enjoy them ; to enjoy them is to have them 
lying by us ; having no other need of them 
than to use them for the clearing of the eye- 
sight, and the comforting of our senses. 
These we did carry about with us, sewing 
them in some patches of our doublets near 
unto the heart, and as close to the skin as we 
could handsomely quilt them in, holding 
them to be restorative." 

Poetaster. — This Roman play seems written 
to confute those enemies of Ben in his own 
days and ours, who have said that he made 
a pedantical use of his learning. He has 
here revived the whole Court of Augustus, 
by a learned spell. We are admitted to the 
society of the illustrious dead. Virgil, 
Horace, Ovid, Tibullus, converse in our own 
tongue more finely and poetically than they 
were used to express themselves in their 
native Latin. Nothing can be imagined 
more elegant, refined, and court-like, than 
the scenes between this Louis the Fourteenth 
of antiquity and his literati. The whole 
essence and secret of that kind of inter- 
course is contained therein. The economical 
liberality by which greatness, seeming to 
waive some part of its prerogative, takes 
care to lose none of the essentials ; the 
prudential liberties of an inferior, which 
flatter by commanded boldness and soothe 
with complimentary sincerity ; — these, and 
a thousand beautiful passages from his New 
Inn, his Cynthia's Revels, and from those 
numerous court-masques and entertainments, 
which he was in the daily habit of furnishing, 
might be adduced to show the poetical fancy 
and elegance of mind of the supposed rugged 
old bard. ^ 

Alchemist. — The judgment is perfectly over- 
whelmed by the torrent of images, words, 
and book-knowledge, with which Epicure 
Mammon (Act ii., Scene 2) confounds and 
stuns his incredulous hearer. They come 
pouring out like the successive falls of Nilus. 
They "doubly redouble strokes upon the 
foe." Description outstrides proof. We are 
made to believe effects before we have 
testimony for their causes. If there is no 



one image which attains the height of the 
sublime, yet the confluence and assemblage 
of them all produces a result equal to the 
grandest poetry. The huge Xerxean army 
countervails against single Achilles. Epicure 
Mammon is the most determined offspring of 
its author. It has the whole " matter and 
copy of the father — eye, nose, lip, the trick of 
his frown." It is just such a swaggerer as 
contemporaries have described old Ben to be. 
Meercraft, Bobadil, the Host of the New Inn, 
have all his image and superscription. But 
Mammon is arrogant pretension personified. 
Sir Samson Legend, in Love for Love, is such 
another lying, overbearing character, but he 
does not come up to Epicure Mammon. 
What a " towering bravery " there is in his 
sensuality ! he affects no pleasure under a 
Sultan. It is as if "Egypt with Assyria 
strove in luxury." 



GEORGE CHAPMAN. 

Busst/D'A mbois, By row? s Conspiracy, Byron's 
Tragedy, &c. &c. — Webster has happily cha- 
racterised the " full and heightened style " of 
Chapman, who, of all the English play- writers, 
perhaps approaches nearest to Shakspeare in 
the descriptive and didactic, in passages 
which are less purely dramatic. He could 
not go out of himself, as Shakspeare could 
shift at pleasure, to inform and animate 
other existences, but in himself he had an 
eye to perceive and a soul to embrace all 
forms and modes of being. He would have 
made a great epic poet, if indeed he has not 
abundantly shown himself to be one ; for his 
Homer is not so properly a translation as the 
stories of Achilles and Ulysses rewritten. 
The earnestness and passion which he has 
put into every part of these poems would be 
incredible to a reader of mere modern trans- 
lations. His almost Greek zeal for the glory 
of his heroes can only be paralleled by that 
fierce spirit of Hebrew bigotry, with which 
Milton, as if personating one of the zealots of 
the old law, clothed himself when he sat 
down to paint the acts of Samson against the 
uncircumcised. The great obstacle to Chap- 
man's translations being read, is their un- 
conquerable quaintness. He pours out in 
the same breath the most just and natural, 
and the most violent and crude expressions. 
He seems to grasp at whatever words come 



534 



CHARACTERS OF DRAMATIC WRITERS. 



first to hand while the enthusiasm is upon 
him, as if all other must be inadequate to the 
divine meaning. But passion (the all in all 
in poetry) is everywhere present, raising the 
low, dignifying the mean, and putting sense 
into the absurd. He makes his readers 
glow, weep, tremble, take any affection which 
he pleases, be moved by words, or in spite 
of them, be disgusted, and overcome their 
disgust. 



FRANCIS BEAUMONT.— JOHN FLETCHER. 

Maid's Tragedy. — One characteristic of the 
excellent old poets is, their being able to 
bestow grace upon subjects which naturally 
do not seem susceptible of any. I will 
mention two instances. Zelmane in the 
Arcadia of Sidney, and Helena in the All's 
Well that Ends Well of Shakspeare. What 
can be more unpromising, at first sight, than 
the idea of a young man disguising himself 
in woman's attire, and passing himself off for 
a woman among women ; and that for a long 
space of time 1 Yet Sir Philip has preserved 
so matchless a decorum, that neither does 
Pyrocles' manhood suffer any stain for the 
effeminacy of Zelmane, nor is the respect due 
to the princesses at all diminished when the 
deception comes to be known. In the 
sweetly-constituted mind of Sir Philip Sidney, 
it seems as if no ugly thought or unhandsome 
meditation could find a harbour. He turned 
all that he touched into images of honour 
and virtue. Helena in Shakspeare is a young 
woman seeking a man in marriage. The 
ordinary rules of courtship are reversed, the 
habitual feelings are crossed. Yet with such 
exquisite address this dangerous subject is 
handled, that Helena's forwardness loses her 
no honour ; delicacy dispenses with its laws 
in her favour, and nature, in her single case, 
seems content to suffer a sweet violation. 
A spatia, in the Maid's Tragedy, is a character 
equally difficult with Helena, of being 
managed with grace. She too is a slighted 
woman, refused by the man who had once 
engaged to marry her. Yet it is artfully 
contrived, that while we pity we respect her, 
and she descends without degradation. Such 
wonders true poetry and passion can do, to 
confer dignity upon subjects which do not 
seem capable of it. But Aspatia must not 
be compared at all points with Helena ; she 



does not so absolutely predominate over her 
situation but she suffers some diminution, 
some abatement of the full lustre of the 
female character, which Helena never does. 
Her character has many degrees of sweet- 
ness, some of delicacy ; but it has weakness, 
which, if we do not despise, we are sorry for. 
After all, Beaumont and Fletcher were but 
an inferior sort of Shakspeares and Sidneys. 
Philaster. — The character of Bellario must 
have been extremely popular in its day. 
For many years after the date of Philaster's 
first exhibition on the stage, scarce a play 
can be found without one of these women- 
pages in it, following in the train of some 
pre-engaged lover, calling on the gods to 
bless her happy rival (his mistress), whom no 
doubt she secretly curses in her heart, giving 
rise to many pretty equivoques by the way on 
the confusion of sex, and either made happy 
at last by some surprising turn of fate, or 
dismissed with the joint pity of the lovers 
and the audience. Donne has a copy of 
verses to his mistress, dissuading her from a 
resolution, which she seems to have taken up 
from some of these scenical representations, 
of following him abroad as a page. It is so 
earnest, so weighty, so rich in poetry, in 
sense, in wit, and pathos, that it deserves to 
be read as a solemn close in future to all 
such sickly fancies as he there deprecates. 



JOHN FLETCHER. " 

Thierry and Theodoret. — The scene where 
Ordella offers her life a sacrifice, that the 
king of France may not be childless, I have 
always considered as the finest in all Fletcher, 
and Ordella to be the most perfect notion of 
the female heroic character, next to Calantha 
in the Broken Heart. She is a piece of 
sainted nature. Yet, noble as the whole 
passage is, it must be confessed that the 
manner of it, compared with Shakspeare's 
finest scenes, is faint and languid. Its 
motion is circular, not progressive. Each 
line revolves on itself in a sort of separate 
orbit. They do not join into one another 
like a running-hand. Fletcher's ideas moved 
slow ; his versification, though sweet, is 
tedious, it stops at every turn ; he lays line 
upon line, making up one after the other, 
adding image to image so deliberately, that 
we see their junctures. Shakspeare mingles 



SPECIMENS FKOM THE WRITINGS OF FULLER. 



535 



everything, runs line into line, embarrasses 
sentences and metaphors ; before one idea 
has burst its shell, another is hatched and 
clamorous for disclosure. Another striking 
difference between Fletcher and Shakspeare 
is the fondness of the former for unnatural 
and violent situations. He seems to have 
thought that nothing great could be pro- 
duced in an ordinary way. The chief inci- 
dents in some of his most admired tragedies 
show this.* Shakspeare had nothing of this 
contortion in his mind, none of that craving 
after violent situations, and nights of strained 
and improbable virtue, which I think always 
betrays an imperfect moral sensibility. The 
wit of Fletcher is excellent,t like his serious 
scenes, but there is something strained and 
far-fetched in both. He is too mistrustful of 
Nature, he always goes a little on one side 
of her. — Shakspeare chose her without a 
reserve : and had riches, power, understand- 
ing, and length of days, with her for a dowry. 
Faithful Shepherdess. — If all the parts of 
this delightful pastoral had been in unison 
with its many innocent scenes and sweet 
lyric intermixtures, it had been a poem fit 
to vie with Comus or the Arcadia, to have 
been put into the hands of boys and virgins, 
to have made matter for young dreams, like 
the loves of Hermia and Lysander. But a 
spot is on the face of this Diana. Nothing 
short of infatuation could have driven 
Fletcher upon mixing with this "blessedness " 
such an ugly deformity as Chloe, the wanton 
shepherdess ! If Chloe was meant to set off 
Clorin by contrast, Fletcher should have 
known that such weeds by juxtaposition do 
not set off, but kill sweet flowers. 

* Wife for a Month, Cupid's Revenge, Double 
Marriage, &c. 

i Wit without Money, and his comedies generally. 



PHILIP MASSINGER.— THOMAS DECKER. 

The Virgin Martyr. — This play has some 
beauties of so very high an order, that with 
all my respect for Massinger, I do not think 
he had poetical enthusiasm capable of rising 
up to them. His associate Decker, who 
wrote Old Fortunatus, had poetry enough 
for anything. The very impurities which 
obtrude themselves among the sweet pieties 
of this play, like Satan among the Sons of 
Heaven, have a strength of contrast, a raci- 
ness, and a glow, in them, which are beyond 
Massinger. They are to the religion of the 
rest what Caliban is to Miranda. 



PHILIP 



MASSINGER.— THOMAS MIDDLETON.- 
WILLIAM ROWLEY. 



Old Laiv. — There is an exquisiteness of 
moral sensibility, making one's eyes to gush 
out tears of delight, and a poetical strange- 
ness in the circumstances of this sweet tragi- 
comedy, which are unlike anything in the 
dramas which Massinger wrote alone. The 
pathos is of a subtler edge. Middleton and 
Eowley, who assisted in it, had both of them 
finer geniuses than their associate. 

JAMES SHIRLEY. 

Claims a place amongst the worthies of this 
period, not so much for any transcendent 
talent in himself, as that he was the last 
of a great race, all of whom spoke nearly 
the same language, and had a set of 
moral feelings and notions in common. A 
new language, and quite a new turn of 
tragic and comic interest, came in with the 
Restoration. 



SPECIMENS FROM THE WRITINGS OF FULLER, 



THE CHURCH HISTORIAN. 



The writings of Fuller are usually de- 
signated by the title of quaint, and with 
sufficient reason ; for such was his natural 
bias to conceits, that I doubt not upon most 
occasions it would have been going out of his 



way to have expressed himself out of them. 
But his wit is not always a lumen siccum, a 
dry faculty of surprising ; on the contrary, 
his conceits are oftentimes deeply steeped in 
human feeling and passion. Above all, his 



536 



SPECIMENS FROM THE WRITINGS OF FULLER. 



way of telling a story, for its eager liveliness, 
and the perpetual running commentary of 
the narrator happily blended with the nar- 
ration, is perhaps unequalled. 

As his works are now scarcely perused 
but by antiquaries, I thought it might not 
be unacceptable to my readers to present 
them with some specimens of his manner, in 
single thoughts and phrases ; and in some 
few passages of greater length, chiefly of a 
narrative description. I shall arrange them 
as I casually find them in my book of 
extracts, without being solicitous to specify 
the particular work from which they are 
taken. 

Pyramids. — "The Pyramids themselves, 
doting with age, have forgotten the names of 
their founders." 

Virtue in a short person. — " His soul had 
but a short diocese to visit, and therefore 
might the better attend the effectual in- 
forming thereof." 

Intellect in a very tall one. — " Ofttimes such 
who are built four stories high, are observed 
to have little in their cock-loft." 

Naturals. — "Their heads sometimes so 
little, that there is no room for wit ; some- 
times so long, that there is no wit for so 
much room." 

Negroes. — "The image of God cut in 
ebony." 

School-divinity. — "At the first it will be 
as welcome to thee as a prison, and their 
very solutions will seem knots unto thee." 

Mr. Perkins the Divine. — " He had a 
capacious head, with angles winding and 
roomy enough to lodge all controversial in- 
tricacies." 

The same. — "He would pronounce the 
word Damn with such an emphasis as left 
a doleful echo in his auditors' ears a good 
while after." 

Judges in capital cases. — " O let him 
take heed how he strikes that hath a dead 
hand." 

Memory. — "Philosophers place it in the 
rear of the head, and it seems the mine of 
memory lies there, because there men 
naturally dig for it, scratching it when they 
are at a loss." 

Fancy. — "It is the most boundless and 
restless faculty of the soul ; for while the 
Understanding and the Will are kept, as it 
were, in libera custodia to their objects of 



verum et bonum, the Fancy is free from all 
engagements : it digs without spade, sails 
without ship, flies without wings, builds 
without charges, fights without bloodshed: 
in a moment striding from the centre to 
the circumference of the world ; by a kind 
of omnipotency creating and annihilating 
things in an instant ; and things divorced 
in Nature are married in Fancy as in a law- 
less place." 

S Infants. — " Some, admiring what motives 
to mirth infants meet with in their silent 
and solitary smiles, have resolved, how truly 
I know not, that then they converse with 
angels ; as indeed such cannot among mortals 
find any fitter companions." 

Music. — " Such is the sociableness of music, 
it conforms itself to all companies both in 
mirth and mourning ; complying to improve 
that passion with which it finds the auditors 
most affected. In a word, it is an invention 
which might have beseemed a son of Seth 
to have been the father thereof: though 
better it was that Cain's great-grandchild 
should have the credit first to find it, than 
the world the unhappiness longer to have 
wanted it." 

St. Monica. — "Drawing near her death, 
she sent most pious thoughts as harbingers 
to heaven, and her soul saw a glimpse of 
happiness through the chinks of her sickness- 
broken body." * 

Mortality. — "To smell to a turf of fresh 
earth is wholesome for the body, no less are 
thoughts of mortality cordial to the soul." 

Virgin. — "No lordling husband shall at 
the same time command her presence and 
distance ; to be always near in constant 
attendance, and always to stand aloof in 
awful observance." 

Elder Brother. — "Is one who made haste 
to come into the world to bring his parents 
the first news of male posterity, and is well 
rewarded for his tidings." 

Bishop Fletcher. — "His pride was rather 
on him than in him, as only gait and gesture 
deep, not sinking to his heart, though cause- 
lessly condemned for a proud man, as who 
was a good hypocrite, and far more humble 
than he appeared." 

Masters of Colleges^ — "A little allay of 

* " The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decayed, 
Lets in new lights through chinks which time 
has made." — Waller. 



SPECIMENS FROM THE WRITINGS OF FULLER. 



537 



dulness in a Master of a College makes him 
fitter to manage secular affairs." 

The Good Yeoman. — "Is a gentleman in 
ore, whom the next age may see refined." 

Good Parent. — " For his love, therein like 
a well-drawn picture, he eyes all his children 
alike." 

Deformity in Children. — "This partiality 
is tyranny, when parents despise those that 
are deformed ; enough to break those whom 
God had boived before." 

Good Master. — " In correcting his servant 
he becomes not a slave to his own passion. 
Not cruelly making new indentures of the 
flesh of his apprentice. He is tender of his 
servant in sickness and age. If crippled in 
his service, his house is his hospitaL Yet 
how many throw away those dry bones, out 
of the which themselves have sucked the 
marrow ! " 

Good Widow. — " If she can speak but little 
good of him [her dead husband] she speaks 
but little of him. So handsomely folding up 
her discourse, that his virtues are shown 
outwards, and his vices wrapt up in silence ; 
as counting it barbarism to throw dirt on 
his memory, who hath mould cast on his 
body." 

Horses. — " These are men's wings, where- 
with they make such speed. A generous 
creature a horse is, sensible in some sort of 
honour ; and made most handsome by that 
which deforms men most — pride." 

Martyrdom. — "Heart of oak hath some- 
times warped a little in the scorching heat 
of persecution. Their want of true courage 
herein cannot be excused. Yet many cen- 
sure them for surrendering up their forts 
after a long siege, who would have yielded 
up their own at the first summons. — Oh ! 
there is more required to make one valiant, 
than to call Cranmer or Jewel coward ; as if 
the fire in Smithfield had been no hotter 
than what is painted in the Book of Martyrs." 

Text of St. Paid. — "St. Paul saith, Let 
not the sun go down on your wrath, to carry 
news to the antipodes in another world of 
thy revengeful nature. Yet let us take the 
Apostle's meaning rather than his words, 
with all possible speed to depose our passion ; 
not understanding him so literally, that we 
may take leave to be angry till sunset : then 
might our wrath lengthen with the days ; and 
men in Greenland, where the day lasts above 



a quarter of a year, have plentiful scope for 
revenge." * 

Bishop Brownrig. — "He carried learning 
enough in numerato about him in his pockets 
for any discourse, and had much more at 
home in his chests for any serious dispute." 

Modest Want. — " Those that with diligence 
fight against poverty, though neither conquer 
till death makes it a drawn battle, expect 
not but prevent their craving of thee : for 
God forbid the heavens should never rain, 
till the earth first opens her mouth ; seeing 
some grounds will sooner burn than chap." 

Death-bed Temptations. — " The devil is most 
busy on the last day of his term ; and a 
tenant to be outed cares not what mischief 
he doth." 

Conversation. — " Seeing we are civilised 
Englishmen, let us not be naked savages in 
our talk." 

Wounded Soldier. — " Halting is the state- 
liest march of a soldier ; and 'tis a brave 
sight to see the flesh of an ancient as torn as 
his colours." 

Wat Tyler. — "A misogrammatist ; if a good 
Greek word may be given to so barbarous a 
rebel." 

Heralds. — " Heralds new mould men's 
names — taking from them, adding to them, 
melting out all the liquid letters, torturing 
mutes to make them speak, and making 
vowels dumb, — to bring it to a fallacious 
homonomy at the last, that their names may be 
the same with those noble houses they pre- 
tend to." 

Antiquarian Diligence. — "It is most worthy 
observation, with what diligence he [Camden] 
inquired after ancient places, making hue 
and cry after many a city which was run 
away, and by certain marks and tokens pur- 
suing to find it ; as by the situation on the 
Eoman highways, by just distance from other 
ancient cities, by some affinity of name, by 
tradition of the inhabitants, by Eoman coins 
digged up, and by some appearance of ruins. 
A broken urn is a whole evidence : or an 



* This whimsical prevention of a consequence which 
no one would have thought of deducing, — setting up an 
absurdum on purpose to hunt it down, — placing guards 
as it were at the very outposts of possibility, — gravely 
giving out laws to insanity and prescribing moral fences 
to distempered intellects, could never have entered into 
a head less entertainingly constructedthan that of Fuller, 
or Sir Thomas Browne, the very air of whose style the 
conclusion of this passage most aptly imitates. 



538 



SPECIMENS FROM THE WRITINGS OF FULLER. 



old gate still surviving, out of which the city- 
is run out. Besides, commonly some new- 
spruce town not far off is grown out of the 
ashes thereof, which yet hath so much natural 
affection as dutifully to own those reverend 
ruins for her mother." 

Henry de Essex. — " He is too well known 
in our English Chronicles, being Baron of 
Ealeigh, in Essex, and Hereditary Standard 
Bearer of England. It happened in the reign 
of this king [Henry II.] there was a fierce 
battle fought in Flintshire, at Coleshall, be- 
tween the English and "Welsh, wherein this 
Henry de Essex animum et signum simul 
abjecit, betwixt traitor and coward, cast away 
both his courage and banner together, occa- 
sioning a great overthrow of English. But 
he that had the baseness to do, had the bold- 
ness to deny the doing, of so foul a fact ; 
until he was challenged in combat by Eobert 
de Momford, a knight, eye-witness thereof, 
and by him overcome in a duel. Whereupon 
his large inheritance was confiscated to the 
king, and he himself, partly thrust, partly 
going, into a convent, hid his head in a cowl, 
under which, betwixt shame and sanctity, he 
blushed out the remainder of his life"* — 
Worthies, article Bedfordshire. 

Sir Edward Harwood, Knt. — " I have read 
of a bird, which hath a face like, and yet 
will prey upon, a man : who coming to the 
water to drink, and finding there by reflec- 
tion, that he had killed one like himself, 
pineth away by degrees, and never after- 
wards enjoy eth itself. f Such is in some sort 

* The fine imagination of Fuller has done what might 
have been pronounced impossible : it has given an inte- 
rest and a holy character to coward infamy. Nothing 
can be more beautiful than the concluding account of the 
last days, and expiatory retirement, of poor Henry de 
Essex. The address with which the whole of this little 
story is told is most consummate : the charm of it seems 
to consist in a perpetual balance of antitheses not too 
violently opposed, and the consequent activity of mind in 
which the reader is kept: — "Betwixt traitor and 
coward" — " baseness to do, boldness to deny " — ■" partly 
thrust, partly going, into a convent " — " betwixt shame 
and sanctity." The reader by this artifice is taken into 
a kind of partnership with the writer, — his judgment is 
exercised in settling the preponderance, — he feels as if 
he were consulted as to the issue. But the modern his- 
torian flings at once the dead weight of his own judg- 
ment into the scale, and settles the matter. 

+ I do not know where Fuller read of this bird ; but a 
more awful and affecting story, and moralising of a story, 
in Natural History, or rather in that Fabulous Natural 
History where poets and mythologists found the Phoenix 
and the Unicorn, and " other strange fowl," is nowhere 
extant. It is a fable which Sir Thomas Browne, if he 
had heard of it, would have exploded among his Vulgar 



the condition of Sir Edward. This accident, 
that he had killed one in a private quarrel, 
put a period to his carnal mirth, and was a 
covering to his eyes all the days of his life. 
No possible provocations could afterwards 
tempt him to a duel ; and no wonder that 
one's conscience loathed that whereof he had 
surfeited. He refused all challenges with 
more honour than others accepted them ; it 
being well known, that he would set his foot 
as far in the face of his enemy as any man 
alive." — Worthies, article Lincolnshire. 

Decayed Gentry. — " It happened in the 
reign of King James, when Henry Earl of 
Huntingdon was Lieutenant of Leicestershire, 
that a labourer's son in that country was 
pressed into the wars ; as I take it, to go 
over with Count Mansfield. The old man at 
Leicester requested his son might be dis- 
charged, as being the only staff of his age, 
who by his industry maintained him and his 
mother. The Earl demanded his name, 
which the man for a long time was loath to 
tell (as suspecting it a fault for so poor a 
man to confess the truth), at last he told his 
name was Hastings. ■ Cousin Hastings,' said 
the Earl, ' we cannot all be top branches of 
the tree, though we all spring from the same 
root ; your son, my kinsman, shall not be 
pressed.' So good was the meeting of 
modesty in a poor, with courtesy in an hon- 
ourable person, and gentry I believe in both. 
And I have reason to believe, that some who 
justly own the surnames and blood of Bohuns, 
Mortimers, and Plantagenets (though igno- 
rant of their own extractions,) are hid in the 
heap of common people, where they find that 
under a thatched cottage which some of their 
ancestors could not enjoy in a leaded castle, 
— contentment, with quiet and security." — 
Worthies, article Of Shire-Reeves or Shiriffes. 

Tenderness of Conscience in a Tradesman. — 
" Thomas Curson, born in Allhallows, Lom- 
bard-street, armourer, dwelt without Bishops- 



Errors ; but the delight which he would have taken in 
the discussing of its probabilities, would have shown 
that the truth of the fact, though the avowed object of 
his search was not so much the motive which put him 
upon the investigation, as those hidden affinities and 
poetical analogies, — those essential verities in the appli- 
cation of strange fable, which made him linger with such 
reluctant delay among the last fading lights of popular 
tradition ; and not seldom to conjure up a superstition, 
that had been long extinct, from its dusty grave, to inter 
it himself with greater ceremonies and solemnities of 
burial. 



SPECIMENS FROM THE WRITINGS OF FULLER. 



539 



gate. It happened that a stage-player bor- 
rowed a rusty musket, which had lain long 
leger in his shop : now though his part were 
comical, he therewith acted an unexpected 
tragedy, killing one of the standers by, the 
gun casually going off on the stage, which 
he suspected not to be charged. Oh the 
difference of divers men in the tenderness of 
their consciences ! some are scarce touched 
with a wound, whilst others are wounded 
with a touch therein. This poor armourer 
was highly afflicted therewith, though done 
against his will, yeaj without his know- 
ledge, in his absence, by another, out of 
mere chance. Hereupon he resolved to give 
all his estate to pious uses : no sooner had he 
gotten a round sum, but presently he posted 
with it in his apron to the Court of Alder- 
men, and was in pain till by their direction 
he had settled it for the relief of poor in his 
own and other parishes, and disposed of some 
hundreds of pounds accordingly, as I am 
credibly informed by the then churchwardens 
of the said parish. Thus as he conceived him- 
self casually (though at a great distance) to 
have occasioned the death of one, he was 
the immediate and direct cause of giving a 
comfortable living to many." 

Burning of Wickliffe' s Body by Order of the 
Council of Constance. — " Hitherto [a.d. 1428] 
the corpse of John Wickliffe had quietly 
slept in his grave about forty-one years after 
his death, till his body was reduced to bones, 
and his bones almost to dust. For though the 
earth in the chancel of Lutterworth, in Leices- 
tershire, where he was interred, hath not so 
quick a digestion with the earth of Aceldama, 
to consume flesh in twenty-four hours, yet 
such the appetite thereof, and all other 
English graves, to leave small reversions of 
a body after so many years. But now such 
the spleen of the Council of Constance, as 
they not only cursed his memory as dying an 
obstinate heretic, but ordered that his bones 
(with this charitable caution, — if it may be 
discerned from the bodies of other faithful 



people) be taken out of the ground, and 
thrown far off from any Christian burial. 
In obedience hereunto, Richard Fleming, 
Bishop of Lincoln, Diocesan of Lutterworth, 
sent his officers (vultures with a quick sight, 
scent, at a dead carcass) to ungrave him. Ac- 
cordingly to Lutterworth they come, Sumner, 
Commissary, Official, Chancellor, Proctors, 
Doctors, and their servants, (so that the 
remnant of the body would not hold out a bone 
amongst so many hands,) take what was left 
out of the grave, and burnt them to ashes, 
and cast them into Swift, a neighbouring 
brook, running hard by. Thus this brook has 
conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, 
Severn into the narrow seas, they into the 
main ocean; and thus the ashes of Wickliffe 
are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is 
dispersed all the world over"* — Church 
History. ^ 

* The concluding period of this most lively narrative 
I will not call a conceit : it is one of the grandest con- 
ceptions I ever met with. One feels the ashes of Wick- 
liffe gliding away out of the reach of the Sumners, Com- 
missaries, Officials, Proctors, Doctors, and all the 
puddering rout of executioners of the impotent rage of 
the baffled Council : from Swift into Avon, from Avon 
into Severn, from Severn into the narrow seas, from the 
narrow seas into the main ocean, where they become the 
emblem of his doctrine, " dispersed all the world over." 
Hamlet's tracing the body of Caesar to the clay that 
stops a beer barrel is a no less curious pursuit of 
" ruined mortality ; " but it is in an inverse ratio to this : 
it degrades and saddens us, for one part of our nature at 
least ; but this expands the whole of our nature, and 
gives to the body a sort of ubiquity, — a diffusion as far as 
the actions of its partner can have reach or influence. 

I have seen this passage smiled at, and set down as a 
quaint conceit of old Fuller. But what is not a conceit 
to those who read it in a temper different from that in 
which the writer composed it ? The most pathetic parts 
of poetry to cold tempers seem and are nonsense, 
as divinity was to the Greeks foolishness. When 
Richard II., meditating on his own utter annihilation as 
to royalty, cries out, 

" O that I were a mockery king of snow, 
To melt before the sun of Bolingbroke," 

if we had been going on pace for pace with the passion 
before, this sudden conversion of a strong-felt metaphor 
into something to be actually realised in nature, like that 
of Jeremiah, " Oh ! that my head were waters, and mine 
eyes a fountain of tears," is strictly and strikingly 
natural ; but come unprepared upon it, and it is a con- 
ceit : and so is a "head " turned into " waters." 



540 



ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH. 



ON THE GENIUS AND CHAEACTEE OF HOGAETH ; 

WITH SOME REMARKS ON A PASSAGE IN THE WRITINGS OF THE LATE MR. BARRY. 



One of the earliest and noblest enjoy- 
ments I had when a boy, was in the contem- 
plation of those capital prints by Hogarth, 
the Harlot's and Rake's Progresses, which, 
along with some others, hung upon the walls 
of a great hall in an old-fashioned house in 

shire, and seemed the solitary tenants 

(with myself) of that antiquated and life- 
deserted apartment. 

Eecollection of the manner in which those 
prints used to affect me has often made me 
wonder, when I have heard Hogarth de- 
scribed as a mere comic painter, as one of 
those whose chief ambition was to raise a 
laugh. To deny that there are throughout 
the prints which I have mentioned circum- 
stances introduced of a laughable, tendency, 
would be to run counter to the common 
notions of mankind ; but to suppose that in 
their ruling character they appeal chiefly to 
the risible faculty, and not first and foremost 
to the very heart of man, its best and most 
serious feelings, would be to mistake no less 
grossly their aim and purpose. Aset of severer 
Satires (for they are not so much Comedies, 
which they have been likened to, as they are 
strong and masculine Satires) less mingled 
with anything of mere fun, were never 
written upon paper, or graven upon copper. 
They resemble Juvenal, or the satiric touches 
in Timon of Athens. 

I was pleased with the reply of a gentleman, 
who being asked which book he esteemed 
most in his library, answered, — " Shak- 
speare : " being asked which he esteemed 
next best, replied, " Hogarth." His graphic 
representations are indeed books : they have 
the teeming, fruitful, suggestive meaning of 
words. Other pictures we look at, — his 
prints we read. 

In pursuance of this parallel, I have some- 
times entertained myself with comparing the 
Timon of Athens of Shakspeare (which I 
have just mentioned) and Hogarth's Rake's 
Progress together. The story, the moral, in 
both is nearly the same. The wild course of 



riot and extravagance, ending in the one with 
driving the Prodigal from the society of men 
into the solitude of the deserts, and in the 
other with conducting the Eake through his 
several stages of dissipation into the still 
more complete desolations of the mad-house, 
in the play and in the picture, are described 
with almost equal force and nature. The 
levee of the Eake, which forms the subject 
of the second plate in the series, is almost a 
transcript of Timon's levee in the opening 
scene of that play. We find a dedicating 
poet, and other similar characters, in both. 

The concluding scene in the Rake's Progress 
is perhaps superior to the last scenes of 
Timon. If we seek for something of kindred 
excellence in poetry, it must be in the scenes 
of Lear's beginning madness, where the King 
and the Fool and the Tom-o'-Bedlam conspire 
to produce such a medley of mirth checked 
by misery, and misery rebuked by mirth ; 
where the society of those "strange bed- 
fellows " which misfortunes have brought 
Lear acquainted with, so finely sets forth the 
destitute state of the monarch ; while the 
lunatic bans of the one, and the disjointed 
sayings and wild but pregnant allusions of 
the other, so wonderfully sympathise with 
that confusion, which they seem to assist in 
the production of, in the senses of that 
" child-changed father." 

In the scene in Bedlam, which terminates 
the Rake's Progress, we find the same assort- 
ment of the ludicrous with the terrible. 
Here is desperate madness, the overturning 
of originally strong thinking faculties, at 
which we shudder, as we contemplate the 
duration and pressure of affliction which it 
must have asked to destroy such a building ; 
— and here is the gradual hurtless lapse into 
idiocy, of faculties, which at their best of 
times never having been strong, we look 
upon the consummation of their decay with 
no more of pity than is consistent with a 
smile. The mad tailor, the poor driveller 
that has gone out of his wits (and truly he 



ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH. 



541 



appears to have had no great journey to go 
to get past their confines) for the love of 
Charming Betty Careless, — these half-laugh- 
able, scarce-pitiable objects, take off from the 
horror which the principal figure would of 
itself raise, at the same time that they assist 
the feeling of the scene by contributing to 
the general notion of its subject : — 

" Madness, thou chaos of the hrain, 

What art, that pleasure giv'st and pain ? 

Tyranny of Fancy's reign ! 

Mechanic Fancy, that can huild 

Vast labyrinths and mazes wild, 

With rule disjointed, shapeless measure, 

Fill'd with horror, flll'd with pleasure ! 

Shapes of horror, that would even 

Cast doubts of mercy upon heaven ; 

Shapes of pleasure, that but seen, 

Would split the shaking sides of Spleen." * 

Is it carrying the spirit of comparison to 
excess to remark, that in the poor kneeling 
weeping female who accompanies her seducer 
in his sad decay, there is something analogous 
to Kent, or Caius, as he delights rather to 
be called, in Lear, — the noblest pattern of, 
virtue which even Shakspeare has conceived, 
— who follows his royal master in banishment, 
that had pronounced his banishment, and, 
forgetful at once of his wrongs and dignities, 
taking on himself the disguise of a menial, 
retains his fidelity to the figure, his loyalty 
to the carcass, the shadow, the shell and 
empty husk of Lear 1 

In the perusal of a book, or of a picture, 
much of the impression which we receive 
depends upon the habit of mind which we 
bring with us to such perusal. The same 
circumstance may make one person laugh, 
which shall render another very serious ; or 
in the same person the first impression may 
be corrected by after-thought. The mis- 
employed incongruous characters at the 
Harlot's Funeral, on a superficial inspection, 
provoke to laughter ; but when we have 
sacrificed the first emotion to levity, a very 
different frame of mind succeeds, or the 
painter has lost half his purpose. I never 
look at that wonderful assemblage of depraved 
beings, who, without a grain of reverence or 
pity in their perverted minds, are performing 
the sacred exteriors of duty to the relics of 
their departed partner in folly, but I am as 
much moved to sympathy from the very 
want of it in them, as I should be by the 

* Lines inscribed under the plate. 



finest representation of a virtuous death-bed 
surrounded by real mourners, pious children, 
weeping friends, — perhaps more by the very 
contrast. What reflections does it not awake, 
of the dreadful heartless state in which the 
creature (a female too) must have Uved, who 
in death wants the accompaniment of one 
genuine tear. That wretch who is removing 
the lid of the coffin to gaze upon the corpse 
with a face which indicates a perfect negation 
of all goodness or womanhood — the hypocrite 
parson and his demure partner — all the 
fiendish group — to a thoughtful mind present 
a moral emblem more affecting than if the 
poor friendless carcass had been depicted as 
thrown out to the woods, where wolves had 
assisted at its obsequies, itself furnishing 
forth its own funeral banquet. 

It is easy to laugh at such incongruities as 
are met together in this picture, — incongruous 
objects being of the very essence of laughter, 
— but surely the laugh is far different in its 
kind from that thoughtless species to which 
we are moved by mere farce and grotesque. 
"We laugh when Ferdinand Count Fathom, 
at the first sight of the white cliffs of Britain, 
feels his heart yearn with filial fondness 
towards the land of his progenitors, which he 
is coming to fleece and plunder, — we smile 
at the exquisite irony of the passage, — but if 
we are not led on by such passages to some 
more salutary feeling than laughter, we are 
very negligent perusers of them in book or 
picture. 

It is the fashion with those who cry up 
the great Historical School in this country, 
at the head of which Sir Joshua Eeynolds is 
placed, to exclude Hogarth from that school, 
as an artist of an inferior and vulgar class. 
Those persons seem to me to confound the 
painting of subjects in common or vulgar 
life with the being a vulgar artist. The 
quantity of thought which Hogarth crowds 
into every picture would alone unvulgarise 
every subject which he might choose. Let 
us take the lowest of his subjects, the print 
called Gin Lane. Here is plenty of poverty 
and low stuff to disgust upon a superficial 
view ; and accordingly a cold spectator feels 
himself immediately disgusted and repelled. 
I have seen many turn away from it, not 
being able to bear it. The same persons 
would perhaps have looked with great com- 
placency upon Poussin's celebrated picture 



542 



ON THE GENIUS AND CHAEACTER OF HOGARTH. 



of the Plague at Athens* Disease and Death 
and bewildering Terror, in Athenian garments^ 
are endurable, and come, as the delicate 
critics express it, within the "limits of 
pleasurable sensation." But the scenes of 
their own St. Giles's, delineated by their own 
countryman, are too shocking to think of. 
Yet if we could abstract our minds from the 
fascinating colours of the picture, and forget 
the coarse execution (in some respects) of the 
print, intended as it was to be a cheap plate, 
accessible to the poorer sort of people, for 
whose instruction it was done, I think we 
could have no hesitation in conferring the 
palm of superior genius upon Hogarth, 
comparing this work of his with Poussin's 
picture. There is more of imagination in it 
— that power which draws all things to one, 
— which makes things animate and inani- 
mate, beings with their attributes, subjects, 
and their accessories, take one colour and 
serve to one effect. Everything in the print, 
to use a vulgar expression, tells. Every part 
is full of " strange images of death." It is 
perfectly amazing and astounding to look at. 
Not only the two prominent figures, the 
woman and the half-dead man, which are as 
terrible as anything which Michael Angelo 
ever drew, but everything else in the print, 
contributes to bewilder and stupify, — the 
very houses, as I heard a friend of mine 
express it, tumbling all about in various 
directions, seem drunk — seem absolutely reel- 
ing from the effect of that diabolical spirit 
of frenzy which goes forth over the whole 
composition. To show the poetical and 
almost prophetical conception in the artist, 
one little circumstance may serve. Not 
content with the dying and dead figures, 
which he has strewed in profusion over the 
proper scene of the action, he shows you 
what (of a kindred nature) is passing beyond 
it. Close by the shell, in which, by direction 
of the parish beadle, a man is depositing his 
wife, is an old wall, which, partaking of the 
universal decay around it, is tumbling to 
pieces. Through a gap in this wall are seen 
three figures, which appear to make a part 
in some funeral procession which is passing 
by on the other side of the wall, out of the 
sphere of the composition. This extending 
of the interest beyond the bounds of the 

• At the late Mr. Hope's, in Cavendish-square. 



subject could only have been conceived by a 
great genius. Shakspeare, in his description 
of the painting of the Trojan War, in his 
Tarquin and Lucrece, has introduced a similar 
device, where the painter made a part stand 
for the whole : — 

" For much imaginary work was there, 
Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind, 
That for Achilles' image stood his spear, 
Grip'd in an armed hand ; himself behind 
Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind : 
A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head, 
Stood for the whole to be imagined." 

This he well calls imaginary loork, where 
the spectator must meet the artist in his 
conceptions half way ; and it is peculiar to 
the confidence of high genius alone to trust 
so much to spectators or readers. Lesser 
artists show everything distinct and full, as 
they require an object to be made out to 
themselves before they can comprehend it. 

When I think of the power displayed in 
this (I will not hesitate to say) sublime 
print, it seems to me the extreme narrowness 
of system alone, and of that rage for classifi- 
cation, by which, in matters of taste at least, 
we are perpetually perplexing, instead of 
arranging, our ideas, that would make us 
concede to the work of Poussin above 
mentioned, and deny to this of Hogarth, the 
name of a grand serious composition. 

We are for ever deceiving ourselves with 
names and theories. We call one man a 
great historical painter, because he has taken 
for his subjects kings or great men, or 
transactions over which time has thrown a 
grandeur. We term another the painter of 
common life, and set him down in our minds 
for an artist of an inferior class, without 
reflecting whether the quantity of thought 
shown by the latter may not much more 
than level the distinction which their mere 
choice of subjects may seem to place between 
them ; or whether, in fact, from that very 
common life a great artist may not extract 
as deep an interest as another man from that 
which we are pleased to call history. 

I entertain the highest respect for the 
talents and virtues of Eeynolds, but I do not 
like that his reputation should overshadow 
and stifle the merits of such a man as 
Hogarth, nor that to mere names and 
classifications we should be content to 
sacrifice one of the greatest ornaments of 
England. 



ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH. 



543 



I would ask the most enthusiastic admirer 
of Reynolds, whether in the countenances of 
his Staring and Grinning Despair, which he 
has given us for the faces of Ugolino and 
dying Beaufort, there be anything com- 
parable to the expression which Hogarth 
has put into the face of his broken-down 
rake in the last plate but one of the Rake's 
Progress* where a letter from the manager 
is brought to him to say that his play "will 
not do 1 " Here all is easy, natural, undis- 
torted, but withal what a mass of woe is 
here accumulated ! — the long history of a 
mis-spent life is compressed into the coun- 
tenance as plainly as the series of plates 
before had told it ; here is no attempt at 
Gorgonian looks, which are to freeze the 
beholder — no grinning at the antique bed- 
posts — no face-making, or consciousness of 
the presence of spectators in or out of the 
picture, but grief kept to a man's self, a face 
retiring from notice with the shame which 
great anguish sometimes brings with it, — a 
final leave taken of hope, — the coming on of 
vacancy and stupefaction, — a beginning 
alienation of mind looking like tranquillity. 
Here is matter for the mind of the beholder 
to feed on for the hour together, — matter to 
feed and fertilise the mind. It is too real to 
admit one thought about the power of the 
artist who did it. When we compare the 
expression in subjects which so fairly admit 
of comparison, and find the superiority so 
clearly to remain with Hogarth, shall the 
mere contemptible difference of the scene of 
it being laid, in the one case, in our Fleet or 
King's Bench Prison, and, in the other, in 
the State Prison of Pisa, or the bed-room of 
a cardinal, — or that the subject of the one 
has never been authenticated, and the other 
is matter of history, — so weigh down the 
real points of the comparison, as to induce 
us to rank the artist who has chosen the one 
scene or subject (though confessedly inferior 
in that which constitutes the soul of his art) 
in a class from which we exclude the better 
genius (who has happened to make choice of 
the other) with something like disgrace ? * 

* The first perhaps in all Hogarth for serious expres- 
sion. That -which comes next to it, I think, is the jaded 
morning countenance of the debauchee in the second 
plate of the Marriage Alamode, which lectures on the 
vanity of pleasure as audibly as anything in Ecclesiastes. 

t Sir Joshua Reynolds, somewhere in his Lectures, 
speaks of the presumption of Hogarth in attempting the 



The Boys under Demoniacal Possession of 
Raphael and Domenichino, by what law of 
classification are we bound to assign them to 
belong to the great style in painting, and to 
degrade into an inferior class the Rake of 
Hogarth when he is the Madman in the 
Bedlam scene 1 I am sure he is far more 
impressive than either. It is a face which 
no one that has seen can easily forget. There 
is the stretch of human suffering to the 
utmost endurance, severe bodily pain brought 
on by strong mental agony, the frightful 
obstinate laugh of madness, — yet all so 
unforced and natural, that those who never 
were witness to madness in real life, think 
they see nothing but what' is familiar to 
them in this face. Here are no tricks of 
distortion, nothing but the natural face of 
agony. This is high tragic painting, and we 
might as well deny to Shakspeare the 
honours of a great tragedian, because he has 
interwoven scenes of mirth with the serious 
business of his plays, as refuse to Hogarth 
the same praise for the two concluding 
scenes of the Rake's Progress, because of the 
Comic Lunatics * which he has thrown into 
the one, or the Alchymist that he has 
introduced in the other, who is paddling in 
the coals of his furnace, keeping alive the 

grand style in painting, by which he means his choice of 
certain Scripture subjects. Hogarth's excursions into 
Holy Land were not very numerous, but what he has 
left us in this kind have at least this merit, that they 
have expression of some sort or other in them, — the 
Child Moses before Pharaoh'' s Daughter, for instance : 
which is more than can be said of Sir Joshua Reynolds's 
Repose in Egypt, painted for Macklin's Bible, where for 
a Madonna he has substituted a sleepy, insensible, un- 
motherly girl, one so little worthy to have been selected 
as the Mother of the Saviour, that she seems to have 
neither heart nor feeling to entitle her to become a 
mother at all. But indeed the race of Virgin Mary 
painters seems to have been cut up, root and branch, at 
the Reformation. Our artists are too good Protestants 
to give life to that admirable commixture of maternal 
tenderness with reverential awe and wonder approaching 
to worship, with which the Virgin Mothers of L. da 
Vinci and Raphael (themselves by their divine counte- 
nances inviting men to worship) contemplate the union 
of the two natures in the person of their Heaven-born 
Infant. 

* " There are of madmen, as there are of tame, 
All humour'd not alike. We have here some 
So apish and fantastic, play with a feather ; 
And though 'twould grieve a soul to see God's 

image 
So blemish'd and defac'd, yet do they act 
Such antick and such pretty lunacies, 
That, spite of sorrow, they will make you smile. 
Others again we have, like angry lions, 
Fierce as wild bulls, untameable as flies." 

Honest Whore. 



544 



ON" THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH. 



flames of vain hope within the very walls of 
the prison to which the vanity has conducted 
him, which have taught the darker lesson of 
extinguished hope to the desponding figure 
who is the principal person of the scene. 

It is the force of these kindly admixtures 
which assimilates the scenes of Hogarth and 
of Shakspeare to the drama of real life, 
where no such thing as pure tragedy is to 
be found ; but merriment and infelicity, 
ponderous crime and feather-light vanity, 
like twi-formed births, disagreeing com- 
plexions of one intertexture, perpetually 
unite to show forth motley spectacles to the 
world. Then it is that the poet or painter 
shows his art, when in the selection of these 
comic adjuncts he chooses such circum- 
stances as shall relieve, contrast with, or fall 
into, without forming a violent opposition to 
his principal object. Who sees not that the 
Grave-digger in Hamlet, the Fool in Lear, 
have a kind of correspondency to, and fall in 
with, the subjects which they seem to 
interrupt : while the comic stuff in Venice 
Preserved, and the doggrel nonsense of the 
Cook and his poisoning associates in the 
Hollo of Beaumont and Fletcher, are pure, 
irrelevant, impertinent discords, — as bad as 
the quarrelling dog and cat under the table 
of the Lord and the Disciples at Emmaus of 
Titian ? 

Not to tire the reader with perpetual 
reference to prints which he may not be 
fortunate enough to possess, it may be suffi- 
cient to remark, that the same tragic cast of 
expression and incident, blended in some 
instances with a greater alloy of comedy, 
characterises his other grea/t work, the 
Marriage Alamode, as well as those less 
elaborate exertions of his genius, the prints 
called Industry and Idleness, the Distrest 
Poet, &c. forming, with the Harlofs and 
Rake's Progresses, the most considerable if 
not the largest class of his productions, — 
enough surely to rescue Hogarth from the 
imputation of being a mere buffoon, or one 
whose general aim was only to shake the 
sides. 

There remains a very numerous class of 
his performances, the object of which must 
be confessed to be principally comic. But in 
all of them will be found something to dis- 
tinguish them from the droll productions of 
Bunbury and others. They have this differ- 



ence, that we do not merely laugh at, we are 
led into long trains of reflection by them. 
In this respect they resemble the characters 
of Chaucer's Pilgrims, which have strokes 
of humour in them enough to designate 
them for the most part as comic, but our 
strongest feeling still is wonder at the com- 
prehensiveness of genius which could crowd, 
as poet and painter have done, into one small 
canvas so many diverse yet co-operating 
materials. 

The faces of Hogarth have not a mere 
momentary interest, as in caricatures, or 
those grotesque physiognomies which we 
sometimes catch a glance of in the street, 
and, struck with their whimsicality, wish 
for a pencil and the power to sketch them 
down ; and forget them again as rapidly,— 
but they are permanent abiding ideas. Not 
the sports of nature, but her necessary 
eternal classes. We feel that we cannot part 
with any of them, lest a link should be 
broken. 

It is worthy of observation, that he has 
seldom drawn a mean or insignificant coun- 
tenance.* Hogarth's mind was eminently 
reflective ; and, as it has been well observed 
of Shakspeare, that he has transfused his 
own poetical character into the persons of 
his drama (they are all more or less poets) 
Hogarth has impressed a thinking character 
upon the persons of his canvas. This remark 
must not be taken universally. The ex- 
quisite idiotism of the little gentleman in 
the bag and sword beating his drum in the 
print of the Enraged Musician, would of 
itself rise up against so sweeping an asser- 
tion. But I think it will be found to be 
true of the generality of his countenances. 
The knife-grinder and Jew flute-player in the 
plate just mentioned, may serve as instances 
instead of a thousand. They have intense 
thinking faces, though the purpose to which 
they are subservient by no means required 
it ; but indeed it seems as if it was painful 
to Hogarth to contemplate mere vacancy or 
insignificance 



* If there are any of that description, they are in his 
Strolling Players, a print which has been cried up by 
Lord Orford as the richest of his productions, and it may 
be, for what I know, in the mere lumber, the properties, 
and dead furniture of the scene, but in living character 
and expression it is (for Hogarth) lamentably poor and 
wanting ; it is perhaps the only one of his performances 
at which we have a right to feel disgusted. 



ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH. 



545 



This reflection of the artist's own intellect 
from the faces of his characters, is one reason 
why the works of Hogarth, so much more 
than those of any other artist, are objects of 
meditation. Our intellectual natures love 
the mirror which gives them back their own 
likenesses. The mental eye will not bend 
long with delight upon vacancy. 

Another line of eternal separation between 
Hogarth and the common painters of droll 
or burlesque subjects, with whom he is often 
confounded, is the sense of beauty, which in 
the most unpromising subjects seems never 
wholly to have deserted him. "Hogarth 
himself," says Mr. Coleridge,* from whom I 
have borrowed this observation, speaking of 
a scene which took place at Eatzeburg, 
"never drew a more ludicrous distortion, 
both of attitude and physiognomy, than this 
effect occasioned : nor was there wanting 
beside it one of those beautiful female faces 
which the same Hogarth, in lohom the satirist 
never extinguished that love of beauty ivhich 
belonged to him as a poet, so often and so 
gladly introduces as the central figure in a 
crowd of humorous deformities, which figure 
(such is the power of true genius) neither 
acts nor is meant to act as a contrast ; but 
diffuses through all and over each of the 
group a spirit of reconciliation and human 
kindness ; and even when the attention is 
no longer consciously directed to the cause of 
this feeling, still blends its tenderness with 
our laughter : and thus prevents the instructive 
merriment at the whims of nature, or the 
foibles or humours of our fellow-men, from 
degenerating into the heart-poison of contempt 
or hatred." To the beautiful females in 
Hogarth, which Mr. C. has pointed out, 
might be added, the frequent introduction 
of children (which Hogarth seems to have 
taken a particular delight in) into his pieces. 
They have a singular effect in giving tran- 
quillity and a portion of their own innocence 
to the subject. The baby riding in its 
mother's lap in the March to Finchley, (its 
careless innocent face placed directly behind 
the intriguing time-furrowed countenance of 
the treason -plotting French priest,) perfectly 
sobers the whole of that tumultuous scene. 
The boy mourner winding up his top with 
so much unpretending insensibility in the 

* The Friend, No. XVI. 



plate of the Harlot's Funeral, (the only thing 
in that assembly that is not a hypocrite,) 
quiets and soothes the mind that has been 
disturbed at the sight of so much depraved 
man and woman kind. 

I had written thus far, when I met with a 
passage in the writings of the late Mr. Barry, 
which, as it falls in with the vulgar notion 
respecting Hogarth, which this Essay has 
been employed in combating, I shall take the 
liberty to transcribe, with such remarks as 
may suggest themselves to me in the tran- 
scription ; referring the reader for a full 
answer to that which has gone before. 

" Notwithstanding Hogarth's merit does undoubtedly 
entitle him to an honourable place' among the artists, 
and that his little compositions, considered as so many- 
dramatic representations, abounding with humour, cha- 
racter, and extensive observations on the various inci- 
dents of low, faulty, and vicious life, are very in- 
geniously brought together, and frequently tell their 
own story with more facility than is often found in many 
of the elevated and more noble inventions of Raphael 
and other great men ; yet it must be honestly confessed, 
that in what is called knowledge of the figure, foreigners 
have justly observed, that Hogarth is often so raw and 
unformed, as hardly to deserve the name of an artist. 
But this capital defect is not often perceivable, as 
examples of the naked and of elevated nature but rarely 
occur in his subjects, which are for the most part filled 
with characters that in their nature tend to deformity ; 
besides his figures are small, and the jonctures, and other 
difficulties of drawing that might occur in their limbs, 
are artfully concealed with their clothes, rags, &c. But 
what would atone for all bis defects, even if they were 
twice told, is his admirable fund of invention, ever inex- 
haustible in its resources; and his satyr, which is 
always sharp and pertinent, and often highly moral, was 
(except in a few instances, where he weakly and meanly 
suffered his integrity to give way to his envy) seldom or 
never employed in a dishonest or unmanly way. Hogarth 
has been often imitated in his satirical vein, sometimes 
in his humorous : but very few have attempted to rival 
him in his moral walk. The line of art pursued by my 
very ingenious predecessor and brother Academician, 
Mr. Penny, is quite distinct from that of Hogarth, and 
is of a much more delicate and superior relish ; he 
attempts the heart, and reaches it, whilst Hogarth's 
general aim is only to shake the sides ; in other respects 
no comparison can be thought of, as Mr. Penny has all 
that knowledge of the figure and academical skill which 
the other wanted. As to Mr. Bunbury, who had so 
happily succeeded in the vein of humour and caricatura, 
he has for some time past altogether relinquished it, for 
the more amiable pursuit of beautiful nature : this, 
indeed, is not to be wondered at, when we recollect tbat 
he has, in Mrs. Bunbury, so admirable an exemplar of 
the most finished grace and beauty continually at his 
elbow. But (to say all that occurs to me on this subject) 
perbaps it may be reasonably doubted, whether the being 
much conversant with Hogarth's method of exposing 
meanness, deformity, and vice, in many of his works, is 
not rather a dangerous, or, at least, a worthless pursuit ; 
which, if it does not find a false relish and a love of and 
search after satyr and buffoonery in the spectator, is at 
least not unlikely to give him one. Life is short ; and 
the little leisure of it is much better laid out upon that 
species of art which is employed about the amiable and 
the admirable, as it is more likely to be attended with 



546 



ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH. 



better and nobler consequences to ourselves. These two 
pursuits in art may be compared with two sets of people 
with whom we might associate ; if we give ourselves up 
to the Footes, the Kenricks, &c. we shall be continually 
busied and paddling in whatever is ridiculous, faulty, 
and vicious in life ; whereas there are those to be found 
with whom we should be in the constant pursuit and 
study of all that gives a value and a dignity to human 
nature." [Account of a Series of Pictures in the Great 
Room of the Society of Arts, Manufactures, and Com- 
merce, at the Adelphi, by James Barry, R.A., Professor 
of Painting to the Royal Academy ; reprinted in the last 
quarto edition of his works.] 

" It must be honestly confessed, that in 



what is called knowledge of the figure, foreigners have 
justly observed," &c. 

It is a secret well known to the professors 
of the art and mystery of criticism, to insist 
upon what they do not find in a man's works, 
and to pass over in silence what they do. 
That Hogarth did not draw the naked figure 
so well as Michael Angelo might be allowed, 
especially as " examples of the naked," as 
Mr. Barry acknowledges, " rarely (he might 
almost have said never) occur in his sub- 
jects ; " and that his figures under their 
draperies do not discover all the fine graces 
of an Antinoiis or an Apollo, may be con- 
ceded likewise ; perhaps it was more suitable 
to his purpose to represent the average forms 
of mankind in the mediocrity (as Mr. Burke 
expresses it) of the age in which he lived : 
but that his figures in general, and in his 
best subjects, are so glaringly incorrect as is 
here insinuated, I dare trust my own eye so 
far as positively to deny the fact. And there 
is one part of the figure in which Hogarth 
is allowed to have excelled, which these 
foreigners seem to have overlooked, or 
perhaps calculating from its proportion to 
the whole (a seventh or an eighth, I forget 
which,) deemed it of trifling importance ; I 
mean the human face ; a small part, reckon- 
ing by geographical inches, in the map of 
man's body, but here it is that the painter 
of expression must condense the wonders of 
his skill, even at the expense of neglecting 
the "jonctures and other difficulties of 
drawing in the limbs," which it must be a 
cold eye that, in the interest so strongly 
demanded by Hogarth's countenances, has 
leisure to survey and censure. 

" The line of art pursued by my very ingenious prede- 
cessor and brother Academician, Mr. Penny." 

The first impression caused in me by 
reading this passage was an eager desire to 



know who this Mr. Penny was. This great 
surpasser of Hogarth in the " delicacy of his 
relish," and the "line which he pursued," 
where is he, what are his works, what has 
he to show ? In vain I tried to recollect, 
till by happily putting the question to a 
friend who is more conversant in the works 
of the illustrious obscure than myself, I 
learnt that he was the painter of a Death of 
Wolfe which missed the prize the year that 
the celebrated picture of West on the same 
subject obtained it ; that he also made a 
picture of the Marquis of Granby relieving 
a Sick Soldier ; moreover, that he was the 
inventor of two pictures of Suspended and 
Restored Animation, which I now remember 
to have seen in the Exhibition some years 
since, and the prints from which are still 
extant in good men's houses. This then, I 
suppose, is the line of subjects in which 
Mr. Penny was so much superior to Hogarth. 
I confess I am not of that opinion. The 
relieving of poverty by the purse, and the 
restoring a young man to his parents by 
using the methods prescribed by the Humane 
Society, are doubtless very amiable subjects, 
pretty things to teach the first rudiments of 
humanity ; they amount to about as much 
instruction as the stories of good boys that 
give away their custards to poor beggar-boys 
in children's books. But, good God ! is this 
milk for babes to be set up in opposition to 
Hogarth's moral scenes, his strong meat for 
men ? As well might we prefer the fulsome 
verses upon their own goodness to which 
the gentlemen of the Literary Fund annually 
sit still with such shameless patience to 
listen, to the satires of Juvenal and Persius ; 
because 'the former are full of tender images 
of "Worth relieved by Charity, and Charity 
stretching out her hand to rescue sinking 
Genius, and the theme of the latter is men's 
crimes and follies with their black con- 
sequences — forgetful meanwhile of those 
strains of moral pathos, those sublime heart- 
touches, which these poets (in them chiefly 
showing themselves poets) are perpetually 
darting across the otherwise appalling gloom 
of their subject — consolatory remembrancers, 
when their pictures of guilty mankind have 
made us even to despair for our species, 
that there is such a thing as virtue and 
moral dignity in the world, that her un- 
quenchable spark is not utterly out — 



ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH. 



5i\ 



refreshing admonitions, to which we turn 
for shelter from the too great heat and 
asperity of the general satire. 

And is there nothing analogous to this in 
Hogarth % nothing which " attempts and 
reaches the heart ? " — no aim beyond that of 
" shaking the sides % " — If the kneeling 
ministering female in the last scene of the 
Rake's Progress, the Bedlam scene, of which 
I have spoken before, and have dared almost 
to parallel it with the most absolute idea of 
'Virtue which Shakspeare has left us, be not 
enough to disprove the assertion ; if the sad 
endings of the Harlot and the Rake, the 
passionate heart-bleeding entreaties for for- 
giveness which the adulterous wife is pouring 
forth to her assassinated and dying lord in 
the last scene but one of the Marriage 
Alamode, — if these be not things to touch 
the heart, and dispose the mind to a medi- 
tative tenderness : is there nothing sweetly 
conciliatory in the mild patient face and 
gesture with which the wife seems to allay 
and ventilate the feverish irritated feelings 
of her poor poverty-distracted mate (the 
true copy of the genus irritabile) in the print 
of the Distrest Poet? or if an image of 
maternal love be required, where shall we 
find a sublimer view of it than in that aged 
woman in Industry and Idleness (plate V.) 
who is clinging with the fondness of hope 
not quite extinguished to her brutal vice- 
hardened child, whom she is accompanying 
to the ship which is to bear him away from 
his native soil, of which he has been adjudged 
unworthy : in whose shocking face every 
trace of the human countenance seems 
obliterated, and a brute beast's to be left 
instead, shocking and repulsive to all but 
her who watched over it in its cradle before 
it was so sadly altered, and feels it must 
belong to her while a pulse by the vindictive 
laws of his country shall be suffered to con- 
tinue to beat in it. Compared with such 
things, what is Mr. Penny's " knowledge of 
the figure and academical skill which 
Hogarth wanted ? " 

With respect to what follows concerning 
another gentleman, with the congratulations 
to him on his escape out of the regions of 
" humour and caricatura," in which it 
appears he was in danger of travelling side 
by side with Hogarth, I can only congratu- 
late my country, that Mrs. Hogarth knew 



her province better than, by disturbing her 
husband at his palette, to divert him from 
that universality of subject, which has 
stamped him perhaps, next to Shakspeare, 
the most inventive genius which this island 
has produced, into the " amiable pursuit of 
beautiful nature," i.e. copying ad infinitum 
the individual charms and graces of Mrs. H. 

" Hogarth's method of exposing meanness, deformity, 
and vice, paddling in whatever is ridiculous, faulty, and 
vicious." 

A person unacquainted with the works 
thus stigmatised would be apt to imagine 
that in Hogarth there was nothing else to 
be found but subjects of the coarsest and 
most repulsive nature. That his imagination 
was naturally unsweet, and that he delighted 
in raking into every species of moral filth. 
That he preyed upon sore places only, and 
took a pleasure in exposing the unsound and 
rotten parts of human nature : — whereas, 
with the exception of some of the plates of 
the Harlots Progress, which are harder in 
their character than any of the rest of his 
productions, (the Stages of Cruelty I omit as 
mere worthless caricaturas, foreign to his 
general habits, the offspring of his fancy in 
some wayward humour,) there is scarce one 
of his pieces where vice is most strongly 
satirised, in which some figure is not intro- 
duced upon which the moral eye may rest 
satisfied ; a face that indicates goodness, or 
perhaps mere good-humouredness and care- 
lessness of mind (negation of evil) only, yet 
enough to give a relaxation to the frowning 
brow of satire, and keep the general air from 
tainting. Take the mild, supplicating posture 
of patient Poverty in the poor woman that 
is persuading the pawnbroker to accept her 
clothes in pledge, in the plate of Gin Lane, 
for an instance. A little does it, a little of 
the good nature overpowers a world of bad. 
One cordial honest laugh of a Tom Jones 
absolutely clears the atmosphere that was 
reeking with the black putrifying breathings 
of a hypocrite Blifil. One homely expostu- 
lating shrug from Strap warms the whole 
air which the suggestions of a gentlemanly 
ingratitude from his friend Eandom had 
begun to freeze. One " Lord bless us ! " of 
Parson Adams upon the wickedness of the 
times, exorcises and purges off the mass of 
iniquity which the world-knowledge of even 



N N 2 



548 



ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH. 



a Fielding could cull out and rake together. 
But of the severer class of Hogarth's per- 
formances, enough, I trust, has been said to 
show that they do not merely shock and 
repulse ; that there is in them the " scorn of 
vice" and the "pity" too; something to 
touch the heart, and keep alive the sense of 
moral beauty ; the "lacrymse rerum," and 
the sorrowing by which the heart is made 
better. If they be bad things, then is satire 
and tragedy a bad thing ; let us proclaim at 
once an age of gold, and sink the existence 
of vice and misery in our speculations : 
let us 

" ■ — ■ — ■ wink, and shut our apprehensions up 

From common sense of what men were and are :" 

let us make believe with the children, that 
every body is good and happy ; and, with 
Dr. Swift, write panegyrics upon the world. 

But that larger half of Hogarth's works, 
which were painted more for entertainment 
than instruction (though such was the sug- 
gestiveness of his mind that there is always 
something to be learnt from them), his 
humorous scenes, — are they such as merely 
to disgust and set us against our species ? 

The confident assertions of such a man as 
I consider the late Mr. Barry to have been, 
have that weight of authority in them which 
staggers at first hearing, even a long pre- 
conceived opinion. When I read his pathetic 
admonition concerning the shortness of life, 
and how much better the little leisure of it 
were laid out upon " that species of art which 
is employed about the amiable and the ad- 
mirable ; " and Hogarth's " method, " pro- 
scribed as a " dangerous or worthless pur- 
suit," I began to think there was something 
in it ; that I might have been indulging all 
my life a passion for the works of this artist, 
to the utter prejudice of my taste and moral 
sense ; but my first convictions gradually 
returned, a world of good-natured English 
faces came up one by one to my recollec- 
tion, and a glance at the matchless Election 
Entertainment, which I have the happi- 
ness to have hanging up in my parlour, 
subverted Mr. Barry's whole theory in an 
instant. 

In that inimitable print, (which in my 
judgment as far exceeds the more known 
and celebrated March to Finchley, as the best 
comedy exceeds the best farce that ever was 



written,) let a person look till he be saturated, 
and when he has done wondering at the in- 
ventiveness of genius which could bring so 
many characters (more than thirty distinct 
classes of face) into a room and set them 
down at table together, or otherwise dispose 
them about, in so natural a manner, engage 
them in so many easy sets and occupations, 
yet all partaking of the spirit of the occasion 
which brought them together, so that we 
feel that nothing but an election time could 
have assembled them ; having no central 
figure or principal group, (for the hero of 
the piece, the Candidate, is properly set aside 
in the levelling indistinction of the day, one 
must look for him to find him,) nothing to 
detain the eye from passing from part to 
part, where every part is alike instinct with 
life, — for here are no furniture-faces, 
figures brought in to fill up the scene like 
stage choruses, but all dramatis personae : 
when he shall have done wondering at all 
these faces so strongly charactered, yet 
finished with the accuracy of the finest 
miniature ; when he shall have done ad- 
miring the numberless appendages of the 
scene, those gratuitous doles which rich 
genius flings into the heap when it has 
already done enough, the over-measure 
which it delights in giving, as if it felt its 
stores were exhaustless ; the dumb rhetoric 
of the scenery — for tables, and chairs, and 
joint-stools in Hogarth are living and signi- 
ficant things ; the witticisms that are ex- 
pressed by words, (all artists but Hogarth 
have failed when they have endeavoured to 
combine two mediums of expression, and 
have introduced words into their pictures,) 
and the unwritten numberless little allusive 
pleasantries that are scattered about ; ^the 
work that is going on in the scene, and 
beyond it, as is made visible to the " eye of 
mind," by the mob which chokes up the 
doorway, and the sword that has forced an 
entrance before its master ; when he shall 
have sufficiently admired this wealth of 
genius, let him fairly say what is the result 
left on his mind. Is it an impression of the 
vileness and worthlessness of his species ? or 
is it not the general feeling which remains, 
after the individual faces have ceased to act 
sensibly on his mind, a kindly one in favour 
of his species ? was not the general air of 
the scene wholesome ? did it do the heart 



ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH. 



5-JU 



hurt to be among it? Something of a 
riotous spirit to be sure is there, some 
worldly-mindedness in some of the faces, a 
Doddingtonian smoothness which does not 
promise any superfluous degree of sincerity 
in the fine gentleman who has been the 
occasion of calling so much good company 
together ; but is not the general cast of 
expression in the faces of the good sort 1 do 
they not seem cut out of the good old rock, 
substantial English honesty ? would one fear 
treachery among characters of their expres- 
sion 1 or shall we call their honest mirth and 
seldom-returning relaxation by the hard 
names of vice and profligacy ? That poor 
country fellow, that is grasping his staff 
(which, from that difficulty of feeling them- 
selves at home which poor men experience 
at a feast, he has never parted with since he 
came into the room), and is enjoying with a 
relish that seems to fit all the capacities of 
his soul the slender joke, which that facetious 
wag his neighbour is practising upon the 
gouty gentleman, whose eyes the effort to 
suppress pain has made as round as rings — 
does it shock the " dignity of human nature" 
to look at that man, and to sympathise with 
him in the seldom-heard joke which has 
unbent his care-worn, hard-working visage, 
and drawn iron smiles from it ? or with that 
full-hearted cobbler, who is honouring with 
the grasp of an honest fist the unused palm 
of that annoyed patrician, whom the licence 
of the time has seated next him ? 

I can see nothing " dangerous " in the 
contemplation of such scenes as this, or the 
Enraged Musician, or the Southwarh Fair, or 
twenty other pleasant prints which come 
crowding in upon my recollection, in which 
the restless activities, the diversified bents 
and humours, the blameless peculiarities of 
men, as they deserve to be called, rather 
than their " vices and follies," are held up in 
a laughable point of view. All laughter is 
not of a dangerous or soul-hardening ten- 
dency. There is the petrifying sneer of a 
demon which excludes and kills Love, and 
there is the cordial laughter of a man which 
implies and cherishes it. What heart was 
ever made the worse by joining in a hearty 
laugh at the simplicities of Sir Hugh Evans 
or Parson Adams, where a sense of the 
ridiculous mutually kindles and is kindled 



by a perception of the amiable ? That 
tumultuous harmony of singers that are 
roaring out the words, "The world shall 
bow to the Assyrian throne," from the opera 
of Judith, in the third plate of the series 
called the Four Groups of Heads ; which the 
quick eye of Hogarth must have struck off 
in the very infancy of the rage for sacred 
oratorios in this country, while " Music yet 
was young ;" when we have done smiling at 
the deafening distortions, which these 
tearers of devotion to rags and tatters, these 
takers of heaven by storm, in their boisterous 
mimicry of the occupation of angels, are 
making, — what unkindly impression is left 
behind, or what more of harsh or con- 
temptuous feeling, than when we quietly 
leave Uncle Toby and Mr. Shandy riding 
their hobby-horses about the room? The 
conceited, long-backed Sign-painter, that 
with all the self-applause of a Raphael or 
Correggio (the twist of body which his 
conceit has thrown him into has something 
of the Correggiesque in it), is contemplating 
the picture of a bottle, which he is drawing 
from an actual bottle that hangs beside him, 
in the print of Beer Street, — while we smile 
at the enormity of the self-delusion, can we 
help loving the good-humour and self-com- 
placency of the fellow ? would we willingly 
wake him from his dream 1 

I say not that all the ridiculous subjects 
of Hogarth have, necessarily, something in 
them to make us like them ; some are 
indifferent to us, some in their natures 
repulsive, and only made interesting by the 
wonderful skill and truth to nature in the 
painter ; but I contend that there is in most 
of them that sprinkling of the better nature, 
which, like holy water, chases away and 
disperses the contagion of the bad. They 
have this in them, besides, that they bring 
us acquainted with the every-day human 
face, — they give us skill to detect those 
gradations of sense and virtue (which escape 
the careless or fastidious observer) in the 
countenances of the world about us ; and 
prevent that disgust at common life, that 
t&dium quotidianarum formarum, which an 
unrestricted passion for ideal forms and 
beauties is in danger of producing. In this, 
as in many other things, they are analogous 
to the best novels of Smollett or Fielding. 



550 



ON THE POETICAL WORKS OF GEORGE WITHER. 



ON THE POETICAL WOEKS OF GEOEGE WITHER 



The poems of G. Wither are distinguished 
by a hearty homeliness of manner, and a 
plain moral speaking. He seems to have 
passed his life in one continued act of an 
innocent self-pleasing. That which he calls 
his Motto is a continued self-eulogy of two 
thousand lines, yet we read it to the end 
without any feeling of distaste, almost 
without a consciousness that we have been 
listening all the while to a man praising 
himself. There are none of the cold particles 
in it, the hardness and self-ends, which 
render vanity and egotism hateful. He seems 
to be praising another person, under the 
mask of self : or rather, we feel that it was 
indifferent to him where he found the virtue 
which he celebrates ; whether another's 
bosom or his own were its chosen receptacle. 
His poems are full, and this in particular is 
one downright confession, of a generous self- 
seeking. But by self he sometimes means a 
great deal, — his friends, his principles, his 
country, the human race. 

Whoever expects to find in the satirical 
pieces of this writer any of those peculiarities 
which pleased him in the satires of Dryden 
or Pope, will be grievously disappointed. 
Here are no high-finished characters, no nice 
traits of individual nature, few or no 
personalities. The game run down is coarse 
general vice, or folly as it appears in classes. 
A liar, a drunkard, a coxcomb, is stript and 
whipt ; no Shaftesbury, no Villiers, or 
Wharton, is curiously anatomised, and read 
upon. But to a well-natured mind there is 
a charm of moral sensibility running through 
them, which amply compensates the want of 
those luxuries. Wither seems everywhere 
bursting with a love of goodness, and a 
hatred of all low and base actions. At this 
day it is hard to discover what parts of the 
poem here particularly alluded to, Abuses 
Stript and Whipt, could have occasioned the 
imprisonment of the author. Was Vice in 
High Places more suspicious than now % 
had she more power ; or more leisure to 
listen after ill reports ? That a man should 



be convicted of a libel when he named no 
names but Hate, and Envy, and Lust, and 
Avarice, is like one of the indictments in the 
Pilgrim's Progress, where Faithful is 
arraigned for having "railed on our noble 
Prince Beelzebub, and spoken contemptibly 
of his honourable friends, the Lord Old Man, 
the Lord Carnal Delight, and the Lord 
Luxurious." What unlucky jealousy could 
have tempted the great men of those days to 
appropriate such innocent abstractions to 
themselves ? 

Wither seems to have contemplated to a 
degree of idolatry his own possible virtue. 
He is for ever anticipating persecution and 
martyrdom ; fingering, as it were, the flames, 
to try how he can bear them. Perhaps his 
premature defiance sometimes made him 
obnoxious to censures which he would other- 
wise have slipped by. 

The homely versification of these Satires is 
not likely to attract in the present day. It 
is certainly not such as we should expect 
from a poet "soaring in the high region 
of his fancies, with his garland and his 
singing robes about him ; " * nor is it such 
as he has shown in his Philarete, and in some 
parts of his Shepherds Hunting. He seems 
to have adopted this dress with voluntary 
humility, as fittest for a moral teacher, as 
our divines choose sober grey or black ; but 
in their humility consists their sweetness. 
The deepest tone of moral feeling in them 
(though all throughout is weighty, earnest, 
and passionate) is in those pathetic injunc- 
tions against shedding of blood in quarrels, 
in the chapter entitled Revenge. The story 
of his own forbearance, which follows, is 
highly interesting. While the Christian 
sings his own victory over Anger, the Man 
of Courage cannot help peeping out to let 
you know, that it was some higher principle 
than fear which counselled this forbearance. 

Whether encaged, or roaming at liberty, 
Wither never seems to have abated a jot of 
that free spirit which sets its mark upon his 
* Milton. 



ON THE POETICAL WORKS OP GEORGE WITHER. 



551 



writings, as much as a predominant feature 
of independence impresses every page of our 
late glorious Burns ; but the elder poet 
wraps his proof-armour closer about him, 
the other wears his too much outwards ; he 
is thinking too much of annoying the foe to 
be quite easy within ; the spiritual defences 
of Wither are a perpetual source of inward 
sunshine, the magnanimity of the modern is 
not without its alloy of soreness, and a sense 
of injustice, which seems perpetually to gall 
and irritate. Wither was better skilled in 
the " sweet uses of adversity ;" he knew 
how to extract the "precious jewel" from 
the head of the " toad," without drawing any 
of the " ugly venom " along with it". The 
prison notes of Wither are finer than the 
wood notes of most of his poetical brethren. 
The description in the Fourth Eclogue of his 
Shepherds Hunting (which was composed 
during his imprisonment in the Marshalsea) 
of the power of the Muse to extract pleasure 
from common objects, has been oftener 
quoted, and is more known, than any part of 
his writings. Indeed, the whole Eclogue is 
in a strain so much above not only what 
himself, but almost what any other poet has 
written, that he himself could not help 
noticing it ; he remarks that his spirits had 
been raised higher than they were wont, 
" through the love of poesy." The praises of 
Poetry have been often sung in ancient and 
in modern times ; strange powers have been 
ascribed to it of influence over animate and 
inanimate auditors ; its force over fascinated 
crowds has been acknowledged ; but, before 
Wither, no one ever celebrated its power at 
home, the wealth and the strength which this 
divine gift confers upon its possessor. Fame, 
and that too after death, was all which 
hitherto the poets had promised themselves 
from their art. It seems to have been left 
to Wither to discover that poetry was a 
present possession, as well as a rich reversion, 
and that the Muse had promise of both 
lives, — of this, and of that which was to 
come. 

The Mistress of Philarete is in substance a 
panegyric protracted through several thou- 
sand lines in the mouth of a single speaker, 
but diversified, so as to produce an almost 
dramatic effect, by the artful introduction of 
some ladies, who are rather auditors than 
interlocutors in the scene ; and of a boy, 



whose singing furnishes pretence for an occa- 
sional change of metre : though the seven- 
syllable line, in which the main part of it is 
written, is that in which Wither has shown 
himself so great a master, that I do not 
know that I am always thankful to him for 
the exchange. 

Wither has chosen to bestow upon the 
lady whom he commends the name of Arete, 
or Virtue ; and, assuming to himself the 
character of Philarete, or Lover of Virtue, 
there is a sort of propriety in that heaped 
measure of perfections which he attributes 
to this partly real, partly allegorical person- 
age. Drayton before him had shadowed his 
mistress under the name of 'Idea, or Perfect 
Pattern, and some of the old Italian love- 
strains are couched in such religious terms 
as to make it doubtful whether it be a mis- 
tress, or Divine Grace, which the poet is 
addressing. 

In this poem (full of beauties) there are 
two passages of pre-eminent merit. The 
first is where the lover, after a flight of 
rapturous commendation, expresses his won- 
der why all men that are about his mistress, 
even to her very servants, do not view her 
with the same eyes that he does. 

" Sometime I do admire 
All men burn not with desire : 
Nay, I muse her servants are not 
Pleading love ; but O ! they dare not. 
And I therefore wonder, why 
They do not grow sick and die. 
Sure they would do so, but that, 
By the ordinance of fate, 
There is some concealed thing, 
So each gazer limiting, 
He can see no more of merit, 
Than beseems his worth and spirit. 
For in her a grace there shines, 
That o'er-daring thoughts confines, 
Making worthless men despair 
To be loved of one so fair. 
Yea, the destinies agree, 
Some good judgments blind should be, 
And not gain the power of knowing 
Those rare beauties in her growing. 
Reason doth as much imply : 
For, if every judging eye, 
Which beholdeth her, should there 
Find what excellences are, 
All, o'ercome by those perfections, 
Would be captive to affections. 
So, in happiness unblest, 
She for lovers should not rest." 

The other is, where he has been comparing 
her beauties to gold, and stars, and the most 
excellent things in nature ; and, fearing to 
be accused of hyperbole, the common charge 
against poets, vindicates himself by boldly 



552 



ON THE POETICAL WORKS OF GEORGE WITHER. 



taking upon him, that these comparisons are 
no hyperboles ; but that the best things in 
nature do, in a lover's eye, fall short of those 
excellences which he adores in her. 

" What pearls, what rubies can 
Seem so lovely fair to man, 
As her lips -whom he doth love, 
When in sweet discourse they move, 
Or her lovelier teeth, the while 
She doth bless him with a smile ? 
Stars indeed fair creatures be ; 
Yet amongst us where is he 
Joys not more the whilst he lies 
Sunning in his mistress' eyes, 
Than in all the glimmering light 
Of a starry winter's night 1 
Note the beauty of an eye — 
And if aught you praise it by 
Leave such passion in yom- mind, 
Let my reason's eye be blind. 
Mark if ever red or white 
Any where gave such delight, 
As when they have taken place 
In a worthy woman's face. 
* * * * 

I must praise her as I may, 
Which I do mine own rude way, 
Sometimes setting forth her glories 
By unheard of allegories " — &c. 

To the measure in which these lines are 
written the wits of Queen Anne's days 
contemptuously gave the name of Naniby 
Pamby, in ridicule of Ambrose Philips, who 
has used it in some instances, as in the lines 



on Cuzzoni, to my feeling at least, very deli- 
ciously ; but Wither, whose darling measure 
it seems to have been, may show, that in 
skilful hands it is capable of expressing the 
subtilest movements of passion. So true it 
is, which Drayton seems to have felt, that it 
is the poet who modifies the metre, not the 
metre the poet ; in his own words, that 

" It's possible to climb ; 
To kindle, or to stake ; 

Altho' in Skelton's rhime."* 



In the 



* A long line is a line we are long repeating 
Shepherds Hunting take the following — 

" If thy verse doth bravely tower, 
As she makes wing, she gets power ; 
Yet the higher she doth soar, 
She's affronted still the more, 
'Till she to the high'st hath past, 
Then she rests with fame at last." 

What longer measure can go beyond the majesty of 
this ! what Alexandrine is half so long in pronouncing 
or expresses labour slowly but strongly surmounting 
difficulty with the life with which it is done in the 
second of these lines ? or what metre could go beyond 
these from Philarete — 

" Her true beauty leaves behind 
Apprehensions in my mind 
Of more sweetness, than all art 
Or inventions can impart. 
Thoughts too deep to be expressed, 
And too strong to be suj)press , d. ,> 



LETTEKS, 



UNDER ASSUMED SIGNATURES, PUBLISHED IN " THE REFLECTOR." 



THE LONDONER 



TO THE EDITOR OF " THE REFLECTOR. 



Mr. Beflector, — I was born under the 
shadow of St. Dunstan's steeple, just where 
the conflux of the eastern and western in- 
habitants of this two-fold city meet and 
justle in friendly opposition at Temple-bar. 
The same day which gave me to the world, 
saw London happy in the celebration of her 
great annual feast. This I cannot help look- 
ing upon as a lively omen of the future great 
good-will which I was destined to bear 
toward the city, resembling in kind that 
solicitude which every Chief Magistrate is 
supposed to feel for whatever concerns her 
interests and well-being. Indeed I consider 
myself in some sort a speculative Lord Mayor 
of London : for though circumstances un- 
happily preclude me from the hope of ever 
arriving at the dignity of a gold chain and 
Spital Sermon, yet thus much will I say of 
myself in truth, that Whittington with his 
Cat (just emblem of vigilance and a furred 
gown) never went beyond me in affection 
which I bear to the citizens. 

I was born, as you have heard, in a crowd. 
This has begot in me an entire affection for 
that way of life, amounting to an almost 
insurmountable aversion from solitude and 
rural scenes. This aversion was never in- 
terrupted or suspended, except for a few 
years in the younger part of my life, during 
a period in which I had set my affections 
upon a charming young woman,/ Every man, 
while the passion is upon him, is for a time 
at least addicted to groves and meadows and 
purling streams. During this -short period 
of my existence, I contracted just familiarity 



enough with rural objects to understand 
tolerably well ever after the poets, when they 
declaim in such passionate terms in favour 
of a country life. 

For my own part, now the fit is past, I 
have no hesitation in declaring, that a mob 
of happy faces crowding up at the pit door 
of Drury-lane Theatre, just at the hour of 
six, gives me ten thousand sincerer pleasures, 
than I could ever receive from all the flocks 
of silly sheep that ever whitened the plains 
of Arcadia or Epsom Downs. ., 

This passion for crowds is nowhere feasted 
so full as in London. The man must have a 
rare recipe for melancholy who can be dull 
in Fleet-street. I am naturally inclined to 
hypochondria, but in London it vanishes, 
like all other ills. Often, when I have felt 
a weariness or distaste at home, have I 
rushed out into her crowded Strand, and 
fed my humour, till tears have wetted my 
cheek for unutterable sympathies with the 
multitudinous moving picture, which she 
never fails to present at all hours, like the 
scenes of a shifting pantomime. 

The very deformities of London, which 
give distaste to others, from habit do not 
displease me. The endless succession of 
shops where Fancy miscalled Folly is sup- 
plied with perpetual gauds and toys, excite 
in me no puritanical aversion. I gladly be- 
hold every appetite supplied with its proper 
food. The obliging customer, and the obliged 
tradesman — things which live by bowing, 
and things which exist but for homage — do 
not affect me with disgust ; from habit I 



554 ON BURIAL SOCIETIES ; AND THE CHARACTER OF AN UNDERTAKER. 



perceive nothing but urbanity, where other 
men, more refined, discover meanness : I love 
the very smoke of London, because it has 
been the medium most familiar to my vision. 
I see grand principles of honour at work in 
the dirty ring which encompasses two com- 
batants with fists, and principles of no less 
eternal justice in the detection of a pick- 
pocket. The salutary astonishment with 
which an execution is surveyed, convinces 
me more forcibly than a hundred volumes of 
abstract polity, that the universal instinct of 
man in all ages has leaned to order and good 
government. 

Thus an art of extracting morality from 
the commonest incidents of a town life is 



attained by the same well-natured alchymy 
with which the Foresters of Arden, in a 
beautiful country, 

" Found tongues in trees, books in the running- brooks, 
Sermons in stones, and good in everything." 

Where has spleen her food but in London ! 
Humour, Interest, Curiosity, suck at her 
measureless breasts without a possibility of 
being satiated. Nursed amid her noise, her 
crowds, her beloved smoke, what have I been 
doing all my life, if I have not lent out my 
heart with usury to such scenes ! 

I am, Sir, your faithful servant, 

A Londoner. 



ON BUEIAL SOCIETIES : AND THE CHAEACTEE OF AN UNDEETAKEE. 



TO THE EDITOR OF " THE REFLECTOR. 



Mr. Eeflector, — I was amused the other 
day with having the following notice thrust 
into my hand by a man who gives out bills 
at the corner of Fleet-market. Whether he 
saw any prognostics about me, that made 
him judge such notice seasonable, I cannot 
say ; I might perhaps carry in a countenance 
(naturally not very florid) traces of a fever 
which had not long left me. Those fellows 
have a good instinctive way of guessing at 
the sort of people that are likeliest to pay 
attention to their papers. 

" BURIAL SOCIETY. 

" A favourable opportunity now offers to 
any person, of either sex, who would wish to 
be buried in a genteel manner, by paying 
one shilling entrance, and two-pence per 
week for the benefit of the stock. Members 
to be free in six months. The money to be 
paid at Mr. Middleton's, at the sign of the 
First and the Last, Stonecutter's-street, Fleet- 
market. The deceased to be furnished as 
follows : — A strong elm coffin, covered with 
superfine black, and furnished with two rows, 
all round, close drove, best japanned nails, 
and adorned with ornamental drops, a hand- 
some plate of inscription, Angel above, and 
Flower beneath, and four pair of handsome 



handles, with wrought gripes ; the coffin to 
be well pitched, lined, and ruffled with fine 
crape ; a handsome crape shroud, cap, and 
pillow. For use, a handsome velvet pall, 
three gentlemen's cloaks, three crape hat- 
bands, three hoods and scarfs, and six pair of 
gloves ; two porters equipped to attend the 
funeral, a man to attend the same with band 
and gloves ; also, the burial fees paid, if not 
exceeding one guinea." 

"Man," says Sir Thomas Browne, "is a 
noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous 
in the grave." Whoever drew up this little 
advertisement certainly understood this 
appetite in the species, and has made abun- 
dant provision for it. It really almost in- 
duces a tcedium, vitce upon one to read it. 
Methinks I could be willing to die, in death 
to be so attended. The two rows all round 
close-drove best black japanned nails, — how 
feelingly do they invite, and almost irre- 
sistibly persuade us to come and be fastened 
down ! what aching head can resist the 
temptation to repose, which the crape shroud, 
the cap, and the pillow present ; what sting 
is there in death, which the handles with 
wrought gripes are not calculated to pluck 
away ? what victory in the grave, which the 
drops and the velvet pall do not render at 
least extremely disputable 1 but above all, 



ON" BURIAL SOCIETIES ; AND THE CHARACTER OF AN UNDERTAKER. 555 



the pretty emblematic plate with the Angel 
above and the Flower beneath, takes me 
mightily. 

The notice goes on to inform us, that 
though the society has been established but 
a very few years, upwards of eleven hundred 
persons have put down their names. It is 
really an affecting consideration to think of 
so many poor people, of the industrious and 
hard-working class (for none but such would 
be possessed of such a generous forethought) 
clubbing their twopences to save the reproach 
of a parish funeral. Many a poor fellow, I 
dare swear, has that Angel and Flower kept 
from the Angel and Punchbowl, while, to 
provide himself a bier, he has curtailed him- 
self of beer. Many a savoury morsel has the 
living body been deprived of, that the lifeless 
one might be served up in a richer state to 
the worms. And sure, if the body could 
understand the actions of the soul, and 
entertain generous notions of things, it would 
thank its provident partner, that she had 
been more solicitous to defend it from dis- 
honours at its dissolution, than careful to 
pamper it with good things in the time of its 
union. If Caesar were chiefly anxious at his 
death how he might die most decently, every 
Burial Society may be considered as a club 
of Caesars. 

Nothing tends to keep up, in the imagi- 
nations of the poorer sort of people, a generous 
horror of the workhouse more than the 
manner in which pauper funerals are con- 
ducted in this metropolis. The coffin nothing 
but a few naked planks coarsely put together, 
— the want of a pall (that decent and well- 
imagined veil, which, hiding the coffin that 
hides the body, keeps that which would 
shock us at two removes from us), the 
coloured coats of the men that are hired, at 
cheap rates, to carry the body, — altogether, 
give the notion of the deceased having been 
some person of an ill life and conversation, 
some one who may not claim the entire rites 
of Christian burial, — one by whom some 
parts of the sacred ceremony would be de- 
secrated if they should be bestowed upon 
him. I meet these meagre processions some- 
times in the street. They are sure to make 
me out of humour and melancholy all the 
day after. They have a harsh and ominous 
aspect. 

If there is anything in the prospectus 



issued from Mr. Middleton's, Stonecutter's- 
street, which pleases me less than the rest, 
it is to find that the six pair of gloves are to 
be returned, that they are only lent, or, as 
the bill expresses it, for use, on the occasion. 
The hood, scarfs, and hat-bands, may properly 
enough be given up after the solemnity ; the 
cloaks no gentlemen would think of keeping ; 
but a pair of gloves, once fitted on, ought not 
in courtesy to be re-demanded. The wearer 
should certainly have the fee-simple of them. 
The cost would be but trifling, and they 
would be a proper memorial of the day. 
This part of the Proposal wants recon- 
sidering. It is not conceived in the same 
liberal way of thinking as the rest. I am 
also a little doubtful whether the limit, 
within which the burial-fee is made payable, 
should not be extended to thirty shillings. 

Some provision too ought undoubtedly to 
be made in favour of those well-intentioned 
persons and well-wishers to the fund, who, 
-having all along paid their subscriptions 
regularly, are so unfortunate as to die before 
the six months, which would entitle them to 
their freedom, are quite completed. One can 
hardly imagine a more distressing case than 
that of a poor fellow lingering on in a con- 
sumption till the period of his freedom is 
almost in sight, and then finding himself 
going with a velocity which makes it doubt- 
ful whether he shall be entitled to his funeral 
honours : his quota to which he nevertheless 
squeezes out, to the diminution of the com- 
forts which sickness demands. I think, in 
such cases, some of the contribution money 
ought to revert. "With some such modifica- 
tions, which might easily be introduced, I 
see nothing in these Proposals of Mr. Mid- 
dleton which is not strictly fair and genteel ; 
and heartily recommend them to all persons 
of moderate incomes, in either sex, who are 
willing that this perishable part of them 
should quit the scene of its mortal activities 
with as handsome circumstances as possible. 

Before I quit the subject, I must guard 
my readers against a scandal, which they may 
be apt to take at the place whence these 
Proposals purport to be issued. From the 
sign of the First and the Last, they may 
conclude that Mr. Middleton is some pub- 
lican, who, in assembling a club of this 
description at his house, may have a sinister 
end of his own, altogether foreign to the 



556 



ON BURIAL SOCIETIES: AND THE CHARACTER OF AN UNDERTAKER. 



solemn purpose for which the club is pre- 
tended to be instituted. I must set them 
right by informing them that the issuer of 
these Proposals is no publican, though he 
hangs out a sign, but an honest superinten- 
dant of funerals, who, by the device of a 
Cradle and a Coffin, connecting both ends of 
human existence together, has most ingeni- 
ously contrived to insinuate, that the framers 
of these first and last receptacles of mankind 
divide this our life betwixt them, and that 
all that passes from the midwife to the under- 
taker may, in strict propriety, go for nothing : 
an awful and instructive lesson to human 
vanity. 

Looking over some papers lately that fell 
into my hands by chance, and appear to have 
been written about the beginning of the last 
century, I stumbled, among the rest, upon 
the following short Essay, which the writer 
calls, " The Character of an Undertaker.'''' It 
is written with some stiffness and peculiari- 
ties of style, but some parts of it, I think, 
not unaptly characterise the profession to 
which Mr. Middleton has the honour to 
belong. The writer doubtless had in his 
mind the entertaining character of Sable, in 
Steele's excellent comedy of The Funeral. 

CHARACTER OF AN UNDERTAKER. 

" He is master of the ceremonies at burials 
and mourning assemblies, grand marshal at 
funeral processions, the only true yeoman of 
the body, over which he exercises a dicta- 
torial authority from the moment that the 
breath has taken leave to that of its final 
commitment to the earth. His ministry 
begins where the physician's, the lawyer's, 
and the divine's, end. Or if some part of the 
functions of the latter run parallel with his, 
it is only in ordine ad spiritualia. His 
temporalities remain unquestioned. He is 
arbitrator of all questions of honour which 
may concern the defunct ; and upon slight 
inspection will pronounce how long he may 
remain in this upper world with credit to 
himself, and when it will be prudent for his 
reputation that he should retire. His deter- 
mination in these points is peremptory and 
without appeal. Yet, with a modesty pecu- 
liar to his profession, he meddles not out of 
his own sphere. With the good or bad 
actions of the deceased in his life-time he has 



nothing to do. He leaves the friends of the 
dead man to form their own conjectures as 
to the place to which the departed spirit is 
gone. His care is only about the exuviae. 
He concerns not himself even about the 
body as it is a structure of parts internal, 
and a wonderful microcosm. He leaves such 
curious speculations to the anatomy pro- 
fessor. Or, if anything, he is averse to such 
wanton inquiries, as delighting rather that 
the parts which he has care of should be 
returned to their kindred dust in as hand- 
some and unmutilated condition as possible ; 
that the grave should have its full and 
unimpaired tribute, — a complete and just 
carcass. Nor is he only careful to provide 
for the body's entireness, but for its accom- 
modation and ornament. He orders the 
fashion of its clothes, and designs the sym- 
metry of its dwelling. Its vanity has an 
innocent survival in him. He is bed-maker 
to the dead. The pillows which he lays 
never rumple. The day of interment is the 
theatre in which he displays the mysteries of 
his art. It is hard to describe what he is, or 
rather to tell what he is not, on that day : 
for, being neither kinsman, servant, nor 
friend, he is all in turns ; a transcendant, 
running through all those relations. His 
office is to supply the place of self-agency in 
the family, who are presumed incapable of it 
through grief. He is eyes, and ears, and 
hands, to the whole household. A draught 
of wine cannot go round to the mourners, 
but he must minister it. A chair may 
hardly be restored to its place by a less 
solemn hand than his. He takes upon him- 
self all functions, and is a sort of ephemeral 
major-domo ! He distributes his attentions 
among the company assembled according to 
the degree of affliction, which he calculates 
from the degree of kin to the deceased ; and 
marshals them accordingly in the procession. 
He himself is of a sad and tristful counte- 
nance ; yet such as (if well examined) is not 
without some show of patience and resigna- 
tion at bottom ; prefiguring, as it were, to 
the friends of the deceased, what their grief 
shall be when the hand of Time shall have 
softened and taken down the bitterness of 
their first anguish ; so handsomely can he 
fore-shape and anticipate the work of Time. 
Lastly, with his wand, as with another divi- 
ning rod, he calculates the depth of earth 



ON THE DANGER OF CONFOUNDING MORAL WITH PERSONAL DEFORMITY. 557 



at which the bones of the dead man may 
rest, which he ordinarily contrives may be 
at such a distance from the surface of this 
earth, as may frustrate the profane attempts 
of such as would violate his repose, yet suffi- 
ciently on this side the centre to give his 
friends hopes of an easy and practicable 
resurrection. And here we leave him, casting 



in dust to dust, which is the last friendly 
office that he undertakes to do." 

Begging your pardon for detaining you 
so long among "graves, and worms, and 
epitaphs," 

I am, Sir, 

Your humble servant, 

Moriturus. 



ON THE DANGER OF CONFOUNDING MORAL WITH PERSONAL 

DEFORMITY. 

WITH A HINT TO THOSE WHO HAVE THE FRAMING OF ADVERTISEMENTS FOK APPREHENDING OFFENDERS. 



TO THE EDITOR OF " THE REFLECTOR. 



Mr. Reflector, — There is no science in 
their pretensions to which mankind are more 
apt to commit grievous mistakes, than in the 
supposed very obvious one of physiognomy. 
I quarrel not with the principles of this 
science, as they are laid down by learned 
professors ; much less am I disposed, with 
some people, to deny its existence altogether 
as any inlet of knowledge that can be de- 
pended upon. I believe that there is, or may 
be, an art to " read the mind's construction 
in the face." But, then, in every species of 
reading, so much depends upon the eyes of 
the reader ; if they are blear, or apt to 
dazzle, or inattentive, or strained with too 
much attention, the optic power will infal- 
libly bring home false reports of what it 
reads. How often do we say, upon a cursory 
glance at a stranger, "What a fine open 
countenance he has ! " who, upon second in- 
spection, proves to have the exact features of 
a knave 1 Nay, in much, more intimate 
acquaintances, how a delusion of this kind 
shall continue for months, years, and then 
break up all at once. 

Ask the married man, who has been so 
but for a short space of time, if those blue 
eyes where, during so many years of anxious 
courtship, truth, sweetness, serenity, seemed 
to be written in characters which could not 
be misunderstood — ask him if the characters 
which they now convey be exactly the same ? 
— if for truth he does not read a dull virtue 
(the mimic of constancy) which changes not, 
only because it wants the judgment to make 
a preference ? — if for sweetness he does not 



read a stupid habit of looking pleased at 
everything 1 — if for serenity he does not read 
animal tranquillity, the dead pool of the 
heart, which no breeze of passion can stir 
into health ? Alas ! what is this book of 
the countenance good for, which when we 
have read so long, and thought that we un- 
derstood its contents, there comes a countless 
list of heart-breaking errata at the end ! 

But these are the pitiable mistakes to 
which love alone is subject. I have inad- 
vertently wandered from my purpose, which 
was to expose quite an opposite blunder, into 
which we are no less apt to fall, through 
hate. How ugly a person looks upon whose 
reputation some awkward aspersion hangs, 
and how suddenly his countenance clears up 
with his character ! I remember being per- 
suaded of a man whom I had conceived an 
ill opinion of, that he had a very bad set of 
teeth ; which, since I have had better oppor- 
tunities of being acquainted with his face and 
facts, I find to have been the very reverse 
of the truth. That crooked old woman, I 
once said, speaking of an ancient gentle- 
woman, whose actions did not square alto- 
gether with my notions of the rule of right. 
The unanimous surprise of the company be- 
fore whom I uttered these words soon con- 
vinced me that I had confounded mental with 
bodily obliquity, and that there was nothing 
tortuous about the old lady but her deeds. 

This humour of mankind to deny personal 
comeliness to those with whose moral attri- 
butes they are dissatisfied, is very strongly 
shown in those advertisements which stare us 



558 ON THE DANGER OF CONFOUNDING MORAL WITH PERSONAL DEFORMITY. 



in the face from the walls of every street, 
and, with the tempting bait which they hang 
forth, stimulate at once cupidity and an 
abstract love of justice in the breast of every 
passing peruser : I mean, the advertisements 
offering rewards for the apprehension of ab- 
sconded culprits, strayed apprentices, bank- 
rupts who have conveyed away their effects, 
debtors that have run away from their bail. 
I observe, that in exact proportion to the 
indignity with which the prosecutor, who is 
commonly the framer of the advertisement, 
conceives he has been treated, the personal 
pretensions of the fugitive are denied, and 
his defects exaggerated. 

A fellow whose misdeeds have been 
directed against the public in general, and 
in whose delinquency no individual shall feel 
himself particularly interested, generally 
meets with fair usage. A coiner or a smug- 
gler shall get off tolerably well. His beauty, 
ifhe has any, is not much underrated, his 
deformities are not much magnified. A run- 
away apprentice, who excites perhaps the 
next least degree of spleen in his prosecutor, 
generally escapes with a pair of bandy legs ; 
if he has taken anything with him in his 
flight, a hitch in his gait is generally super- 
added. A bankrupt, who has been guilty of 
withdrawing his effects, if his case be not 
very atrocious, commonly meets with mild 
usage. But a debtor, who has left his bail 
in jeopardy, is sure to be described in cha- 
racters of unmingled deformity. Here the 
personal feelings of the bail, which may be 
allowed to be somewhat poignant, are ad- 
mitted to interfere ; and, as wrath and re- 
venge commonly strike in the dark, the 
colours are laid on with a grossness which 
I am convinced must often defeat its own 
purpose. The fish that casts an inky 
cloud about him that his enemies may not 
find him, cannot more obscure himself by 
that device than the blackening representa- 
tions of these angry advertisers must inevi- 
tably serve to cloak and screen the persons 
of those who have injured them from detec- 
tion. I have before me at this moment one 
of these bills, which runs thus : — 



"FIFTY POUNDS REWARD. 

" Run away from his bail, John Tomkins, 
formerly resident in Princes-street, Soho, but 



lately of Clerkenwell. Whoever shall ap- 
prehend, or cause to be apprehended and 
lodged in one of his Majesty's jails, the said 
John Tomkins, shall receive the above re- 
ward. He is a thickset, sturdy man, about 
five foot six inches high, halts in his left leg, 
with a stoop in his gait, with coarse red hair, 
nose short and cocked up, with little grey 
eyes, (one of them bears the effect of a blow 
which he has lately received,) with a pot 
belly ; speaks with a thick and disagreeable 
voice ; goes shabbily drest ; had on when he 
went away a greasy shag great-coat with 
rusty yellow buttons." 

Now although it is not out of the compass 
of possibility that John Tomkins aforesaid 
may comprehend in his agreeable person all 
the above-mentioned aggregate of charms ; 
yet, from my observation of the manner in 
which these advertisements are usually 
drawn up, though I have not the pleasure 
of knowing the gentleman, yet would I lay a 
wager, that an advertisement to the following 
effect would have a much better chance of 
apprehending and laying by the heels this 
John Tomkins than the above description, 
although penned by one who, from the good 
services which he appears to have done for 
him, has not improbably been blessed with 
some years of previous intercourse with the 
said John. Taking, then, the above adver- 
tisement to be true, or nearly so, down to 
the words "left leg" inclusive, (though I 
have some doubt if the blemish there im- 
plied amount to a positive lameness, or be 
perceivable by any but the nearest friends of 
John,) I would proceed thus : — 

— " Leans a little forward in his walk ; his 
hair thick and inclining to auburn ; his nose 
of the middle size, a little turned up at the 
end ; lively hazel eyes, (the contusion, as its 
effects are probably gone off by this time, I 
judge better omitted ;) inclines to be corpu- 
lent ; his voice thick but pleasing, especially 
when he sings ; had on a decent shag great- 
coat with yellow buttons." 

Now I would stake a considerable wager 
(though by no means a positive man) that 
some such mitigated description would lead 
the beagles of the law into a much surer 
track for finding this ungracious varlet, than 
to set them upon a false scent after fictitious 
ugliness and fictitious shabbiness ; though, 
to do those gentlemen justice, I have no 



ON THE DANGER OF CONFOUNDING MORAL WITH PERSONAL DEFORMITY. 51 



doubt their experience has taught them in 
all such cases to abate a great deal of the 
deformity which they are instructed to ex- 
pect, and has discovered to them that the 
Devil's agents upon this earth, like their 
master, are far less ugly in reality than they 
are painted. 

I am afraid, Mr. Eeflector, that I shall be 
thought to have gone wide of my subject, 
which was to detect the practical errors of 
physiognomy, properly so called ; whereas I 
have introduced physical defects, such as 
lameness, the effects of accidents upon a 
man's person, his wearing apparel, &c, as 
circumstances on which the eye of dislike, 
looking askance, may report erroneous con- 
clusions to the understanding. But if we 
are liable, through a kind or an unkind 
passion, to mistake so grossly concerning 
things so exterior and palpable, how much 
more are we likely to err respecting those 
nicer and less perceptible hints of character 
in a face whose detection constitutes the 
triumph of the physiognomist ! 

To revert to those bestowers of unmerited 
deformity, the framers of advertisements for 
the apprehension of delinquents, a sincere 
desire of promoting the end of public justice 
induces me to address a word to them on 
the best means of attaining those ends. I 
will endeavour to lay down a few practical, 
or rather negative, rules for their use, for my 
ambition extends no further than to arm 
them with cautions against the self-defeating 
of their own purposes : — 

1. Imprimis, then, Mr. Advertiser ! If 
the culprit whom you are willing to recover 
be one to whom in times past you have 
shown kindness, and been disposed to think 
kindly of him yourself, but he has deceived 
your trust, and has run away, and left you 
with a load of debt to answer for him, — sit 
down calmly, and endeavour to behold him 
through the spectacles of memory rather 
than of present conceit. Image to yourself, 
before you pen a tittle of his description, the 
same plausible, good-looking man who took 
you in ; and try to put away from your 
mind every intrusion of that deceitful spectre 
which perpetually obtrudes itself in the 
room of your former friend's known visage. 
It will do you more credit to have been 
deceived by such a one ; and depend upon it, 
the traitor will convey to the eyes of the 



world in general much more of that first 
idea which you formed (perhaps in part 
erroneous) of his physiognomy, than of that 
frightful substitute which you have suffered 
to creep in upon your mind and usurp upon 
it ; a creature which has no archetype except 
in your own brain. 

2. If you be a master that have to adver- 
tise a runaway apprentice, though the young 
dog's faults are known only to you, and no 
doubt his conduct has been aggravating 
enough, do not presently set him down as 
having crooked ankles. He may have a good 
pair of legs, and run away notwithstanding. 
Indeed, the latter does rather seem to imply 
the former. 

3. If the unhappy person against whom 
your laudable vengeance is directed be a 
thief, think that a thief may have a good 
nose, good eyes, good ears. It is indis- 
pensable to his profession that he be pos- 
sessed of sagacity, foresight, vigilance ; it is 
more than probable, then, that he is endued 
with the bodily types or instruments of 
these qualities to some tolerable degree of 
perfectness. 

4. If petty larceny be his offence, I exhort 
you, do not confound meanness of crime 
with diminutiveness of stature. These things 
have no connexion. I have known a tall 
man stoop to the basest action, a short man 
aspire to the height of crime, a fair man be 
guilty of the foulest actions, &c. 

5. Perhaps the offender has been guilty of 
some atrocious and aggravated murder. 
Here is the most difficult case of all. It is 
above all requisite that such a daring 
violator of the peace and safety of society 
should meet with his reward, a violent and 
ignominious death. But how shall we get 
at him ? Who is there among us that has 
known him before he committed the offence, 
that shall take upon him to say he can sit 
down coolly and pen a dispassionate descrip- 
tion of a murderer 1 The tales of our 
nursery, — the reading of our youth, — the 
ill-looking man that was hired by the Uncle 
to despatch the Children in the "Wood, — the 
grim ruffians who smothered the babes in 
the Tower, — the black and beetle-browed 
assassin of Mrs. Eatcliffe, — the shag-haired 
villain of Mr. Monk Lewis, — the Tarquin 
tread, and mill-stone dropping eyes, of 
Murder in Shakspeare, — the exaggerations 



560 



ON THE INCONVENIENCES EESULTING FROM BEING HANGED. 



of picture and of poetry, — what we have read 
and what we have dreamed of, — rise up and 
crowd in upon us such eye-scaring portraits 
of the man of blood, that our pen is abso- 
lutely forestalled ; we commence poets when 
we should play the part of strictest historians, 
and the very blackness of horror which the 
deed calls up, serves as a cloud to screen the 
doer. The fiction is blameless, it is accordant 
with those wise prejudices with which 
nature has guarded our innocence, as with 
impassable barriers, against the commission 
of such appalliug crimes ; but, meantime, the 
criminal escapes ; or if, — owing to that wise 
abatement in their expectation of deformity, 
which, as I hinted at before, the officers of 
pursuit never fail to make, and no doubt in 
cases of this sort they make a more than 
ordinary allowance, — if, owing to this or any 
accident, the offender is caught and brought 
to his trial, who that has been led out of 
curiosity to witness such a scene has not 



with astonishment reflected on the difference 
between a real committer of a murder, and the 
idea of one which he has been collecting and 
heightening all his life out of books, dreams, 
&c. ? The fellow, perhaps, is a sleek, smug- 
looking man, with light hair and eyebrows, 
— the latter by no means jutting out or like 
a crag, — and with none of those marks 
which our fancy had pre-bestowed upon 
him. 

I find I am getting unawares too serious ; 
the best way on such occasions is to leave 
off, which I shall do by generally recom- 
mending to all prosecuting advertisers not 
to confound crimes with ugliness ; or rather, 
to distinguish between that physiognomical 
deformity, which I am willing to grant 
always accompanies crime, and mere physical 
ugliness, — which signifies nothing, is the 
opponent of nothing, and may exist in a good 
or bad person indifferently. 

Crito. 



ON THE INCONVENIENCES EESULTING FEOM BEING HANGED. 



TO THE EDITOR OF " THE REFLECTOR. 



Sir, — I am one of those unhappy persons 
whose misfortunes, it seems, do not entitle 
them to the benefit of pure pity. All that is 
bestowed upon me of that kindest alleviator 
of human miseries comes dashed with a 
double portion of contempt. My griefs have 
nothing in them that is felt as sacred by the 
bystanders. Yet is my affliction, in truth, 
of the deepest grain — the heaviest task that 
was ever given to mortal patience to sustain. 
Time, that wears out all other sorrows, can 
never modify or soften mine. Here they 
must continue to gnaw as long at that fatal 
mark 

"Why was I ever born ? Why was inno- 
cence in my person suffered to be branded 
with a stain which was appointed only for 
the blackest guilt ? What had I done, or 
my parents, that a disgrace of mine should 
involve a whole posterity in infamy 1 I am 
almost tempted to believe, that, in some pre- 
existent state, crimes to which this sublunary 
life of mine hath been as much a stranger as 
the babe that is newly born into it, have 



drawn down upon me this vengeance, so 
disproportionate to my actions on this 
globe. 

My brain sickens, and my bosom labours 
to be delivered of the weight that presses 
upon it, yet my conscious pen shrinks from 
the avowal. But out it must 

O, Mr. Eeflector ! guess at the wretch's 
misery who now writes this to you, when, 
with tears and burning blushes, he is obliged 
to confess that he has been — hanged 

Methinks I hear an involuntary excla- 
mation burst from you, as your imagination 
presents to you fearful images of your 
correspondent unknown — hanged ! 

Fear not, Mr. Editor. No disembodied 
spirit has the honour of addressing you. I 
am flesh and blood, an unfortunate system 
of bones, muscles, sinews, arteries, like 
yourself. 

Then, I presume, you mean to be pleasant. — 
That expression of yours, Mr. Correspondent, 
must be taken somehovj in a metaphorical 



ON THE INCONVENIENCES RESULTING FROM BEING HANGED. 



561 



In the plainest sense, without trope or 
figure — Yes, Mr. Editor ! this neck of mine 
has felt the fatal noose, — these hands have 
tremblingly held up the corroborative prayer- 
book, — these lips have sucked the moisture 
of the last consolatory orange, — this tongue 
has chanted the doleful cantata which no 
performer was ever called upon to repeat, — 
this face has had the veiling night-cap drawn 
over it 

But for no crime of mine. — Far be it from 
me to arraign the justice of my country, 
which, though tardy, did at length recognise 
my innocence. It is not for me to reflect 
upon judge or jury, now that eleven years 
have elapsed since the erroneous sentence 
was pronounced. Men will always be fallible, 
and perhaps circumstances did appear at the 
time a little strong 

Suffice it to say, that after hanging four 
minutes, (as the spectators were pleased to 
compute it, — a man that is being strangled, 
I know from experience, has altogether a 
different measure of time from his friends 
who are breathing leisurely about him, — I 
suppose the minutes lengthen as time 
approaches eternity, in the same manner as 
the miles get longer as you travel north- 
ward,) — after hanging four minutes, accord- 
ing to the best calculation of the bystanders, 
a reprieve came, and I was cut down 

Really I am ashamed of deforming your 
pages with these technical phrases — if I 
knew how to express my meaning shorter 

But to proceed. — My first care after I had 
been brought to myself by the usual methods, 
(those methods that are so interesting to the 
operator and his assistants, who are pretty 
numerous on such occasions, — but which no 
patient was ever desirous of undergoing a 
second time for the benefit of science,) my 
first care was to provide myself with an 
enormous stock or cravat to hide the place — 
you understand me ; — my next care was to 
procure a residence as distant as possible 
from that part of the country where I had 
suffered. For that reason I chose the 
metropolis, as the place where wounded 
honour (I had been told) could lurk with 
the least danger of exciting inquiry, and 
stigmatised innocence had the best chance of 
hiding her disgrace in a crowd. I sought 
out a new circle of acquaintance, and my 
circumstances happily enabling me to pursue 



my fancy in that respect, I endeavoured, by 
mingling in all the pleasures which the town 
affords, to efface the memory of what I had 
undergone. 

But, alas ! such is the portentous and all- 
pervading chain of connexion which links 
together the head and members of this great 
community, my scheme of lying perdu was 
defeated almost at the outset. A country- 
man of mine, whom a foolish law-suit had 
brought to town, by chance met me, and the 
secret was soon blazoned about. 

In a short time, I found myself deserted 
by most of those who had been my intimate 
friends. Not that any guilt was supposed 
to attach to my character. ' My officious 
countryman, to do him justice, had been 
candid enough to explain my perfect inno- 
cence. But, somehow or other, there is a 
want of strong virtue in mankind. We have 
plenty of the softer instincts, but the heroic 
character is gone. How else can I account 
for it, that of all my numerous acquaintance, 
among whom I had the honour of ranking 
sundry persons of education, talents, and 
worth, scarcely here and there one or two 
could be found who had the courage to 
associate with a man that had been hanged. 

Those few who did not desert me altogether 
were persons of strong but coarse minds ; 
and from the absence of all delicacy in them 
I suffered almost as much as from the 
superabundance of a false species of it in the 
others. Those who stuck by me were the 
jokers, who thought themselves entitled by 
the fidelity which they had shown towards 
me to use me with what familiarity they 
pleased. Many and unfeeling are the jests 
that I have suffered from these rude (because 
faithful) Achateses. As they passed me in 
the streets, one would nod significantly to 
his companion and say, pointing to me, 
Smoke his cravat, and ask me if I had got a 
wen, that I was so solicitous to cover my 
neck. Another would inquire, What news 
from * * * Assizes ? (which you may guess, 
Mr. Editor, was the scene of my shame,) and 
whether the sessions was like to prove a 
maiden one 1 A third would offer to insure 
me from drowning. A fourth would tease 
me with inquiries how I felt when I was 
swinging, whether I had not something like 
a blue flame dancing before my eyes ? A 
fifth took a fancy never to call me anything 



562 



ON THE INCONVENIENCES RESULTING FROM BEING HANGED. 



but Lazarus. And an eminent bookseller 
and publisher, — who, in his zeal to present 
the public with new facts, had he lived in 
those days, I am confident, would not have 
scrupled waiting upon the person himself 
last mentioned, at the most critical period of 
his existence, to solicit a few facts relative to 
resuscitation, — had the modesty to offer me 
— guineas per sheet, if I would write, in his 
Magazine, a physiological account of my 
feelings upon coming to myself. 

But these were evils which a moderate 
fortitude might have enabled me to struggle 
with. Alas ! Mr. Editor, the women, — 
whose good graces I had always most 
assiduously cultivated, from whose softer 
minds I had hoped a more delicate and 
generous sympathy than I found in the men, 
— the women began to shun me — this was 
the unkindest blow of all. 

But is it to be wondered at ? How couldst 
thou imagine, wretchedest of beings, that 
that tender creature Seraphina would fling 
her pretty arms about that neck which 
previous circumstances had rendered in- 
famous 1 That she would put up with the 
refuse of the rope, the leavings of the cord ? 
Or that any analogy could subsist between 
the knot which binds true lovers, and the 
knot which ties malefactors ? 

I can forgive that pert baggage Flirtilla, 
who, when I complimented her one day on 
the execution which her eyes had done, 
replied, that, to be sure, Mr. * * was a judge 
of those things. But from thy more exalted 
mind, Celestina, I expected a more unpre- 
judiced decision. The person whose true 
name I conceal under this appellation, of all 
the women that T was ever acquainted with 
had the most manly turn of mind, which she 
had improved by reading and the best con- 
versation. Her understanding was not more 
masculine than her manners and whole 
disposition were delicately and truly feminine. 
She was the daughter of an officer who had 
fallen in the service of his country, leaving 
his widow, and Celestina, an only child, with 
a fortune sufficient to set them above want, 
but not to enable them to live in splendour. 
I had the mother's permission to pay my 
addresses to the young lady, and Celestina 
seemed to approve of my suit. 

Often and often have I poured out my 
overcharged soul in the presence of Celestina, 



complaining of the hard and unfeeling 
prejudices of the world ; and the sweet maid 
has again and again declared, that no 
irrational prejudice should hinder her from 
esteeming every man according to his 
intrinsic worth. Often has she repeated the 
consolatory assurance, that she could never 
consider as essentially ignominious an acci- 
dent, which was indeed to be deprecated, but 
which might have happened to the most 
innocent of mankind. Then would she set 
forth some illustrious example, which her 
reading easily furnished, of a Phocion or a 
Socrates unjustly condemned ; of a Ealeigh 
or a Sir Thomas More, to whom late pos- 
terity had done justice ; and by soothing 
my fancy with some such agreeable parallel, 
she would make me almost to triumph in 
my disgrace, and convert my shame into 
glory. 

In such entertaining and instructive con- 
versations the time passed on, till I impor- 
tunately urged the mistress of my affections 
to name the day for our union. To this she 
obligingly consented, and I thought myself 
the happiest of mankind. But how was I 
surprised one morning on the receipt of the 
following billet from my charmer :— 

Sir, — You must not impute it to levity, 
or to a worse failing, ingratitude, if, with 
anguish of heart, I feel myself compelled by 
irresistible arguments to recall a vow which 
I fear I made with too little consideration. 
I never can be yours. The reasons of my 
decision, which is final, are in my own breast, 
and you must everlastingly remain a stranger 
to them. Assure yourself that I can never 
cease to esteem you as I ought. 

Celestina. 

At the sight of this paper, I ran in frantic 
haste to Celestina's lodgings, where I learned, 
to my infinite mortification, that the mother 
and daughter were set off on a journey to a 
distant part of the country, to visit a rela- 
tion, and were not expected to return in less 
than four months. 

Stunned by this blow, which left me with- 
out the courage to solicit an explanation by 
letter, even if I had known where they were, 
(for the particular address was industriously 
concealed from me,) I waited with impatience 
the termination of the period, in the vain 



ON THE INCONVENIENCES EESULTING FROM BEING HANGED. 



563 



hope that I might be permitted to have a 
chance of softening the harsh decision by 
a personal interview with Celestina after 
her return. But before three months were 
at an end, I learned from the newspapers 
that my beloved had — given her hand to 
another ! 

Heart-broken as I was, I was totally at a 
loss to account for the strange step which 
she had taken ; and it was not till some 
years after that I learned the true reason 
from a female relation of hers, to whom it 
seems Celestina had confessed in confidence, 
that it was no demerit of mine that had 
caused her to break off the match so abruptly, 
nor any preference which she might feel for 
any other person, for she preferred me (she 
was pleased to say,) to all mankind ; but 
when she came to lay the matter closer to 
her heart, she found that she never should 
be able to bear the sight — (I give you her 
very words as they were detailed to me by 
her relation) — the sight of a man in a night- 
cap, who had appeared on a public platform 
— it would lead to such a disagreeable asso- 
ciation of ideas ! And to this punctilio I 
was sacrificed. 

To pass over an infinite series of minor 
mortifications, to which this last and heaviest 
might well render me callous, behold me 
here, Mr. Editor ! in the thirty-seventh year 
of my existence, (the twelfth, reckoning from 
my re-animation,) cut off from all respectable 
connexions ; rejected by the fairer half of 
the community, — who in my case alone seem 
to have laid aside the characteristic pity 
of their sex ; punished because I was once 
punished unjustly ; suffering for no other 
reason than because I once had the mis- 
fortune to suffer without any cause at all. 
In no other country, I think, but this, could 
a man have been subject to such a life-long 
persecution, when once his innocence had 
been clearly established. 

Had I crawled forth a rescued victim from 
the rack in the horrible dungeons of the In- : 
quisition, — had I heaved myself up from a 
half bastinado in China, or been torn from 
the just-entering, ghastly impaling stake 
in Barbary, — had I dropt alive from the [ 
knout in Russia, or come off with a gashed ' 
neck from the half-mortal, scarce-in-time- 
retracted cimeter of an executioneering slave 
in Turkey, — I might have borne about the 



remnant of this frame (the mangled trophy 
of reprieved innocence) with credit to my- 
self, in any of those barbarous countries. 
No scorn, at least, would have mingled 
with the pity (small as it might be) with 
which what was left of me would have been 
surveyed. 

The singularity of my case has often led me 
to inquire into the reasons of the general levity 
with which the subject of hanging is treated 
as a topic in this country. I say, as a topic : 
for let the very persons who speak so lightly 
of the thing at a distance be brought to view 
the real scene, — let the platform be bona 
fide exhibited, and the trembling culprit 
brought forth, — the case is changed ; but as 
a topic of conversation, I appeal to the vulgar 
jokes which pass current in every street. 
But why mention them, when the politest 
authors have agreed in making use of this 
subject as a source of the ridiculous ? Swift, 
and Pope, and Prior, are fond of recurring 
to it. Gay has built an entire drama upon 
this single foundation. The whole interest 
of the Beggar's Opera may be said to hang 
upon it. To such writers as Fielding and 
Smollett it is a perfect bonne-bouche. — Hear 
the facetious Tom Brown, in his Comical 
View of London and Westminster, describe 
the Order of the Show at one of the Tyburn 
Executions in his time : — " Mr. Ordinary 
visits his melancholy flock in Newgate by 
eight. Doleful procession up Holborn-hill 
about eleven. Men handsome and proper that 
were never thought so before, which is some 
I comfort however. Arrive at the fatal place 
! by twelve. Burnt brandy, women, and sab- 
; bath-breaking, repented of. Some few peni- 
j tential drops fall under the gallows. Sheriffs' 
J men, parson, pickpockets, criminals, all very 
j busy. The last concluding peremptory psalm 
struck up. Show over by one." — In this 
| sportive strain does this misguided wit think 
proper to play with a subject so serious, 
which yet he would hardly have done if he 
had not known that there existed a predis- 
position in the habits of his unaccountable 
countrymen to consider the subject as a jest. 
But what shall we say to Shakspeare, who, 
(not to mention the solution which the Grave- 
digger in Hamlet gives of his fellow-work- 
man's problem,) in that scene in Measure for 
Measure, where the Clown calls upon Master 
Barnardine to get up and be hanged, which 



o o 2 



564 



ON THE INCONVENIENCES EESULTING FROM BEING HANGED. 



he declines on the score of being sleepy, has 
actually gone out of his way to gratify this 
amiable propensity in his countrymen; for 
it is plain, from the use that was to be made 
of his head, and from AbhorsorCs asking, " Is 
the axe upon the block, sirrah ? " that be- 
heading, and not hanging, was the punish- 
ment to which Barnardine was destined. 
But Shakspeare knew that the axe and block 
were pregnant with no ludicrous images, and 
therefore falsified the historic truth of his 
own drama (if I may so speak), rather than 
he would leave out such excellent matter for 
a jest as the suspending of a fellow-creature 
in mid-air has been ever esteemed to be by 
Englishmen. 

One reason why the ludicrous never fails 
to intrude itself into our contemplations upon 
this mode of death, I suppose to be, the ab- 
surd posture into which a man is thrown 
who is condemned to dance, as the vulgar 
delight to express it, upon nothing. To see 
him whisking and wavering in the air, 

" As the -wind you know will wave a man ; " • 

to behold the vacant carcase, from which the 
life is newly dislodged, shifting between 
earth and heaven, the sport of every gust ; 
like a weathercock, serving to show from 
which point the wind blows ; like a maukin, 
fit only to scare away birds ; like a nest left 
to swing upon a bough when the bird is 
flown : these are uses to which we cannot 
without a mixture of spleen and contempt 
behold the human carcase reduced. We 
string up dogs, foxes, bats, moles, weasels. 
Man surely deserves a steadier death. 

Another reason why the ludicrous asso- 
ciates more forcibly with this than with any 
other mode of punishment, I cannot help 
thinking to be, the senseless costume with 
which old prescription has thought fit to 
clothe the exit of malefactors in this country. 
Let a man do what he will to abstract from 
his imagination all idea of the whimsical, 
something of it will come across him when 
he contemplates the figure of a fellow-creature 
in the day-time (in however distressing a 
situation) in a night-cap. Whether it be 
that this nocturnal addition has something 
discordant with daylight, or that it is the 
dress which we are seen in at those times 

* Hieronimo in the Spanish Tragedy. 



when we are " seen," as the Angel in Milton 
expresses it, "least wise," — this, I am afraid, 
will always be the case ; unless, indeed, as 
in my instance, some strong personal feeling 
overpower the ludicrous altogether. To me, 
when I reflect upon the train of misfortunes 
which have pursued men through life, owing 
to that accursed drapery, the cap presents as 
purely frightful an object as the sleeveless 
yellow coat and devil-painted mitre of the 
San Benitos. — An ancestor of mine, who 
suffered for his loyalty in the time of the 
civil wars, was so sensible of the truth of 
what I am here advancing, that on the morn- 
ing of execution, no entreaties could prevail 
upon him to submit to the odious dishabille, 
as he called it, but he insisted upon wear- 
ing and actually suffered in, the identical, 
flowing periwig which he is painted in, in 
the gallery belonging to my uncle's seat in 
shire. 



Suffer me, Mr. Editor, before I quit the 
subject, to say a word or two respecting the 
minister of justice in this country; in plain 
words, I mean the hangman. It has always 
appeared to me that, in the mode of inflicting 
capital punishments with us, there is too 
much of the ministry of the human hand. The 
guillotine, as performing its functions more 
of itself and sparing human agency, though a 
cruel and disgusting exhibition, in my mind 
has many ways the advantage over our way. 
In beheading, indeed, as it was formerly prac- 
tised in England, and in whipping to death, 
as is sometimes practised now, the hand of 
man is no doubt sufficiently busy ; but there 
is something less repugnant in these down- 
right blows than in the officious barber-like 
ministerings of the other. To have a fellow 
with his hangman's hands fumbling about 
your collar, adjusting the thing as your valet 
would regulate your cravat, valuing himself 
on his menial dexterity 

I never shall forget meeting my rascal, — 
I mean the fellow who officiated for me, — in 
London last winter. I think I see him now, 
— in a waistcoat that had been mine, — 
smirking along as if he knew me 

In some parts of Germany, that fellow's 
office is by law declared infamous, and his 
posterity incapable of being ennobled. They 
have hereditary hangmen, or had at least, 
in the same manner as they had heredi- 
tary other great officers of state ; and the 



ON THE MELANCHOLY OF TAILORS. 



565 



hangmen's families of two adjoining parishes 
intermarried with each other, to keep the 
breed entire. I wish something of the same 
kind were established in England. 



But it is time to quit a subject which teems 

with disagreeable images 

Permit me to subscribe myself, Mr. Editor, 
Your unfortunate friend, 

Pensilis. 



ON THE MELANCHOLY OF TAILORS. 



" Sedet, seternumque sedebit, 
Infelix Theseus." Virgil. 



That there is a professional melancholy, if 
I may so express myself, incident to the 
occupation of a tailor, is a fact which I think 
very few will venture to dispute. I' may 
safely appeal to my readers, whether they 
ever knew one of that faculty that was not 
of a temperament, to say the least, far re- 
moved from mercurial or jovial. 

Observe the suspicious gravity of their 
gait. The peacock is not more tender, from 
a consciousness of his peculiar infirmity, 
than a gentleman of this profession is of 
being known by the same infallible testi- 
monies of his occupation. " Walk, that I 
may know thee." 

Do you ever see him go whistling along 
the foot-path like a carman, or brush through 
a crowd like a baker, or go smiling to himself 
like a lover ? Is he forward to thrust into 
mobs, or to make one at the ballad-singer's 
audiences ? Does he not rather slink by 
assemblies and meetings of the people, as one 
that wisely declines popular observation 1 

How extremely rare is a noisy tailor ! a 
mirthful and obstreperous tailor ! 

" At my nativity," says Sir Thomas 
Browne, " my ascendant was the earthly 
sign of Scorpius ; I was born in the planetary 
hour of Saturn, and I think I have a piece 
of that leaden planet in me." One would 
think that he were anatomising a tailor ! 
save that to the latter's occupation, methinks, 
a woollen planet would seem more consonant, 
and that he should be born when the sun 
was in Aries. — He goes on : "I am no 
way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth 
and galliardise of company." How true a 
type of the whole trade ! Eminently eco- 
nomical of his words, you shall seldom hear 
a jest come from one of them. He sometimes 
furnishes subject for a repartee, but rarely 
(I think) contributes one ore proprio. 



Drink itself does not seem to elevate him, 
or at least to call out of him any of the ex- 
ternal indications of vanity. I cannot say 
that it never causes his pride to swell, but it 
never breaks out. I am even fearful that it 
may swell and rankle to an alarming degree 
inwardly. For pride is near of kin to me- 
lancholy ! — a hurtful obstruction from the 
ordinary outlets of vanity being shut. It is 
this stoppage which engenders proud 
humours. Therefore a tailor may be proud. 
I think he is never vain. The display of his 
gaudy patterns, in that book of his which 
emulates the rainbow, never raises any 
inflations of that emotion in him, corres- 
ponding to what the wig-maker (for instance) 
evinces, when he expatiates on a curl or a bit 
of hair. He spreads them forth with a sullen 
incapacity for pleasure, a real or affected 
indifference to grandeur. Cloth of gold 
neither seems to elate, nor cloth of frieze to 
depress him — according to the beautiful 
motto which formed the modest imprese of 
the shield worn by Charles Brandon at his 
marriage with the king's sister. Nay, I doubt 
whether he would discover any vain-glorious 
complacence in his colours, though " Iris " 
herself " dipt the woof." 

In further corroboration of this argument 
— who ever saw the wedding of a tailor an- 
nounced in the newspapers, or the birth of 
his eldest son ? 

When was a tailor known to give a dance, 
or to be himself a good dancer, or to perform 
exquisitely on the tight-rope, or to shine in 
any such light and airy pastimes 1 to sing, 
or play on the violin 1 

Do they much care for public rejoicings, 
lightings up, ringing of bells, firing of can- 
nons, &c. ? 

Valiant I know they can be ; but I appeal 
to those who were witnesses to the exploits 



566 



ON THE MELANCHOLY OF TAILORS. 



of Eliot's famous troop, whether in their 
fiercest charges they betrayed anything of 
that thoughtless oblivion of death with 
which a Frenchman jigs into battle, or 
whether they did not show more of the 
melancholy valour of the Spaniard, upon 
whom they charged ; that deliberate courage 
which contemplation and sedentary habits 
breathe 1 

Are they often great newsmongers ? — I 
have known some few among them arrive 
at the dignity of speculative politicians ; but 
that light and cheerful every- day interest in 
the affairs and goings on of the world, which 
makes the barber * such delightful company, 
I think is rarely observable in them. 

This characteristic pensiveness in them 
being so notorious, I wonder none of those 
writers, who have expressly treated of me- 
lancholy, should have mentioned it. Burton, 
whose book is an excellent abstract of all the 
authors in that kind who preceded him, and 
who treats of every species of this malady, 
from the hypochondriacal or windy to the 
heroical or love melancholy, has strangely 
omitted it. Shakspeare himself has over- 
looked it. "I have neither the scholar's 
melancholy (saith Jaques), which is emula- 
tion ; nor the courtier's, which is proud ; nor 
the soldier's, which is politic ; nor the lover's, 
which is all these : " and then, when you 
might expect him to have brought in, " nor 
the tailor's, which is " so and so, he comes to 
an end of his enumeration, and falls to a 
defining of his own melancholy. 

Milton likewise has omitted it, where he 
had so fair an opportunity of bringing it in, 
in his Penseroso. 

But the partial omissions of historians 
proving nothing against the existence of any 

* Having incidentally mentioned the barber in a com- 
parison of professional temperaments, I bope no otber 
trade will take offence, or look upon it as an incivility 
done to them, if I say, that in courtesy, humanity, and 
all the conversational and social graces which " gladden 
life," I esteem no profession comparable to his. Indeed, 
so great is the goodwill which I bear to tbis useful and 
agreeable body of men, that, residing in one of the Inns 
of Court (where the best specimens of them are to be 
found, except perhaps at the universities), there are seven 
of them to whom I am personally known, and who 
never pass me without the compliment of the hat on 
either side. My truly polite and urbane friend, Mr. 

A m, of Flower-de-luce-court, in Fleet-street, will 

forgive my mention of him in particular. I can truly 
say, that I never spent a quarter of an hour under his 
hands without deriving some profit from the agreeable 
discussions which are always going on there. 



well-attested fact, I shall proceed and endea- 
vour to ascertain the causes why this pensive 
turn should be so predominant in people of 
this profession above all others. 
/'And first, may it not be, that the custom 
of wearing apparel being derived to us from 
the fall, and one of the most mortifying 
products of that unhappy event, a certain 
seriousness (to say no more of it) may in the 
order of things have been intended to be 
impressed upon the minds of that race of 
men to whom in all ages the care of con- 
triving the human apparel has been en- 
trusted, to keep up the memory of the first 
institution of clothes, and serve as a standing 
remonstrance against those vanities which 
the absurd conversion of a memorial of our 
shame into an ornament of our persons was 
destined to produce %/ Correspondent in 
some sort to this, it may be remarked, that 
the tailor sitting over a cave or hollow place, 
in the caballistick language of his order is 
said to have certain melancholy regions always 
open under his feet. — But waiving further 
inquiry into final causes, where the best of 
us can only wander in the dark, let us try to 
discover the efficient causes of this melan- 
choly. 

I think, then, that they may be reduced 
to two, omitting some subordinate ones, viz. 

The sedentary habits of the tailor. — 
Something peculiar in his diet. — 

First, his sedentary habits.— In Doctor 
Norris's famous narrative of the frenzy of 
Mr. John Dennis, the patient, being ques- 
tioned as to the occasion of the swelling in 
his legs, replies that it came "by criticism ;" 
to which the learned doctor seeming to 
demur, as to a distemper which he had never 
read of, Dennis (who appears not to have 
been mad upon all subjects) rejoins, with 
some warmth, that it was no distemper, but 
a noble art ; that he had sat fourteen hours 
a day at it ; and that the other was a pretty 
doctor not to know that there was a commu- 
nication between the brain and the legs ! 

When we consider that this sitting for 
fourteen hours continuously, which the critic 
probably practised only while he was writing 
his " remarks," is no more than what the 
tailor, in the ordinary pursuance of his art, 
submits to daily (Sundays excepted) through- 
out the year, shall we wonder to find the 



ON THE IMMODERATE INDULGENCE OF THE PALATE. 



567 



brain affected, and in a manner overclouded, 
from that indissoluble sympathy between 
the noble and less noble parts of the body 
which Dennis hints at ? The unnatural and 
painful manner of his sitting must also 
greatly aggravate the evil, insomuch that I 
have sometimes ventured to liken tailors at 
their boards to so many envious, Junos, sitting 
cross-legged to hinder the birth of their own 
felicity. The legs transversed thus jxj cross- 
wise, or decussated, was among the ancients 
the posture of malediction. The Turks, who 
practise it at this day, are noted to be a 
melancholy people. 

Secondly, his diet. — To which purpose I 
find a most remarkable passage in Burton, 
in his chapter entitled " Bad diet a cause of 



melancholy." " Amongst herbs to be eaten 
(he says) I find gourds, cucumbers, melons, 
disallowed ; but especially cabbage. It 
causeth troublesome dreams, and sends up 
black vapours to the brain. Galen, Loc. 
Affect, lib. iii. cap. 6, of all herbs condemns 
cabbage. And Isaack, lib. ii. cap. 1, animoe 
gravitatem, facit, it brings heaviness to the 
soul." I could not omit so flattering a testi- 
mony from an author who, having no theory 
of his own to serve, has so unconsciously 
contributed to the confirmation of mine. It 
is well known that this last-named vegetable 
has, from the earliest periods which we can 
discover, constituted almost the sole food of 
this extraordinary race of people. 

Burton, Junior. 



HOSPITA ON THE IMMODERATE INDULGENCE OF THE PLEASURES 

OF THE PALATE. 



TO THE EDITOR OF " THE REFLECTOR. 



Mr. Reflector, — My husband and I are 
fond of company, and being in easy circum- 
stances, we are seldom without a party to 
dinner two or three days in a week. The 
utmost cordiality has hitherto prevailed at 
our meetings ; but there is a young gentle- 
man, a near relation of my husband's, that 
has lately come among us, whose preposterous 
behaviour bids fair, if not timely checked, to 
disturb our tranquillity. He is too great a 
favourite with my husband in other respects, 
for me to remonstrate with him in any other 
than this distant way. A letter printed in 
your publication may catch his eye ; for he 
is a great reader, and makes a point of seeing 
all the new things that come out. Indeed, 
he is by no means deficient in understanding. 
My husband says that he has a good deal of 
wit ; but for my part I cannot say I am any 
judge of that, having seldom observed him 
open his mouth except for purposes very 
foreign to conversation. In short, Sir, this 
young gentleman's failing is, an immoderate 
indulgence of his palate. The first time he 
dined with us, he thought it necessary to 
extenuate the length of time he kept the 
dinner on the table, by declaring that he had 
taken a very long walk in the morning, and 



came in fasting ; but as that excuse could 
not serve above once or twice at most, he 
has latterly dropped the mask altogether, 
and chosen to appear in his own proper 
colours without reserve or apology. 

You cannot imagine how unpleasant his 
conduct has become. His way of staring at 
the dishes as they are brought in, has abso- 
lutely something immodest in it : it is like 
the stare of an impudent man of fashion at 
a fine woman, when she first comes into a 
room. I am positively in pain for the dishes, 
and cannot help thinking they have con- 
sciousness, and will be put out of counte- 
nance, he treats them so like what they 
are not. 

Then again he makes no scruple of keeping 
a joint of meat on the table, after the cheese 
and fruit are brought in, till he has what he 
calls done with it. Now how awkward this 
looks, where there are ladies, you may judge, 
Mr. Reflector, — how it disturbs the order 
and comfort of a meal. And yet I always 
make a point of helping him first, contrary 
to all good manners, — before any of my 
female friends are helped, — that he may 
avoid this very error. I wish he would eat 
before he comes out. 



568 



ON THE IMMODERATE INDULGENCE OF THE PALATE. 



What makes his proceedings more particu- 
larly offensive at our house is, that my 
husband, though out of common politeness 
he is obliged to set dishes of animal food 
before his visitors, yet himself and his whole 
family, (myself included) feed entirely on 
vegetables. We have a theory, that animal 
food is neither wholesome nor natural to 
man ; and even vegetables we refuse to eat 
until they have undergone the operation of 
fire, in consideration of those numberless 
little living creatures which the glass helps 
us to detect in every fibre of the plant or 
root before it be dressed. On the same 
theory we boil our water, which is our only 
drink, before we suffer it to come to table. 
Our children are perfect little Pythagoreans : 
it would do you good to see them in their 
nursery, stuffing their dried fruits, figs, 
raisins, and milk, which is the only approach 
to animal food which is allowed. They have 
no notion how the substance of a creature 
that ever had life can become food for an- 
other creature. A beef-steak is an absurdity 
to them : a mutton-chop, a solecism in 
terms ; a cutlet, a word absolutely without 
any meaning ; a butcher is nonsense, except 
so far as it is taken for a man who delights 
in blood, or a hero. In this happy state of 
innocence we have kept their minds, not 
allowing them to go into the kitchen, or to 
hear of any preparations for the dressing of 
animal food, or even to know that such 
things are practised. But as a state of 
ignorance is incompatible with a certain age, 
and as my eldest girl, who is ten years old 
next Midsummer, must shortly be introduced 
into the world and sit at table with us, where 
she will see some things which will shock all 
her received notions, I have been endeavour- 
ing by little and little to break her mind, and 
prepare it for the disagreeable impressions 
which must be forced upon it. The first hint 
I gave her upon the subject, I could see her 
recoil from it with the same horror with 
which we listen to a tale of Anthro- 
pophagism ; but she has gradually grown 



more reconciled to it, in some measure, from 
my telling her that it was the custom of the 
world, — to which, however senseless, we 
must submit, so far as we could do it with 
innocence, not to give offence ; and she has 
shown so much strength of mind on other 
occasions, which I have no doubt is owing to 
the calmness and serenity superinduced by 
her diet, that I am in good hopes when the 
proper season for her dibut arrives, she may 
be brought to endure the sight of a roasted 
chicken or a dish of sweet-breads for the 
first time without fainting. Such being the 
nature of our little household, you may guess 
what inroads into the economy of it, — what 
revolutions and turnings of things upside 
down, the example of such a feeder as 
Mr. is calculated to produce. 

I wonder, at a time like the present, when 
the scarcity of every kind of food is so 
painfully acknowledged, that shame has no 
effect upon him. Can he have read Mr. 
Malthus's Thoughts on the Ratio of Food 
to Population 1 Can he think it reasonable 
that one man should consume the sustenance 
of many ? 

The young gentleman has an agreeable air 
and person, such as are not unlikely to 
recommend him on the score of matrimony. 
But his fortune is not over large ; and what 
prudent young woman would think of em- 
barking hers with a man who would bring 
three or four mouths (or what is equivalent 
to them) into a family ? She might as 
reasonably choose a widower in the same 
circumstances, with three or four children. 

I cannot think who he takes after. His 
father and mother, by all accounts, were 
very moderate eaters ; only I have heard 
that the latter swallowed her victuals very 
fast, and the former had a tedious custom of 
sitting long at his meals. Perhaps he takes 
after both. 

I wish you would turn this in your 
thoughts, Mr. Beflector, and give us your 
ideas on the subject of excessive eating, and, 
particularly, of animal food. Hospita. 



EDAX ON APPETITE. 



569 



EDAX ON APPETITE. 



TO THE EDITOR OF " THE REFLECTOR. 



Mr. Eeflector, — I am going to lay before 
you a case of the most iniquitous persecution 
that ever poor devil suffered. 

You must know, then, that I have been 
visited with a calamity ever since my birth. 
How shall I mention it without offending 
delicacy ? Yet out it must. My sufferings, 
then, have all arisen from a most inordinate 
appetite 

Not for wealth, not for vast possessions, — 
then might I have hoped to find a cure in 
some of those precepts of philosophers or 
poets, — those verba et voces which Horace 
speaks of : — 

" quibus hunc lenire dolorem 
Possis, et magnam niorbi deponere partem ; " 

not for glory, not for fame, not for applause, 
— for against this disease, too, "he tells us 
there are certain piacula, or, as Pope has 
chosen to render it, 

" rhymes, which fresh and fresh applied, 
Will cure the arrant'st puppy of his pride ; " 

nor yet for pleasure, properly so called : the 
strict and virtuous lessons which I received 
in early life from the best of parents, — a 
pious clergyman of the Church of England, 
now no more, — I trust have rendered me 
sufficiently secure on that side : 

No, Sir, for none of these things ; but an 
appetite, in its coarsest and least metaphorical 
sense, — an appetite for food. 

The exorbitancies of my arrow-root and 
pappish days I cannot go back far enough to 
remember ; only I have been told that my 
mother's constitution not admitting of my 
being nursed at home, the woman who had 
the care of me for that purpose used to make 
most extravagant demands for my pretended 
excesses in that kind ; which my parents, 
rather than believe anything unpleasant of 
me, chose to impute to the known covetous- 
ness and mercenary disposition of that sort 
of people. This blindness continued on then- 
part alter I was sent for home, up to the 



period when it was thought proper, on 
account of my advanced age, that I should 
mix with other boys more unreservedly than 
I had hitherto done. I was accordingly sent 
to boarding-school. 

Here the melancholy truth became too 
apparent to be disguised. The prying 
republic of which a great' school consists 
soon found me out : there was no shifting 
the blame any longer upon other people's 
shoulders, — no good-natured maid to take 
upon herself the enormities of which I stood 
accused in the article of bread and butter, 
besides the crying sin of stolen ends of 
puddings, and cold pies strangely missing. 
The truth was but too manifest in my looks, 
— in the evident signs of inanition which I 
exhibited after the fullest meals, in spite of 
the double allowance which my master was 
privately instructed by my kind parents to 
give me. The sense of the ridiculous, which 
is but too much alive in grown persons, is 
tenfold more active and alert in boys. Once 
detected, I was the constant butt of their 
arrows, — the mark against which every puny 
leveller directed his little shaft of scorn. The 
very Graduses and Thesauruses were raked 
for phrases to pelt me with by the tiny 
pedants. Ventri natus — Ventri deditus, — 
Vesana gula, — Escarum gurges, — Dapibus 
indulgens, — Non dans frsena guise, — Sectans 
lautaB fercula niensae, resounded wheresoever 
I passed. I led a weary life, suffering the 
penalties of guilt for that which was no 
crime, but only following the blameless 
dictates of nature. The remembrance of 
those childish reproaches haunts me yet 
oftentimes in my dreams. My school-days 
come again, and the horror I used to feel, 
when, in some silent corner, retired from the 
notice of my unfeeling playfellows, I have 
sat to mumble the solitary slice of ginger- 
bread allotted me by the bounty of con- 
siderate friends, and have ached at heart 
because I could not spare a portion of it, as 
I saw other boys do, to some favourite boy ; 



570 



EDAX ON APPETITE. 



for if I know my own heart, I was never 
selfish, — never possessed a luxury which I 
did not hasten to communicate to others ; 
but my food, alas ! was none ; it was an 
indispensable necessary ; I could as soon 
have spared the blood in my veins, as have 
parted that with my companions. 

Well, no one stage of suffering lasts for 
ever : we should grow reconciled to it at 
length, I suppose, if it did. The miseries of 
my school-days had their end ; I was once 
more restored to the paternal dwelling. The 
affectionate solicitude of my parents was 
directed to the good-natured purpose of 
concealing, even from myself, the infirmity 
which haunted me. I was continually told 
that I was growing, and the appetite I dis- 
played was humanely represented as being 
nothing more than a symptom and an effect 
of that. I used even to be complimented 
upon it. But this temporary fiction could 
not endure above a year or two. I ceased to 
grow, but, alas ! I did not cease my demands 
for alimentary sustenance. 

Those times are long since past, and with 
them have ceased to exist the fond conceal- 
ment — the indulgent blindness — the delicate 
overlooking — the compassionate fiction. I 
and my infirmity are left exposed and bare 
to the broad, unwinking eye of the world, 
which nothing can elude. My meals are 
scanned, my mouthfuls weighed in a balance ; 
that which appetite demands is set down to 
the account of gluttony, — a sin which my 
whole soul abhors — nay, which Nature her- 
self has put it out of my power to commit. 
I am constitutionally disenabled from that 
vice ; for how can he be guilty of excess who 
never can get enough 1 Let them cease, 
then, to watch my plate ; and leave off their 
ungracious comparisons of it to the seven 
baskets of fragments, and the supernaturally- 
replenished cup of old Baucis : and be 
thankful that their more phlegmatic stomachs, 
not their virtue, have saved them from the 
like reproaches. I do not see that any of 
them desist from eating till the holy rage of 
hunger, as some one calls it, is supplied. 
Alas ! I am doomed to stop short of that 
continence. 

What am I to do ? I am by disposition 
inclined to conviviality and the social meal. 
I am no gourmand : I require no dainties : I 
should despise the board of Heliogabalus, 



except for its long sitting. Those vivacious, 
long-continued meals of the latter Eomans, 
indeed, I justly envy ; but the kind of fare 
which the Curii and Dentati put up with, I 
could be content with. Dentatus I have 
been called, among other unsavoury jests. 
Doublemeal is another name which my 
acquaintance have palmed upon me, for an 
innocent piece of policy which I put in 
practice for some time without being found 
out ; which was^^oing the round of my 
friends, beginning with the most primitive 
feeders among them, who take their dinner 
about one o'clock, and so successively drop- 
ping in upon the next and the next, till by 
the time I got among my more fashionable 
intimates, whose hour was six or seven, I 
have nearly made up the body of a just and 
complete meal (as I reckon it), without 
taking more than one dinner (as they account 
of dinners) at one person's house./ Since I 
have been found out, I endeavour to make 
up by a damper, as I call it, at home, before 
I go out. But alas ! with me, increase of 
appetite truly grows by what it feeds on. 
What is peculiarly offensive to me at those 
dinner-parties is, the senseless custom of 
cheese, and the dessert afterwards. I have 
a rational antipathy to the former ; and for 
fruit, and those other vain vegetable substi- 
tutes for meat (meat, the only legitimate 
aliment for human creatures since the Flood, 
as I take it to be deduced from that per- 
mission, or ordinance rather, given to Noah 
and his descendants), I hold them in perfect 
contempt. Hay for horses. I remember a 
pretty apologue, which Mandeville tells, very 
much to this purpose, in his Fable of the 
Bees : — He brings in a Lion arguing with a 
Merchant, who had ventured to expostulate 
with this king of beasts upon his violent 
methods of feeding. The Lion thus retorts : 
— "Savage I am; but no creature can be 
called cruel but what either by malice or 
insensibility extinguishes his natural pity. 
The Lion was born without compassion ; we 
follow the instinct of our nature ; the gods 
have appointed us to live upon the waste 
and spoil of other animals, and as long as 
we can meet with dead ones, we never hunt 
after the living ; 'tis only man, mischievous 
man, that can make death a sport. Nature 
taught your stomach to crave nothing but 
vegetables. — (Under favour of the Lion, if he 



EDAX ON APPETITE. 



571 



meant to assert this universally of mankind, 
it is not true. However, what he says 
presently is very sensible.) — Your violent 
fondness to change, and greater eagerness 
after novelties, have prompted you to the 
destruction of animals without justice or 
necessity. The Lion has a ferment within 
him, that consumes the toughest skin and 
hardest bones, as well as the flesh of all 
animals, without exception. Your squeamish 
stomach, in which the digestive heat is weak 
and inconsiderable, won't so much as admit 
of the most tender parts of them, unless 
above half the concoction has been performed 
by artificial fire beforehand ; and yet what 
animal have you spared, to satisfy the 
caprices of a languid appetite 1 Languid, I 
say ; for what is man's hunger if compared 
with the Lion's % Yours, when it is at the 
worst, makes you faint ; mine makes me 
mad : oft have I tried with roots and herbs 
to allay the violence of it, but in vain ; 
nothing but large quantities of flesh can any 
ways appease it." — Allowing for the Lion 
not having a prophetic instinct to take in 
every lusus naturae that was possible of the 
human appetite, he was, generally speaking, 
in the right ; and the Merchant was so 
impressed with his argument that, we are 
told, he replied not, but fainted away. O, 
Mr. Reflector, that I were not obliged to 
add, that the creature who thus argues was 
but a type of me ! Miserable man ! / am 
that Lion / " Oft have I tried with roots 
and herbs to allay that violence, but in vain ; 

nothing but ." 

Those tales which are renewed as often as 
the editors of papers want to fill up a space 
in their unfeeling columns, of great eaters, — 
people that devour whole geese and legs of 
mutton/or wagers, — are sometimes attempted 
to be drawn to a parallel with my case. 
This wilful confounding of motives and 
circumstances, which make all the difference 
of moral or immoral in actions, just suits the 
sort of talent which some of my acquaintance 
pride themselves upon. Wagers! — I thank 
Heaven, I was never mercenary, nor could 
consent to prostitute a gift (though but a 
left-handed one) of nature, to the enlarging 
of my worldly substance ; prudent as the 
necessities, which that fatal gift have involved 
me in, might have made such a prostitution 
to appear in the eyes of an indelicate world. 



Eather let me say, that to the satisfaction 
of that talent which was given me, I have 
been content to sacrifice no common expect- 
ations ; for such I had from an old lady, a 
near relation of our family, in whose good 
graces I had the fortune to stand, till one 

fatal evening . You have seen, Mr. 

Reflector, if you have ever passed your time 
much in country towns, the kind of suppers 
which elderly ladies in those places have 
lying in petto in an adjoining parlour, next 
to that where they are entertaining their 
periodically-invited coevals with cards and 
muffins. The cloth is usually spread some 
half-hour before the final rubber is decided, 
whence they adjourn to sup upon what may 
emphatically be called nothing ; — a sliver of 
ham, purposely contrived to be transparent 
to show the china-dish through it, neigh- 
bouring a slip of invisible brawn, which 
abuts upon something they call a tartlet, as 
that is bravely supported by an atom of 
marmalade, flanked in its turn by a grain of 
potted beef, with a power of such dishlings, 
minims of hospitality, spread in defiance of 
human nature, or rather with an utter 
ignorance of what it demands. Being engaged 
at one of these card-parties, I was obliged to 
go a little before supper time (as they face- 
tiously called the point of time in which 
they are taking these shadowy refections), 
and the old lady, with a sort of fear shining 
through the smile of courteous hospitality 
that beamed in her countenance, begged me 
to step into the next room and take some- 
thing before I went out in the cold, — a 
proposal which lay not in my nature to deny. 
Indignant at the airy prospect I saw before 
me, I set to, and in a trice despatched the 
whole meal intended for eleven persons, — 
fish, flesh, fowl, pastry, — to the sprigs of 
garnishing parsley, and the last fearful 
custard that quaked upon the board. I need 
not describe the consternation, when in due 
time the dowagers adjourned from their 
cards. Where was the supper 1 — and the 

servants' answer, Mr. ■ had eat it all. 

— That freak, however, jested me out of a 
good three hundred pounds a year, which I 
afterwards was informed for a certainty the 
old lady meant to leave me. I mention it 
not in illustration of the unhappy faculty 
which I am possessed of ; for any unlucky 
wag of a schoolboy, with a tolerable appetite, 



572 



ED AX ON APPETITE. 



could have done as much without feeling 
any hurt after it, — only that you may judge 
whether I am a man likely to set my talent 
to sale, or to require the pitiful stimulus of 
a wager. 

I have read in Pliny, or in some author of 
that stamp, of a reptile in Africa, whose 
venom is of that hot, destructive quality, 
that wheresoever it fastens its tooth, the 
whole substance of the animal that has been 
bitten in a few seconds is reduced to dust, 
crumbles away, and absolutely disappears : 
it is called, from this quality, the Annihilator. 
"Why am I forced to seek, in all the most 
prodigious and portentous facts of Natural 
History, for creatures typical of myself? 
I am that snake, that Annihilator : "wherever 
I fasten, in a few seconds ." 

O happy sick men, that are groaning under 
the want of that very thing, the excess of 
which is my torment ! O fortunate, too 
fortunate, if you knew your happiness, 
invalids ! What would I not give to 
exchange this fierce concoctive and digestive 
heat, — this rabid fury which vexes me, 
which tears and torments me, — for your 
quiet, mortified, hermit-like, subdued, and 
sanctified stomachs, your cool, chastened 
inclinations, and coy desires for food ! 

To what unhappy figuration of the parts 
intestine I owe this unnatural craving, I 
must leave to the anatomists and the 
physicians to determine : they, like the rest 
of the world, have doubtless their eye upon 
me ; and as I have been cut up alive by the 
sarcasms of my friends, so I shudder when 
I contemplate the probability that this 
animal frame, when its restless appetites 



shall have ceased their importunity, may be 
cut up also (horrible suggestion !) to deter- 
mine in what system of solids or fluids this 
original sin of my constitution lay lurking. 
What work will they make with their acids 
and alkalines, their serums and coagulums, 
effervescences, viscous matter, bile, chyle, 
and acrimonious juices, to explain that cause 
which Nature, who willed the effect to punish 
me for my sins, may no less have determined 
to keep in the dark from them, to punish 
them for their presumption ! 

You may ask, Mr. Eeflector, to what 
purpose is my appeal to you ; what can you 
do for me ? Alas ! I know too well that my 
case is out of the reach of advice, — out of the 
reach of consolation. But it is some relief 
to the wounded heart to impart its tale of 
misery ; and some of my acquaintance, who 
may read my case in your pages under a 
borrowed name, may be induced to give it a 
more humane consideration than I could 
ever yet obtain from them under my own. 
Make them, if possible, to reflect, that an 
original peculiarity of constitution is no 
crime ; that not that which goes into the 
mouth desecrates a man, but that which 
comes out of it, — such as sarcasm, bitter 
jests, mocks and taunts, and ill-natured 
observations ; and let them consider, if there 
be such things (which we have all heard of) 
as Pious Treachery, Innocent Adultery, &c, 
whether there may not be also such a thing 
as Innocent Gluttony. 

I shall only subscribe myself, 

Your afflicted servant, 

Edax. 



CURIOUS FRAGMENTS, 



EXTRACTED FROM A COMMON-PLACE BOOK, 



WHICH BELONGED TO ROBERT BURTON, THE FAMOUS AUTHOR OF THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY. 



EXTRACT I. 

I Democritus Junior, have put my finish- 
ing pen to a tractate Be Melancholia, this 
day, December 5, 1620. First, I blesse the 
Trinity, which hath given me health to pro- 
secute my worthlesse studies thus far, and 
make supplication, with &Laus Deo, if in any 
case these my poor labours may be found in- 
strumental to weede out black melancholy, 
carking cares, harte-grief, from the mind of 
man. Sed hoc magis volo quam expecto. 

I turn now to my book, i nunc liber, goe 
forth, my brave Anatomy, child of my brain- 
sweat, and yee, candidi lectores, lo ! here I 
give him up to you, even do with him what 
you please, my masters. Some, I suppose, 
will applaud, commend, cry him up (these 
are my friends), hee is a flos rarus, forsooth, 
j a none-such, a Phoenix, (concerning whom 
see Plinius and Mandeuille, though Fienus de 
Monstris doubteth at large of such a bird, 
whom Montaltus confuting argueth to have 
been a man males scrupulositatis, of a weak 
and cowardlie faith : Christopherus a Vega is 
with him in this). Others again will blame, 
hiss, reprehende in many things, cry down 
altogether my collections, for crude, inept, 
putid, post cosnam scripta, Cory ate could write 
better upon a full meal, verbose, inerudite, 
and not sufficiently abounding in authorities, 
dogmata, sentences of learneder writers which 
have been before me, when as that first- 
named sort clean otherwise judge of my 
labours to bee nothing else but a messe of 
opinions, a vortex attracting indiscriminate, 
gold, pearls, hay, straw, wood, excrement, an 
exchange, tavern, marte, for foreigners to 
congregate, Danes, Swedes, Hollanders, Lom- 
bards, so many strange faces, dresses, saluta- 
tions, languages, all which Wolfius behelde 



with great content upon the Venetian Rialto, 
as he describes diffusedly in his book the 
World's Epitome, which JSannazar so be- 
praiseth, e contra our Polydore can see no- 
thing in it ; they call me singular, a pedant, 
fantastic, words of reproach in this age, which 
is all too neoterick and light for my humour. 
One cometh to me sighing, complaining. 
He expected universal remedies in my Ana- 
tomy ; so many cures as there are distem- 
peratures among men. I have not put his 
affection in my cases. Hear you his case. 
My fine Sir is a lover, an inamorata, a Pyra- 
mus, a Romeo ; he walks seven years dis- 
consolate, moping, because he cannot enjoy 
his miss, insanus amor is his melancholy, 
the man is mad ; delirat, he dotes ; all this 
while his Glycera is rude, spiteful, not to be 
entreated, churlish, spits at him, yet exceed- 
ing fair, gentle eyes (which is a beauty), hair 
lustrous and smiling, the trope is none of 
mine, JEneas Sylvius hath crines ridentes — 
in conclusion she is wedded to his rival, a 
boore, a Corydon, a rustic, omnino ignarus, he 
can scarce construe Corderius, yet haughty, 
fantastic, opinidtre. The lover travels, goes 
into foreign parts, peregrinates, amoris ergo, 
sees manners, customs, not English, converses 
with pilgrims, lying travellers, monks, her- 
mits, those cattle, pedlars, travelling gentry, 
Egyptians, natural wonders, unicorns (though 
Aldobrandus will have them to be figments), 
satyrs, semi-viri, apes, monkeys, baboons, 
curiosities artificial, pyramides, Virgilius his 
tombe, relicks, bones, which are nothing but 
ivory as Melancthon judges, though Cornu- 
tus leaneth to think them bones of dogs, 
cats, (why not men ?) which subtill priests 
vouch to have been saints, martyrs, heu 
Pietas! By that time he has ended his 
course, fugit hora, seven other years are 



574 



CUKIOUS FRAGMENTS. 



expired, gone by, time is he should return, he 
taketh ship for Britaine, much desired of his 
friends, favebant venti, Neptune is curteis, 
after some weekes at sea he landeth, rides 
post to town, greets his family, kinsmen, 
compotores, those jokers his friends that were 
wont to tipple with him at alehouses; these 
wonder now to see the change, quantum 
mutatus, the man is quite another thing, he is 
disenthralled, manumitted, he wonders what 
so bewitched him, he can now both see, hear, 
smell, handle, converse with his mistress, 
single by reason of the death of his rival, 
a widow having children, grown willing, 
prompt, amorous, showing no such great 
dislike to second nuptials, he might have 
her for asking, no such thing, his mind is 
changed, he loathes his former meat, had 
liever eat ratsbane, aconite, his humour is to 
die a bachelour ; marke the conclusion. In 
this humour of celibate seven other years 
are consumed in idleness, sloth, world's plea- 
sures, which fatigate, satiate, induce weari- 
nesse, vapours, tcedium vita? : When upon a 
day, behold a wonder, redit Amor, the man 
is as sick as ever, he is commenced lover 
upon the old stock, walks with his hand 
thrust in his bosom for negligence, moping 
he leans his head, face yellow, beard flowing 
and incomposite, eyes sunken, anhelus, breath 
wheezy and asthmatical, by reason of over-much 
sighing : society he abhors, solitude is but a 
hell, what shall he doe 1 all this while his 
mistresse is forward, coming, amantissima, 
ready to jump at once into his mouth, her he 
hateth, feels disgust when she is but men- 
tioned, thinks her ugly, old, a painted Jesa- 
beel, Alecto, Megara, and Tisiphone all at 
once, a Corinthian Lais, a strumpet, only not 
handsome ; that which he affecteth so much, 
that which drives him mad, distracted, phre- 
netic, beside himself, is no beauty which 
lives, nothing in rerum naturd (so he might 
entertain a hope of a cure), but something 
which is not, can never be, a certain fantastic 
opinion or notional image of his mistresse, 
that which she was, and that which hee 
thought her to be, in former times, how 
beautiful! torments him, frets him, follows 
him, makes him that he wishes to die. 

This Caprichio, Sir Humourous, hee cometh 
to me to be cured. I counsel marriage with 
his mistresse, according to Hippocrates his 
method, together with milk-diet, herbs, aloes, 



and wild parsley, good in such cases, though 
Avicenna preferreth some sorts of wild fowl, 
teals, widgeons, beccaficos, which men in 
Sussex eat. He flies out in a passion, ho ! ho ; 
and falls to calling me names, dizzard, ass, 
lunatic, moper, Bedlamite, Pseudo-Demo- 
critus. I smile in his face, bidding him 
be patient, tranquil, to no purpose, he still 
rages : I think this man must fetch his re- 
medies from Utopia, Fairy Land, Islands in 
the Moone, &c. 



EXTRACT II. 

***** Much disputacyons of fierce 
wits amongst themselves, in logomachies, 
subtile controversies, many dry blows given 
on either side, contentions of learned men, 
or such as would be so thought, as Bodinus 
de Periodis saith of such an one, arrident 
amici ridet mundus, in English, this man his 
cronies they cocker him up, they flatter him, 
he would fayne appear somebody, meanwhile 
the world thinks him no better than a diz- 
zard, a ninny, a sophist. * * 

* * * Philosophy running mad, madness 
philosophizing, much idle-learned inquiries, 
what truth is? and no issue, fruit, of all 
these noises, only huge books are written, 
and who is the wiser ?***** M en sit- 
ting in the Doctor's chair, we marvel how 
they got there, being homines intellect's pul- 
mrulenti as Trincauellius notes ; they care 
not so they may raise a dust to smother the 
eyes of their oppugners ; homines parvulis- 
simi, as Lemnius, whom Alcuin herein taxeth 
of a crude Latinism ; dwarfs, minims, the 
least little men, these spend their time, 
and it is odds but they lose their time and 
wits too into the bargain, chasing of nimble 
and retiring Truth : Her they prosecute, her 
still they worship, libant, they make liba- 
tions, spilling the wine, as those old Eomans 
in their sacrificials, Cerealia, May-games: 
Truth is the game all these hunt after, to 
the extreme perturbacyon and drying up of 
the moistures, humidum radicate exsiccant, as 
Galen, in his counsels to one of these wear- 
wits, brain-moppers, spunges, saith. * * * * 
and for all this nunquam metam attingunt, 
and how should they ? they bowle awry, 
shooting beside the marke ; whereas it should 
appear, that Truth absolute on this planet of 
ours is scarcely to be found, but in her stede 



CURIOUS FRAGMENTS. 



575 



Queene Opinion predominates, governs, whose 
shifting and ever mutable Lampas, me seem- 
eth, is man's destinie to follow, she prsecur- 
seth, she guideth him, before his uncapable 
eyes she frisketh her tender lights, which 
entertayne the child-man, untill what time 
his sight be strong to endure the vision of 
Very Truth, which is in the heavens, the 
vision beatifical, as Anianus expounds in his 
argument against certain mad wits which 
helde God to be corporeous ; these were 
dizzards, fools, gothamites. * * * * but and 
if Very Truth be extant indeede on earth, as 
some hold she it is which actuates men's 
deeds, purposes, ye may in vaine look for 
her in the learned universities, halls, colleges. 
Truth is no Doctoresse, she takes no degrees 
at Paris or Oxford, amongst great clerks, 
disputants, subtile Aristotles, men nodosi in- 
genii, able to take Lully by the chin, but often- 
times to such an one as myself, an Idiota or 
common person, no great things, melancho- 
lizing in woods where waters are, quiet places 
by rivers, fountains, whereas the silly man 
expecting no such matter, thinketh only how 
best to delectate and refresh his mynde con- 
tinually with Natura her pleasaunt scenes, 
woods, water-falls, or Art her statelie gar- 
dens, parks, terraces, Belvideres, on a sudden 
the goddesse herself Truth has appeared, 
with a shyning lyghte, and a sparklyng 
countenance, so as yee may not be able 
lightly to resist her. ***** 



EXTRACT III. 

This morning, May 2, 1662, having first 
broken my fast upon eggs and cooling salades, 
mallows, water-cresses, those herbes, accord- 
ing to Villanovus his prescription, who dis- 
allows the use of meat in a morning as gross, 
fat, hebetant, feral, altogether fitter for wild 
beasts than men, e contra commendeth this 
herb-diete for gentle, humane, active, con- 
ducing to contemplation in most men, I be- 
took myselfe to the nearest fields. (Being in 
London I commonly dwell in the suburbes, as 
airiest, quietest, loci musis propriores, free 
from noises of caroches, waggons, mechanick 
and base workes, workshoppes, also sights, 
pageants, spectacles of outlandish birds, 
fishes, crocodiles, Indians, mermaids ; adde 
quarrels, fightings, wranglings of the com- 



mon sort, plebs, the rabble, duelloes with 
fists, proper to this island, at which the 
stiletto'd and secret Italian laughs.) With- 
drawing myselfe from these buzzing and illi- 
terate vanities, with a bezo las manos to the 
city, I begin to inhale, draw in, snuff up, as 
horses dilatis naribus snort the fresh aires, 
with exceeding great delight, when suddenly 
there crosses me a procession, sad, heavy, 
dolourous, tristfull, melancholick, able to 
change mirth into dolour, and overcast a 
clearer atmosphere than possibly the neigh- 
bourhoods of so great a citty can afford. An 
old man, a poore man deceased, is borne on 
men's shoulders to a poore buriall, without 
solemnities of hearse, mourners, plumes, 
mutce personce, those personate actors that will 
weep if yee shew them a piece of silver; none 
of those customed civilities of children, kins- 
folk, dependants, following the coffin ; he died 
a poore man, his friends accessores opum, those 
cronies of his that stuck by him so long as he 
had a penny, now leave him, forsake him, 
shun him, desert him ; they think it much 
to follow his putrid and stinking carcase to 
the grave ; his children, if he had any, for 
commonly the case stands thus, this poore 
man his son dies before him, he survives, 
poore, indigent, base, dejected, miserable, &c. T 
or if he have any which survive him, sua 
negotia agunt, they mind their own business, 
forsooth, cannot, will not, find time, leisure, 
inclination, extremum munus perficere, to fol- 
low to the pit their old indulgent father, 
which loved them, stroked them, caressed 
them, cockering them up, quantum potuit, as 
farre as his means extended, while they were 
babes, chits, minims, hee may rot in his 
grave, lie stinking in the sun for them, have 
no buriall at all, they care not. nefas ! 
Chiefly I noted the coffin to have been with- 
out a pall, nothing but a few planks, of 
cheapest wood that could be had, naked, 
having none of the ordinary symptomata of a 
funerall, those locularii which bare the body 



having on diversely coloured coats, and none 
black: (one of these reported the deceased 
to have been an almsman seven yeares, a 
pauper, harboured and fed in the workhouse 
of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, to whose proper 
burying-ground he was now going for inter- 
ment.) All which when I behelde, hardly I 
refrained from weeping, and incontinently I 
fell to musing : " If this man had been rich, 



576 



CUKIOUS FRAGMENTS. 



a Croesus, a Crassus, or as rich as Whittington, 
what pompe, charge, lavish cost, expenditure, 
of rich hu.ria\\,ceremoniall-obsequies, obsequious 
ceremonies, had been thought too good for 
such an one ; what store of panegyricks, 
elogies, funeral orations, &c, some beggarly 
poetaster, worthy to be beaten for his ill 
rimes, crying him up, hee was rich, generous, 
bountiful, polite, learned, a Mcecenas, while 
as in very deede he was nothing lesse : what 
weeping, sighing, sorrowing, honing, com- 
plaining, kinsmen, friends, relatives, four- 
tieth cousins, poor relatives, lamenting for 



the deceased ; hypocriticall heirs, sobbing, 
striking their breasts (they care not if he 
had died a year ago) ; so many clients, 
dependants, flatterers, parasites, cunning 
Onathoes, tramping on foot after the hearse, 
all their care is, who shall stand fairest with 
the successour ; he mean time (like enough) 
spurns them from him, spits at them, treads 
them under his foot, will have nought to do 
with any such cattle. I think him in the 
right : H03C sunt majora gravitate Heracliti. 
These follies are enough to give crying Hera- 
clitus a fit of the spleene. 



MR. H 



A FARCE, IN TWO ACTS. 



AS IT WAS PERFORMED AT DRURY LANE THEATRE, DECEMBER, 1806. 



" Mr. H , tliou wert damned. Bright shone the morning on the play-hills that announced thy appear- 
ance, and the streets were filled with the buzz of persons asking one another if they would go to see Mr. H , 

and answering that they would certainly ; but before night the gaiety, not of the author, but of his friends 
and the town, was eclipsed, for thou wert damned! Hadst thou been anonymous, thou haply mightst have 
lived. But thou didst come to an untimely end for thy tricks, and for want of a better name to pass them 
off ." Tlieatrical Examine)-. 



Mr. H . 

Belvil 
Landlord Pry 



CHARACTERS. 

Mr. Elliston. , Melesinda . . . Miss Mellon. 

Mr. Bartley. Maid to Melesinda . Mrs. Harloioe. 

Mr. Wewitzer. Gentlemen, Ladies, Waiters, Servants, &c. 

Scene — Bath*. 



PROLOGUE, SPOKEN BY MR. ELLISTOK 



If we have sinn'd in paring down a name, 
All civil, well-bred authors do the same. 
Survey the columns of our daily writers — ■ 
You'll find that some Initials are great fighters. 
How fierce the shock, how fatal is the jar, 
When Ensign W. meets Lieutenant R. 
With two stout seconds, just of their own gizzard, 
Cross Captain X. and rough old General Izzard ! 
Letter to Letter spreads the dire alarms, 
Till half the Alphabet is up in arms. 
Nor with less lustre have Initials shone, 
To grace the gentler annals of Crim. Con. 
Where the dispensers of the public lash 
Soft penance give ; a letter and a dash — 
Where Vice reduced in size shrinks to a failing, 
And loses half her grossness by curtailing. 
Faux pas are told in such a modest way, — 
" The affair of Colonel B — with Mrs. A — •" 
You must forgive them — for what is there, say, 
Which such a pliant Vowel must not grant 



To such a very pressing Consonant ? 

Or who poetic justice dares dispute, 

When, mildly melting at a lover's suit, 

The wife's a Liquid, her good man a Mute ? 

Even in the homelier scenes of honest life, 

The coarse-spun intercourse of man and wife, 

Initials I am told have taken place 

Of Deary, Spouse, and that old-fashion'd race ; 

And Cabbage, ask'd by brother Snip to tea, 

Replies " I'll come — but it don't rest with me — 

I always leaves them things to Mrs. C." 

O should this mincing fashion ever spread 

From names of living heroes to the dead, 

How would Ambition sigh, and hang the head, 

As each loved syllable should melt away — 

Her Alexander turn'd into Great A — 

A single C. her Caesar to express — 

Her Scipio shrunk into a Roman S — 

And, nick'd and dock'd to these new modes of speech, 

Great Hannibal himself a Mr. H . 



MR. H 



A FARCE, IN TWO ACTS. 



ACT I. 

Scene. — A Public Room in an Inn. Landlord, 
Waiters, Gentlemen, &c. 

Enter Mr. H. 

Mr. H. Landlord, has the man brought 
home my boots 1 

Landlord. Yes, Sir. 

Mr. H. Yon have paid him ? 

Landlord. There is the receipt, Sir, only 
not quite filled up, no name, only blank — 
" Blank, Dr. to Zekiel Spanish for one pair of 
•best hessians." Now, Sir, he wishes to know 
what name he shall put in, who he shall 
say " Dr." 

Mr. H. Why, Mr. H. to be sure. 

Landlord. So I told him, Sir ; but Zekiel 
has some qualms about it. He says he 
thinks that Mr. H. only would not stand 
good hi law. 

Mr. H. Eot his impertinence ! Bid him 
put in Nebuchadnezzar, and not trouble me 
with his scruples. 

Landlord. I shall, Sir. [Exit. 

Enter a Waiter. 

Waiter. Sir, Squire Level's man is below, 
with a hare and a brace of pheasants for 
Mr. H. 

Mr. H. Give the man half-a-crown, and 
bid him return my best respects to his master. 
Presents, it seems, will find me out, with any 
name or no name. 

Enter 2d Waiter. 

2d Waiter. Sir, the man that makes up the 
Directory is at the door. 

Mr. H. Give him a shilling ; that is what 
these fellows come for. 

2d Waiter. He has sent up to know by 
what name your Honour will please to be 
inserted. 

Mr. II. Zounds, fellow, I give him a 
shilling for leaving out my name, not for 



putting it in. This is one of the plaguy 
comforts of going anonymous. [Exit 2d Waiter. 

Enter 3d Waiter, 

3d Waiter. Two letters for Mr. H. [Exit. 

Mr. H. From ladies {opens them). This 
from Melesinda, to remind me of the morning 
call I promised ; the pretty creature posi- 
tively languishes to be made Mrs. H. I 
believe I must indulge her (affectedly). This 
from her cousin, to bespeak me to some 
party, I suppose (opening it).— Oh, "this 
evening " — " Tea and cards " — (surveying 
himself with complacency). Dear H., thou 
art certainly a pretty fellow. I wonder 
what makes thee such a favourite among 
the ladies : I wish it may not be owing to the 
concealment of thy unfortunate pshaw ! 

Enter 4th Waiter. 

4th Waiter. Sir, one Mr. Printagain is 
inquiring for you. 

Mr. H. Oh, I remember, the poet ; he is 
publishing by subscription. Give him a 
guinea, and tell him he may put me down. 

4th Waiter. What name shall I tell him, 
Sir? 

Mr. H. Zounds, he is a poet ; let him fancy 

a name. [Exit 4th Waiter. 

Enter 5th Waiter. 

5th Waiter. Sir, Bartlemy the lame beggar, 
that you sent a private donation to last 
Monday, has by some accident discovered 
his benefactor, and is at the door waiting to 
return thanks. 

Mr. H. Oh, poor fellow, who could put it 
into his head 1 Now I shall be teased by 
all his tribe, when once this is known. Well, 
tell him I am glad I could be of any service 
to him, and send him away. 

5th Waiter. I would have done so, Sir; 
but the object of his call now, he says, is 
only to know who he is obliged to. 

Mr. H. Why, me. 



MR. H- 



A FARCE. 



579 



5th Waiter. Yes, Sir. 

Mr. IT. Me, me, me ; who else, to be sure 1 

5th Waiter. Yes, Sir ; but he is anxious to 
know the name of his benefactor. 

Mr. H. Here is a pampered rogue of a 
beggar, that cannot be obliged to a gentle- 
man in the way of his profession, but he 
must know the name, birth, parentage, and 
education of his benefactor ! I warrant you, 
next he will require a certificate of one's 
good behaviour, and a magistrate's licence in 
one's pocket, lawfully empowering so and 
so to — give an alms. Any thing more 1 

5th Waiter. Yes, Sir ; here has been Mr. 
Patriot, with the county petition to sign ; 
and Mr. Failtime, that owes so much money, 
has sent to remind you of your promise to 
bail him. 

Mr. H. Neither of which I can do, while 
I have no name. Here is more of the 
plaguy comforts of going anonymous, that 
one can neither serve one's friend nor one's 
country. Damn it, a man had better be 
without a nose, than without a name. I will 
not live long in this mutilated, dismembered 
state ; I will to Melesinda this instant, and 
try to forget these vexations. Melesinda ! 
there is music in the name ; but then, hang it ! 
there is none in mine to answer to it. [Exit. 

{While Me. H. has been speaking, two Gentlemen have been 
observing him curiously) 

1st Gent. "Who the devil is this extra- 
ordinary personage 1 

2d Gent. Who ? Why 'tis Mr. H. 

1st Gent. Has he no more name ? 

2d Gent. None that has yet transpired. 
No more ! why that single letter has been 
enough to inflame the imaginations of all the 
ladies in Bath. He has been here but a 
fortnight, and is already received into all the 
first families. 

1st Gent. Wonderful ! yet, nobody know 
who he is, or where he comes from ! 

2d Gent. He is vastly rich, gives away 
money as if he had infinity ; dresses well, as 
you see ; and for address, the mothers are 
all dying for fear the daughters should get 
him ; and for the daughters, he may com- 
mand them as absolutely as . Melesinda, 

the rich heiress, 'tis thought, will carry him. 

1st Gent. And is it possible that a mere 
anonymous. — 

2d Gent. Phoo ! that is the charm. — Who 
is he 1 and what is he 1 and what is his 



name 1 The man with the great nose on 

his face never excited more of the gaping 
passion of wonderment in the dames of 
Strasburg, than this new-comer, with the 
single letter to his name, has lighted up 
among the wives and maids of Bath : his 
simply having lodgings here, draws more 
visiters to the house than an election. Come 
with me to the Parade, and I will show you 
more of him. [Exeunt. 

Scene in the Street. Mr. H. walking, Belvil 



Belvil. My old Jamaica schoolfellow, that 
I have not seen for so many years 1 it must 
— it can be no other than Jack {going up to 
him). My dear Ho 

Mr. H. {Stopping his mouth). Ho- ! the 

devil, hush. 

Belvil. Why sure it is — 

Mr. H. It is, it is your old friend Jack, 
that shall be nameless. 
, Belvil. My dear Ho 

Mr. H. {Stopping him). Don't name it. 

Belvil. Name what 1 

Mr. H. My curst unfortunate name. I 
have reasons to conceal it for a time. 

Belvil. I understand you — Creditors, Jack 1 

Mr. H. No, I assure you. 

Belvil. Snapp'd up a ward, peradventure, 
and the whole Chancery at your heels ? 

Mr. H. I don't use to travel with such 
cumbersome luggage. 

Belvil. You ha'n't taken a purse ? 

Mr. H. To relieve you at once from all 
disgraceful conjecture, you must know, 'tis 
nothing but the sound of my name. 

Belvil. Eidiculous ! 'tis true yours is none 
of the most romantic ; but what can that 
signify in a man 1 

Mr. H. You must understand that I am in 
some credit with the ladies. 

Belvil. With the ladies ! 

Mr. H. And truly I think not without 
some pretensions. My fortune — 

Belvil. Sufficiently splendid, if I may judge 
from your appearance. 

Mr. H. My figure — 

Belvil. Airy, gay, and imposing. 

Mr. H. My parts — 

Belvil. Bright. 

Mr. H. My conversation — 

Belvil. Equally remote from flippancy and 
taciturnity. 



p p 2 



580 



MR. H- 



A FARCE. 



Mr. H. But then my name — damn my name ! 

Belvil. Childish! 

Mr. H. Not so. Oh, Belvil, you are blest 
with one which sighing virgins may repeat 
without a blush, and for it change the 
paternal. But what virgin of any delicacy 
(and I require some in a wife) would endure 
to be called Mrs. 1 

Belvil. Ha, ha, ha ! most absurd. Did 
not Clementina Falconbridge, the romantic 
Clementina Falconbridge, fancy Tommy 
Potts ? and Eosabella Sweetlips sacrifice 
her mellifluous appellative to Jack Deady 1 
Matilda her cousin married a Gubbins, and 
her sister Amelia a Clutterbuck. 

Mr. H. Potts is tolerable, Deady is suffer- 
able, Gubbins is bearable, and Clutterbuck 
is endurable, but Ho 

Belvil. Hush, Jack, don't betray yourself. 
But you are really ashamed of the family 
name ? 

Mr. H. Ay, and of my father that begot 
me, and my father's father, and all their 
forefathers that have borne it since the 
Conquest. 

Belvil. But how do you know the women 
are so squeamish 1 

Mr. H. I have tried them. I tell you 
there is neither maiden of sixteen nor widow 
of sixty but would turn up their noses at it. 
I have been refused by nineteen virgins, 
twenty-nine relicts, and two old maids. 

Belvil. That was hard indeed, Jack. 

Mr. H. Parsons have stuck at publishing 
the banns, because they averred it was a 
heathenish name ; parents have lingered 
their consent, because they suspected it was 
a fictitious name ; and rivals have declined 
my challenges, because they pretended it was 
an ungentlemanly name. 

Belvil. Ha, ha, ha ! but what course do 
you mean to pursue 1 

Mr. H. To engage the affections of some 
generous girl, who will be content to take 
me as Mr. H. 

Belvil. Mr. H. 

Mr. H. Yes, that is the name I go by 
here ; you know one likes to be as near the 
truth as possible. 

Belvil. Certainly. But what then 1 to get 
her to consent — 

Mr. H. To accompany me to the altar 

without a name in short, to suspend her 

curiosity (that is all) till the moment the 



priest shall pronounce the irrevocable charm, 
which makes two names one. 

Belvil. And that name — and then she 

must be pleased, ha, Jack ? 

Mr. H. Exactly such a girl it has-been my 

fortune to meet with ; hark'e (whispers) 

(musing). Yet, hang it ! 'tis cruel to betray 
her confidence. 

Belvil. But the family name, Jack 1 

Mr. H. As you say, the family name must 
be perpetuated. 

Belvil. Though it be but a homely one. 

Mr. H. True ; but come, I will show you 
the house where dwells this credulous melt- 
ing fair. 

Belvil. Ha, ha ! my old friend dwindled 
down to one letter. [Exeunt. 



Scene. — An Apartment in Melesinda's House. 
Melesinda sola, as if musing. 

Melesinda. H, H, H. Sure it must be 
something precious by its being concealed. 
It can't be Homer, that is a Heathen's name ; 
nor Horatio, that is no surname ; what if it 
be Hamlet 1 the Lord Hamlet — pretty, and 
I his poor distracted Ophelia ! No, 'tis none 
of these ; 'tis Harcourt or Hargrave, or some 
such sounding name, or Howard, high-born 
Howard, that would do ; maybe it is Harley, 
methinks my H. resembles Harley, the 
feeling Harley. But I hear him ! and from 
his own lips I will once for ever be resolved. 

Enter Mr. H. 

Mr. H. My dear Melesinda. 

Melesinda. My dear H. that is all you give 
me power to swear allegiance to, — to be 
enamoured of inarticulate sounds, and call 
with sighs upon an empty letter. But I 
will know. 

Mr. H. My dear Melesinda, press me no 
more for the disclosure of that, which in the 
face of day so soon must be revealed. Call 
it whim, humour, caprice, in me. Suppose 
I have sworn an oath, never, till the cere- 
mony of our marriage is over, to disclose my 
true name. 

Melesinda. Oh ! H, H, H. I cherish here 
a fire of restless curiosity which consumes 
me. 'Tis appetite, passion, call it whim, 
caprice, in me. Suppose I have sworn, I 
must and will know it this very night. 



MR. H- 



A FARCE. 



581 



Mr. H. Ungenerous Melesinda ! I implore 
you to give me this one proof of your 
confidence. The holy vow once past, your 
H. shall not have a secret to withhold. 

Melesinda. My H. has overcome : his 
Melesinda shall pine away and die, before 
she dare express a saucy inclination ; but 
what shall I call you till we are married ? 

Mr. H. Call me ? call me anything, call me 
Love. Love ! ay Love : Love will do very well. 

Melesinda. How many syllables is it, Love ? 

Mr. H. How many ? ud, that is coming to 
the question with a vengeance ! One, two, 
three, four, — what does it signify how many 
syllables ? 

Melesinda. How many syllables, Love ? 

Mr. II. My Melesinda's mind, I had hoped, 
was superior to this childish curiosity. 

Melesinda. How many letters are there 

in it ? [Exit Mr. H. followed by Melesinda, 

repeating the question. 

Scene. — A Room in the Inn. Two Waiters 



1st Waiter. Sir Harbottle Hammond, you 
may depend upon it. 

2d Waiter. Sir Harry Hardcastle, I tell you. 

1st Waiter. The Hammonds of Huntingdon- 
shire. 

2d Waiter. The Hardcastles of Hertford- 
shire. 

1st Waiter. The Hammonds. 

2d Waiter. Don't tell me : does not 
Hardcastle begin with an H ? 

1st Waiter. So does Hammond for that 
matter. 

2d Waiter. Faith, so it does if you go to 
spell it. I did not think of that. I begin to 
to be of your opinion ; he is certainly a 
Hammond. 

1st Waiter. Here comes Susan Chamber- 
maid : may be she can tell. 

Enter Susan. 

Both. Well, Susan, have you heard any- 
thing who the strange gentleman is ? 

Susan. Haven't you heard ? it's all come 

out ! Mrs. Guesswell, the parson's widow, 

has been here about it. I overheard her 

! talking in confidence to Mrs. Setter and 

I Mrs. Pointer, and she says they were holding 

a sort of a cummitty about it. 

Both. What? What? 

Susan. There can't be a doubt of it, she 



says, what from his jigger and the appearance 
he cuts, and his sumpshous way of living, 
and above all from the remarkable circum- 
stance that his surname should begin with 
an H, that he must be — 

Both. Well, well— 

Susan. Neither more nor less than the 
Prince. 

Both. Prince ! 

Susan. The Prince of Hessey-Cassel in 
disguise. 

Both. Very likely, very likely. 

Susan. Oh, there can't be a doubt on it. 
Mrs. Guesswell says she knows it. 

1st Waiter. Now if we could be sure that 
the Prince of Hessy what-do-you-call-him 
was in England on his travels. 

2d Waiter. Get a newspaper. Look in the 
newspapers. 

Susan. Fiddle of the newspapers ; who 
else can it be ? 

Both. That is very true (gravely). 

Enter Landlord. 

Landlord. Here, Susan, James, Philip, 
where are you all? The London coach is 
come in, and there is Mr. Fillaside, the fat 
passenger, has been bawling for somebody 
to help him off with his boots. 

[The Chambermaid and Waiters slip out. 

(Solus.) The house is turned upside down 
since the strange gentleman came into it. 
Nothing but guessing and speculating, and 
speculating and guessing ; waiters and 
chambermaids getting into corners and 
speculating ; ostlers and stable-boys specu- 
lating in the yard ; I believe the very horses 
in the stable are speculating too, for there 
they stand in a musing posture, nothing for 
them to eat, and not seeming to care whether 
they have anything or no ; and after all 
what does it signify ? I hate such curious 

odso, I must take this box up into his 

bed-room — he charged me to see to it 

myself ; — I hate such inquisitive 1 

wonder what is in it — it feels heavy ; (reads) 
" Leases, title-deeds, wills." Here now a 
man might satisfy his curiosity at once. 
Deeds must have names to them, so must 
leases and wills. But I wouldn't — no I 

wouldn't it is a pretty box too — prettily 

dovetailed — I admire the fashion of it much. 
But I'd cut my fingers off, before I'd do such 
a dirty — what have I to do — curse the 



582 



ME. H ,- A FARCE. 



keys, how they rattle ! — rattle in one's 
pockets — the keys and the half-pence {takes 
out a hunch and plays with them). I wonder 
if any of these would fit ; one might just try 
them, but I wouldn't lift up the lid if they 
did. Oh no, what should I be the richer for 
knowing 1 (All this time he tries the keys one 
by one). What's his name to me 1 a thousand 
names begin with an H. I hate people that 
are always prying, poking and prying into 
things, — thrusting their finger into one place 
— a mighty little hole this — and their keys 
into another. Oh Lord ! little rusty fits it ! 
but what is that to me 1 I wouldn't go to — 
no, no — but it is odd little rusty should just 
happen — ( While he is turning up the lid of 
the box, Mr.H. enters behind him unperceived.) 

Mr. H. "What are you about, you dog 1 

Landlord. Oh Lord, Sir ! pardon ; no thief, 
as I hope to be saved. Little Pry was always 
honest. 

Mr. H. What else could move you to open 
that box ? 

Landlord. Sir, don't kill me, and I will 
confess the whole truth. This box happened 
to be lying — that is, I happened to be carrying 
this box, and I happened to have my keys 
out, and so — little rusty happened to fit 

Mr. H. So little rusty happened to fit ! — 
and would not a rope fit that rogue's neck 1 
I see the papers have not been moved : all 
is safe, but it was as well to frighten him a 
little (aside). Come, Landlord, as I think 
you honest, and suspect you only intended 
to gratify a little foolish curiosity 

Landlord. That was all, Sir, upon my 
veracity. 

Mr. H. For this time I will pass it over. 
Your name is Pry, I think ? 

Landlord. Yes, Sir, Jeremiah Pry, at your 
service. 

Mr. H. An apt name : you have a prying 
temper — I mean, some little curiosity — a 
sort of inquisitiveness about you. 

Landlord. A natural thirst after know- 
ledge you may call it, Sir. When a boy, I 
was never easy but when I was thrusting 
up the lids of some of my school-fellows' 
boxes, — not to steal anything, upon my 
honour, Sir, — only to see what was in them ; 
have had pens stuck in my eyes for peeping 
through key-holes after knowledge ; could 
never see a cold pie with the legs dangling- 
out at top, but my fingers were for lifting 



up the crust, — just to try if it were pigeon 
or partridge, — for no other reason in the 
world. Surely I think my passion for nuts 
was owing to the pleasure of cracking the 
shell to get at something concealed, more 
than to any delight I took in eating the 
kernel. In short, Sir, this appetite has grown 
with my growth. 

Mr. H. You will certainly be hanged some 
day for peeping into some bureau or other, 
just to see what is in it. 

Landlord. That is my fear, Sir. The 
thumps and kicks I have had for peering 
into parcels, and turning of letters inside 
out, — just for curiosity! The blankets I 
have been made to dance in for searching 
parish registers for old ladies' ages, — just 
for curiosity ! Once I was dragged through 
a horse-pond, only for peeping into a closet 
that had glass doors to it, while my Lady 
Bluegarters was undressing, — ■ just for 
curiosity ! 

Mr. H. A very harmless piece of curiosity, 
truly ; and now, Mr. Pry, first have the 
goodness to leave that box with me, and 
then do me the favour to carry your curiosity 
so far, as to inquire if my servants are 
within. 

Landlord. I shall, Sir. Here, David, 
Jonathan, — I think I hear them coming, — 
shall make bold to leave you, Sir. [Exit. 

Mr. H. Another tolerable specimen of the 
comforts of going anonymous ! 

Enter Two Footmen. 

1st Footman. You speak first. 

2d Footman. No, you had better speak. 

1st Footman. You promised to begin. 

Mr. H. They have something to say to me. 
The rascals want their wages raised, I 
suppose ; there is always a favour to be 
asked when they come smiling. Well, poor 
rogues, service is but a hard bargain at the 
best. I think I must not be close with them. 
Well, David — well, Jonathan. 

1st Footman. We have served your honour 
faithfully 

2d Footman. Hope your honour won't take 
offence 

Mr. II. The old story, I suppose — wages ? 

1st Footman, That's not it, your honour. 

2d Footman. You speak. 

1st Footman. But if your honour would 
just be pleased to 



MR. H- 



A FARCE. 



2c? Footman. Only be pleased to 

Mr. H. Be quick with what you have to 
say, for I am in haste. 

1st Footman. Just to 

2d Footman. Let us know who it is ■ 

1st Footman. Who it is we have the honour 
to serve. . 

Mr. IT. Why me, me, me ; you serve me. 

2d Footman. Yes, Sir ; but we do not 
know who you are. 

Mr. IT. Childish curiosity ! do not you 
serve a rich master, a gay master, an 
indulgent master ? 

1st Footman. Ah, Sir ! the figure you make 
is to us, your poor servants, the principal 
mortification. 

2d Footman. When we get over a pot at 
the public-house, or in a gentleman's kitchen, 
or elsewhere, as poor servants must have 
their pleasures — when the question goes 
round, who is your master 1 and who do you 
serve ? and one says, I serve Lord So-and-so, 
and another, I am Squire Such-a-one's 
footman ■ 

1st Footman. We have nothing to say for 
it, but that we serve Mr. H. 

2d Footman. Or Squire H. 

Mr. H. Eeally you are a couple of pretty 
modest, reasonable personages ! but I hope 
you will take it as no offence, gentlemen, if, 
upon a dispassionate review of all that you 
have said, I think fit not to tell you any 
more of my name, than I have chosen for 
especial purposes to communicate to the rest 
of the world. 

1st Footman. Why, then, Sir, you may suit 
yourself. 

2d Footman. We tell .you plainly, we 
cannot stay. 

1st Footman. We don't choose to serve 
Mr. H. 

2d Footman. Nor any Mr. or Squire in the 
alphabet 

1st Footman. That lives in Chris-cross Row. 

Mr. H. Go, for a couple of ungrateful, 
inquisitive, senseless rascals ! Go hang, 
starve, or drown! — Eogues, to speak thus 
irreverently of the alphabet — I shall live to 
see you glad to serve old Q — to curl the wig 
of great S — adjust the dot of little i — stand 
behind the chair of X, Y, Z — wear the 
livery of Etcsetera — and ride behind the 

Sulky of And-by-itself-and ! [Exit in a rage. 



ACT II. 

Scene. — A handsome Apartment well lighted, Tea, 
Cards, &c. — A large party of Ladies and 
Gentlemen ; among them Melesinda. 

1st Lady. I wonder when the charming 
man will be here. 

2d Lady. He is a delightful creature ! 
Such a polish 

3d Lady. Such an air in all that he does 
or says 

4th Lady. Yet gifted with a strong under- 
standing 

5th Lady. But has your ladyship the 
remotest idea of what his true name is ? 

1st Lady. They say, his very servants do 
not know it. His French valet, that has 
lived with him these two years 

2d Lady. There, Madam, I must beg leave 

to set you right : my coachman 

• 1st Lady. I have it from the very best 
authority : my footman 

2d Lady, Then, Madam, you have set your 
servants on 

1st Lady. No, Madam, I would scorn any 
such little mean ways of coming at a secret. 
For my part, I don't think any secret of that 
consequence. 

2d Lady. That's just like me ; I make a 
rule of troubling my head with nobody's 
business but my own. 

Melesinda. But then, she takes care to 
make everybody's business her own, and so 
to justify herself that way (Aside.) 

1st Lady. My dear Melesinda, you look 
thoughtful. 

Melesinda. Nothing. 

2d Lady. Give it a name. 

Melesinda. Perhaps it is nameless. 

1st Lady. As the object Come, never 

blush, nor deny it, child. Bless me, what 
great ugly thing is that, that dangles at 
your bosom ? 

Melesinda. This 1 it is a cross : how do 
you like it 1 

2d Lady. A cross ! Well, to me it looks 
for all the world like a great staring H. 

(Here a general laugh.) 

Melesinda. Malicious creatures ! Believe 
me it is a cross, and nothing but a cross. 

1st Lady. A cross, I believe, you would 
willingly hang at. 



584 



MR. H- 



A FARCE. 



Melesinda. Intolerable spite ! 



(Mr. H. is announced.) 
Fnter Mr. H. 

1st Lady. O, Mr. H., we are so glad 

2d Lady. We have been so dull 

'3d Lady. So perfectly lifeless You owe 

it to us, to be more than commonly enter- 
taining. 

Mr. H. Ladies, this is so obliging 

4th Lady. O, Mr, H., those ranunculas you 
said were dying, pretty things, they have got 
up 

6th Lady. I have worked that sprig you 
commended — I want you to come 

Mr. H. Ladies 

6th Lady. I have sent* for that piece of 
music from London. 

Mr. H. The Mozart — {seeing Melesinda) 
— Melesinda ! 

Several Ladies at once. Nay, positively, 
Melesinda, you shan't engross him all to 
yourself. 

[While the Ladies are pressing about Mr. H., the gentle- 
men show signs of displeasure. 

1st Gent. "We shan't be able to edge in a 
word, now this coxcomb is come. 

2d Gent. Damn him, T will affront him. 

1st Gent. Sir, with your leave, I have a 
word to say to one of these ladies. 

2d Gent. If we could be heard 

[The Ladies pay no attention but to Mr. H. 

Mr. H. You see, gentlemen, how the matter 
stands. {Hums an air.) I am not my own 
master: positively I exist and breathe but 
to be agreeable to these Did you speak ? 

1st Gent. And affects absence of mind — 
Puppy ! 

Mr: H. "Who spoke of absence of mind ; did 
you, Madam V How do you do, Lady "Wear- 
well — how do ? I did not see your ladyship 
before — what was I about to say — O — absence 
of mind. I am the most unhappy dog in 
that way, sometimes spurt out the strangest 
things — the most mal-a-propos — without 
meaning to give the least offence, upon 
my honour— sheer absence of mind — things 
I would have given the world not to have said. 

1st Gent. Do you hear the coxcomb ? 

1st Lady. Great wits, they say 

2d Lady. Your fine geniuses are most 
given 

3d Lady. Men of bright parts are com- 
monly too vivacious 



Mr. H. But you shall hear. I was to dine 
the other day at a great Nabob's that must 
be nameless, who, between ourselves, is 
strongly suspected of — being very rich, that's 
all. John, my valet, who knows my foible, 
cautioned me, while he was dressing me, as 
he usually does where he thinks there's a 
danger of my committing a lapsus, to take 
care in my conversation how I made any 
allusion direct or indirect to presents — you 
understand me ? I set out double charged 
with my fellow's consideration and my own ; 
and, to do myself justice, behaved with toler- 
able circumspection for the first half-hour or 
so — till at last a gentleman in company, who 
was indulging a free vein of raillery at the 
expense of the ladies, stumbled upon that 
expression of the poet, which calls them 
" fair defects." 

1st Lady. It is Pope, I believe, who says it. 

Mr. H. No, Madam ; Milton. "Where was 
I ? Oh, "fair defects." This gave occasion to 
a critic in company, to deliver his opinion on 
the phrase — that led to an enumeration of 
all the various words which might have been 
used instead of " defect," as want, absence, 
poverty, deficiency, lack. This moment I, 
who had not been attending to the progress 
of the argument, (as the denouement will 
show) starting suddenly up out of one of my 
reveries, by some unfortunate connexion of 
ideas, which the last fatal word had excited, 
the devil put it into my head to turn round 
to the Nabob, who was sitting next me, and 
in a very marked manner (as it seemed to 
the company) to put the question to him, 
Pray, Sir, what may be the exact value of a 
lack of rupees ? You may guess the confusion 
which followed. 

1st Lady. "What a distressing circumstance ! 

2d Lady. To a delicate mind 

3d Lady. How embarrassing 

4th Lady. 1 declare, I quite pity you. 

1st Gent. Puppy ! 

Mr. H. A Baronet at the table, seeing my 
dilemma, jogged my elbow ; and a good- 
natured Duchess, who does everything with 
a grace peculiar to herself, trod on my toes 
at that instant : this brought me to myself, 
and — covered with blushes, and pitied by all 
the ladies — I withdrew. 

1st Lady. How charmingly he tells a story. 

2d Lady. But how distressing ! 

Mr. H. Lord Squandercounsel, who is my 



MR. H , A FARCE. 



585 



particular friend, was pleased to rally me in 
his inimitable way upon it next day. I shall 
never forget a sensible thing he said on the 
occasion — speaking of absence of mind, my 
foible — says he, my dear Hogs 

Several Ladies. Hogs what — ha — ■ 

Mr. H. My dear Hogsflesh — my name — 
{here a universal scream) — O my cursed unfor- 
tunate tongue ! — H. I mean — where was I ? 

1st Lady. Filthy — abominable ! 

2d Lady. Unutterable ! 

3d Lady. Hogs foil ! 

4th Lady. Disgusting ! 

5th Lady. Vile ! 

6th Lady. Shocking ! 

1st Lady. Odious ! 

2d Lady. Hogs pah ! 

3d Lady. A smelling bottle — look to Miss 
Melesinda. Poor thing ! it is no wonder. 
You had better keep off from her, Mr. 
Hogsflesh, and not be pressing about her in 
her circumstances. 

1st Gent. Good time of day to you, Mr. 
Hogsflesh. 

2d Gent. The compliments of the season to 
you, Mr. Hogsflesh. 

Mr. H. This is too much — flesh and blood 
cannot endure it. 

1st Gent. What flesh ?— hog's-flesh 1 

2d Gent. How he sets up his bristles ! 

Mr. H. Bristles ! 

1st Gent. He looks as fierce as a hog in 
armour. 

Mr. H. A hog ! Madam ! {here he 

severally accosts the Ladies, who by turns repel 
him.) 

1st Lady. Extremely obliged to you for 
your attentions ; but don't want a partner. 

2d Lady. Greatly flattered by your pre- 
ference : but believe I shall remain single. 

3d Lady. Shall always acknowledge your 
politeness ; but have no thoughts of altering 
my condition. 

4th Lady. Always be happy to respect you 
as a friend ; but you must not look for 
anything further. 

5th Lady. No doubt of your ability to 
make any woman happy ; but have no 
thoughts of changing my name. 

6th Lady. Must tell you, Sir, that if, by 
your insinuations, you think to prevail with 
me, you have got the wrong sow by the ear. 
Does he think any lady would go to pig with 
him? 



Old Lady. Must beg you to be less parti- 
cular in your addresses to me. Does he take 
me for a Jew, to long after forbidden meats ? 

Mr. LI. I shall go mad ! — to be refused by 
old Mother Damnable — she that's so old, 
nobody knows whether she was ever married 
or no, but passes for a maid by courtesy ; 
her juvenile exploits being beyond the 
farthest stretch of tradition ! — old Mother 
Damnable ! 

[Exeunt all, either pitying or seeming to avoid him. 

Scene. — The street. 
Belvil and another Gentleman. 

Belvil. Poor Jack, I am really sorry for 
him. The account which you give me of 
his mortifying change of reception at the 
assembly, would be highly diverting, if it 
gave me less pain to hear it. With all his 
amusing absurdities, and amongst them not 
the least, a predominant desire to be thought 
well of by the fair sex, he has an abundant 
share of good-nature, and is a man of 
honour. Notwithstanding all that has hap- 
pened, Melesinda may do worse than take 
him yet. But did the women resent it so 
deeply as you say ? 

Gent. O, intolerably — they fled him as 
fearfully when 'twas once blown, as a man 
would be avoided, who was suddenly dis- 
covered to have marks of the plague, and as 
fast ; when before they had been ready to 
devour the foolishest thing he could say. 

Belvil. Ha ! ha ! so frail is the tenure by 
which these women's favourites commonly 
hold their envied pre-eminence. Well, I 
must go find him out and comfort him. I 
suppose, I shall find him at the inn. 

Gent. Either there or at Melesinda's — 

Adieu ! [Exeunt. 

Scene. — Mr. H 's Apartment. 

Mr. H. {solus.) Was ever anything so 
mortifying 1 to be refused by old Mother 
Damnable ! — with such parts and address, — 
and the little squeamish devils, to dislike me 
for a name, a sound. — Oh my cursed name ! 
that it was something I could be revenged 
on ! if it were alive, that I might tread upon 
it, or crush it, or pummel it, or kick it, or spit 
it out — for it sticks in my throat, and will 
choke me. 

My plaguy ancestors ! if they had left me 
but a Van, or a Mac, or an Irish O', it had 



586 



MR. H- 



A FARCE. 



been something to qualify it. — Mynheer Van 
Hogsflesh, — or Sawney Mac Hogsflesh, — or 
Sir Phelim O'Hogsflesh, — but downright 

blunt . If it had been any other 

name in the world, I could have borne it. 
If it had been the name of a beast, as Bull, 
Fox, Kid, Lamb, Wolf, Lion ; or of a bird, 
as Sparrow, Hawk, Buzzard, Daw, Finch, 
Nightingale ; or of a fish, as Sprat, Herring, 
Salmon ; or the name of a thing, as Ginger, 
Hay, Wood ; or of a colour, as Black, Grey, 
White, Green ; or of a sound, as Bray ; 
or the name of a month, as March, May ; 
or of a place, as Barnet, Baldock, Hitchen ; 
or the name of a coin, as Farthing, 
Penny, Twopenny ; or of a profession, 
as Butcher, Baker, Carpenter, Piper, Fisher, 
Fletcher, Fowler, Glover ; or a Jew's 
name, as Solomons, Isaacs, Jacobs ; or a 
personal name, as Foot, Leg, Crookshanks, 
Heaviside, Sidebottom, Longbottom, Rams- 
bottom, Winterbottom ; or a long name, as 
Blanchenhagen, or Blanchenhausen ; or a 
short name, as Crib, Crisp, Crips, Tag, Trot, 
Tub, Phips, Padge, Papps, or Prig, or Wig, 
or Pip, or Trip ; Trip had been something, 

but Ho . ( Walks about in great agitation 

— recovering his calmness a little, sits down) 

Farewell the most distant thoughts of 
marriage ; the finger-circling ring, the purity- 
figuring glove, the envy-pining bridemaids, 
the wishing parson, and the simpering clerk. 
Farewell the ambiguous blush-raising joke, 
the titter-provoking pun, the morning- 
stirring drum. — No son of mine shall exist, 
to bear my ill-fated name. No nurse come 
chuckling, to tell me it is a boy. No midwife, 
leering at me from under the lids of pro- 
fessional gravity. I dreamed of caudle. — 
{Sings in a melancholy tone) Lullaby, 
Lullaby, — hush-a-by-baby — how like its papa 
it is ! — {Makes motions as if he was nursing) 
And then, when grown up, " Is this your son, 
Sir ? " " Yes, Sir, a poor copy of me, a sad 
young dog, — just what his father was at his 
age, — I have four more at home." Oh! oh! oh! 

Enter Landlord. 

Mr. II. Landlord, I must pack up to- 
night ; you will see all my things got ready. 

Landlord. Hope your Honour does not 
intend to quit the Blue Boar, — sorry any- 
thing has happened. 

Mr. II. He has heard it all. 



Landlord. Your Honour has had some 
mortification, to be sure, as a man may say ; 
you have brought your pigs to a fine market. 

Mr. H. Pigs ! 

Landlord. What then % take old Pry's 
advice, and never mind it. Don't scorch 
your crackling for 'em, Sir. 

Mr. H. Scorch my crackling ! a queer 
phrase ; but I suppose he don't mean to 
affront me. 

Landlord. What is done can't be undone ; 
you can't make a silken purse out of a sow's 
ear. 

Mr. H. As you say, Landlord, thinking of 
a thing does but augment it. 

Landlord. Does but hogment it, indeed, Sir. 

Mr. H. Hogment it ! damn it, I said 
augment it. 

Landlord. Lord, Sir, 'tis not everybody has 
such gift of fine phrases as your Honour, that 
can lard his discourse — 

Mr. H. Lard ! 

Landlord. Suppose they do smoke you — 

Mr. H. Smoke me ! 

Landlord. One of my phrases ; nevermind 
my words, Sir, my meaning is good. We all 
mean the same thing, only you express 
yourself one way, and I another, that's all. 
The meaning's the same ; it is all pork. 

Mr. H. That's another of your phrases, I 

presume. [Bell rings, and the Landlord called for. 

Landlord. Anon, anon. 

Mr. H. Oh, I wish I were anonymous. 

[Exeunt several ways. 

Scene. — Melesinda's Apartment. 
Melesinda and Maid. 

Maid. Lord, Madam ! before I'd take on 
as you do about a foolish — what signifies a 
name 1 Hogs — Hogs — what is it — is just as 
good as any other, for what I see. 

Melesinda. Ignorant creature ! yet she is 
perhaps blest in the absence of those ideas, 
which, while they add a zest to the few 
pleasures which fall to the lot of superior 
natures to enjoy, doubly edge the 

Maid. Superior natures ! a fig ! If he's 
hog by name, he's not hog by nature, that 
don't follow — his name don't make him 
anything, does it 1 He don't grunt the more 
for it, nor squeak, that ever I hear ; he 
likes his victuals out of a plate, as other 
Christians do ; you never see him go to the 
trough 



MR. H- 



A FARCE. 



587 



Melesinda. Unfeeling wretch ! yet possibly 
her intentions 

Maid. For instance, Madam, my name is 
Finch—Betty Finch. I don't whistle the 
more for that, nor long after canary-seed 
while I can get good wholesome mntton — 
no, nor you can't catch me by throwing salt 
on my tail. If you come to that, hadn't I a 
young man used to come after me, they said 
courted me — his name was Lion, Francis Lion, 
a tailor ; but though he was fond enough of 
me, for all that he never offered to eat me. 

Melesinda. How fortunate that the dis- 
covery has been made before it was too late ! 
Had I listened to his deceits, and, as the 
perfidious man had almost persuaded me, 
precipitated myself into an inextricable 
engagement before 

Maid. No great harm if you had. You'd 
only have bought a pig in a poke — and what 
then ? Oh, here he comes creeping 

Enter Me. H. abject. 
Go to her, Mr. Hogs — Hogs — Hogsbristles, 
what's your name ? Don't be afraid, man — 
don't give it up — she's not crying — only 
summat has made her eyes red — she has got 
a sty in her eye, I believe — {going). 
Melesinda. You are not going, Betty 1 
Maid. O, Madam, never mind me — I shall 
be back in the twinkling of a pig's whisker, 
as they say. [Exit. 

Mr. H. Melesinda, you behold before you 
a wretch who would have betrayed your 
confidence — but it was love that prompted 
him ; who would have trick'd you, by an 
unworthy concealment, into a participation 
of that disgrace which a superficial world 
has agreed to attach to a name — but with it 
you would have shared a fortune not con- 
temptible, and a heart — but 'tis over now. 
That name he is content to bear alone — to 
go where the persecuted syllables shall be no 
more heard, or excite no meaning — some 
spot where his native tongue has never 
penetrated, nor any of his countrymen have 
landed, to plant their unfeeling satire, their 
brutal wit, and national ill manners — where 
no Englishmen — {Here Melesinda, who has 
been pouting during this speech, fetches a deep 
sigh). Some yet undiscovered Otaheite, 
where witless, unapprehensive savages shall 
innocently pronounce the ill-fated sounds, 
and think them not inharmonious. 



Melesinda. Oh ! 

Mr. H. Who knows but among the female 
natives might be found 

Melesinda. Sir ! {raising her head?) 

Mr. H. One who would be more kind than 
— some Oberea — Queen Oberea. 

Melesinda. Oh ! 

Mr. H. Or what if I were to seek for 
proofs of reciprocal esteem among unpre- 
judiced African maids, in Monomotopa ? 

Enter Servant. 

Servant. Mr. Belvil. \mdt- 

Enter Belvil. 

Mr. H. Monomotopa {musing). 

Belvil. Heyday, Jack ! what means this 
mortified face ? nothing has happened, I 
hope, between this lady and you ? I beg 
pardon, Madam, but understanding my friend 
was with you, I took the liberty of seeking 
him here. Some little difference possibly 
which a third person can adjust — not a 
word. Will you, Madam, as this gentleman's 
friend, suffer me to be the arbitrator — 
strange — hark'ee, Jack, nothing has come 
out, has there ? you understand me. Oh, I 
guess how it is — somebody has got at your 
secret ; you haven't blabbed it yourself, 
have you ? ha ! ha ! ha ! I could find in 
my heart — Jack, what would you give me if 
I should relieve you ? 

Mr. H. No power of man can relieve me 
{sighs) ; but it must lie at the root, gnawing 
at the root — here it will lie. 

Belvil. No power of man % not a common 
man, I grant you : for instance, a subject — 
it's out of the power of any subject. 

Mr. H. Gnawing at the root— there it will lie. 

Belvil. Such a thing has been known as a 
name to be changed ; but not by a subject — 
{shows a Gazette). 

Mr. H. Gnawing at the root — {suddenly 
snatches the paper out of Belvil's hand) — ha ! 
pish ! nonsense ! give it me — what ! {reads) 
promotions, bankrupts — a great many bank- 
rupts this week — there it will lie. {Lays it 
doivn, takes it up again, and reads) " The 
King has been graciously pleased" — gnawing 
at the root — "graciously pleased to grant 
unto John Hogsflesh,"— the devil— "Hogs- 
flesh, Esq., of Sty Hall, in the county of 
Hants, his royal licence and authority " — O 
Lord'.' O Lord ! — "that he and his issue" — 
me and my issue — "may take and use the 



588 



MR. H- 



A FARCE. 



surname and arms of Bacon" — Bacon, the 
surname and arms of Bacon — " in pursuance 
of an injunction contained in the last will 
and testament of Nicholas Bacon, Esq., his 
late uncle, as well as out of grateful respect 
to his memory : " — grateful respect ! poor 

old soul here's more — " and that such 

arms may be first duly exemplified " — they 
shall, I will take care of that — " according to 
the laws of arms, and recorded in the 
Herald's Office." 

Belvil. Come, Madam, give me leave to 
put my own interpretation upon your silence, 
and to plead for my friend, that now that 
only obstacle which seemed to stand in the 
way of your union is removed, you will suffer 
me to complete the happiness which my news 
seems to have brought him, by introducing 
him with a new claim to your favour, by the 
name of Mr. Bacon. {Takes their hands and 
joins them, which Melesinda seems to give 
consent to with a smile.) 

Mr. H. Generous Melesinda ! my dear 
friend — " he and his issue," me and my issue ! 
— O Lord !— 

Belvil. I wish you joy, Jack, with all my 
heart. 

Mr. H. Bacon, Bacon, Bacon — how odd it 
sounds ! I could never be tired of hearing it. 
There was Lord Chancellor Bacon. Methinks 
I have some of the Yerulam blood in me 
already. — Methinks I could look through 
Nature — there was Friar Bacon, a conjuror, 
— I feel as if I could conjure too 

Enter a Servant. 

Servant. Two young ladies and an old lady 
are at the door, inquiring if you see company, 
Madam. 

Mr. H. " Surname and arms " — 
Melesinda. Show them u\x — My dear Mr. 
Bacon, moderate your joy. 

Enter three Ladies, being part of those who were at 
the Assembly. 

1st Lady. My dear Melesinda, how do you 
do? 

2nd Lady. How do you do ? "We have 
been so concerned for you 



Old Lady. We have been so concerned — 
{seeing him) — Mr. Hogsflesh 

Mr. II. There's no such person — nor there 
never was — nor 'tis not fit there should be 
— " surname and arms " — — 

Belvil. It is true what my friend would 
express ; we have been all in a mistake, 
ladies. Very true, the name of this gen- 
tleman was what you call it, but it is so no 
longer. The succession to the long-contested 
Bacon estate is at length decided, and with 
it my friend succeeds to the name of his 
deceased relative. 

Mr. H. "His Majesty has been graciously 
pleased " — 

1st Lady. I am sure we all join in hearty 
congratulation — {sighs). 

2nd Lady. And wish you joy with all our 
hearts — {heigh ho /) 

Old Lady. And hope you will enjoy the 
name and estate many years — {cries). 

Belvil. Ha ! ha ! ha ! mortify them a little, 
Jack. 

1st Lady. Hope you intend to stay 

2nd Lady. With us some time 

Old Lady. In these parts 

Mr. H. Ladies, for your congratulations I 
thank you ; for the favours you have lavished 
on me, and in particular for this lady's 
{turning to the old Lady) good opinion, I rest 
your debtor. As to any future favours — 
{accosts them severally in the order in which he 
was refused by them at the assembly) — Madam, 
shall always acknowledge your politeness ; 
but at present, you see, I am engaged with 
a partner. Always be happy to respect you 
as a friend, but you must not look for any- 
thing further. Must beg of you to be less 
particular in your addresses to me. Ladies 
all, with this piece of advice, of Bath and you 

Your ever grateful servant takes his leave. 
Lay your plans surer when you plot to 

grieve ; 
See, while you kindly mean to mortify 
Another, the wild arrow do not fly, 
And gall yourself. For once you've been 

mistaken ; 
Your shafts have miss'd their aim — Hogs- 
flesh has saved his Bacon. 



DEDICATION.* 

TO S. T. COLERIDGE, ESQ. 



[y dear Coleridge, 



You will smile to see the slender labours of your friend designated by the title of 
WorTcs ; but such was the wish of the gentlemen who have kindly undertaken the trouble of 
collecting them, and from their judgment could be no appeal. 

It would be a kind of disloyalty to offer to any one but yourself a volume containing the 
early pieces, which were first published among your poems, and were fairly derivatives from you 
and them. My friend Lloyd and myself came into our first battle (authorship is a sort of warfare) 
under cover of the greater Ajax. How this association, which shall always be a dear and proud 
recollection to me, came, to be, broken, — who snapped the three-fold cord, — whether yourself (but I 
know that was not the case) grew ashamed of your former companions, — or whether (which is by 
much the more probable) some ungracious bookseller was author of the separation, — I cannot 
tell ; — but wanting the support of your friendly elm , (I speak for myself,) my vine has, 
since that time, put forth few or no fruits ; the sap (if ever it had any) has become, in a 
manner, dried up and extinct ; and you will find your old associate, in his second volume, 
dwindled into prose and criticism. 

Am I right in assuming this as the cause ? or is it that, as years come upon us, (except 
with some more healthy-happy spirits,) Life itself loses much of its Poetry for us ? we transcribe 
but what we read in the great volume of Nature ; and, as the characters grow dim, we turn off, and 
look another way. You yourself write no Christabels, nor Ancient Mariners, now. 

Some of the Sonnets, which shall be carelessly turned over by the general reader, may 
happily awaken in you remembrances, which I should be sorry should be ever totally extinct — 
the memory 

" Of summer days and of delightful years — " 

even so far back as to those old suppers at our old ********** I nn> — w hen life was fresh, and topics 



* Prefixed to the Author's works published in 1818. 



592 DEDICATION. 



exhaustlcss, — and you first kindled in me, if not the power, yet the love of poetry, and beauty, 

and kindliness. — 

" What words have I heard 
Spoke at the Mermaid ! " 

The world has given you many a shrewd nip and gird since that time, but either my eyes are 
grown dimmer, or my old friend is the same who stood before me three-and-twenty years ago — his 
hair a little confessing the hand of Time, but still shrouding the same capacious brain, — his heart not 
altered, scarcely where it " alteration finds." 

One piece, Coleridge, I have ventured to publish in its original form, though I have heard you 
complain of a certain over-imitation of the antique in the style. If I could see any way of getting 
rid of the objection, without re-writing it entirely, I would make some sacrifices. But when I wrote 
John Woodvil, I never proposed to myself any distinct deviation from common English. I had been 
newly initiated in the writings of our elder dramatists : Beaumont and Fletcher, and Massinger, were 
then a first love ; and from what I was so freshly conversant in, what wonder if my language imper- 
ceptibly took a tinge ? The very time which I had chosen for my story, that which immediately 
followed the Restoration, seemed to require, in an English play, that the English should be of rather 
an older cast than that of the precise year in which it happened to be written. I wish it had not 
some faults, which I can less vindicate than the language. 

I remain, 

My dear Coleridge, 

Yours, 
With unabated esteem, 

C. LAMB. 



POEMS. 



HESTER. 

When maidens such as Hester die, 
Their place ye may not well supply, 
Though ye among a thousand try, 
With vain endeavour. 

A month or more hath she been dead, 
Yet cannot I by force be led 
To think upon the wormy bed, 
And her together. 

A springy motion in her gait, 
A rising step, did indicate 
Of pride and joy no common rate, 
That flush'd her spirit. 

I know not by what name beside 
I shall it call : — if 'twas not pride, 
It was a joy to that allied, 
She did inherit. 

Her parents held the Quaker rule, 
Which doth the human feeling cool, 
But she was train' d in Nature's school, 
Nature had blest her. 

A waking eye, a prying mind, 
A heart that stirs, is hard to bind, 
A hawk's keen sight ye cannot blind, 
Ye could not Hester. 

My sprightly neighbour ! gone before 
To that unknown and silent shore, 
Shall we not meet, as heretofore, 
Some summer morning, 

When from thy cheerful eyes a ray 
Hath struck a bliss upon the day, 
A bliss that would not go away, 
A sweet fore-warning ? 



TO CHARLES LLOYD. 

AN UNEXPECTED VISITER. 

Alone, obscure, without a friend, 

A cheerless, solitary thing, 
Why seeks, my Lloyd, the stranger out ? 

What offering can the stranger bring 

Of social scenes, home-bred delights, 
That him in aught compensate may 

For Stowey's pleasant winter nights, 
For loves and friendships far away? 

In brief oblivion to forego 

Friends, such as thine, so justly dear, 
And be awhile with me content 

To stay, a kindly loiterer, here : 

For this a gleam of random joy 

Hath flush'd my unaccustom'd cheek ; 

And, with an o'ercharged bursting heart, 
I feel the thanks I cannot speak. 

Oh ! sweet are all the Muses' lays, 
And sweet the charm of matin bird ; 

'Twas long since these estranged ears 
The sweeter voice of friend had heard. 

The voice hath spoke : the pleasant sounds 

In memory's ear in after time 
Shall live, to sometimes rouse a tear, 

And sometimes prompt an honest rhyme. 

For, when the transient charm is fled, 
And when the little week is o'er, 

To cheerless, friendless, solitude 
When I return, as heretofore, 

Long, long, within my aching heart 
The grateful sense shall cherish'd be ; 

I'll think less meanly of myself, 

That Lloyd will sometimes think on me. 



QQ 



594 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



THE THREE FRIENDS. 

Three young maids in friendship met ; 

Mary, Martha, Margaret. 

Margaret was tall and fair, 

Martha shorter by a hair ; 

If the first excell'd in feature, 

Th' other's grace and ease were greater : 

Mary, though to rival loth, 

In their best gifts equall'd both. 

They a due proportion kept ; 

Martha mourn'd if Margaret wept ; 

Margaret joy'd when any good 

She of Martha understood ; 

And in sympathy for either 

Mary was outdone by neither. 

Thus far, for a happy space, 

All three ran an equal race, 

A most constant friendship proving, 

Equally beloved and loving ; 

All their wishes, joys, the same ; 

Sisters only not in name. 

Fortune upon each one smiled, 
As upon a fav'rite child ; 
Well to do and well to see 
Were the parents of all three ; 
Till on Martha's father crosses 
Brought a flood of worldly losses, 
And his fortunes rich and great 
Changed at once to low estate ; 
Under which o'erwhelming blow 
Martha's mother was laid low ; 
She a hapless orphan left, 
Of maternal care bereft, 
Trouble following trouble fast, 
Lay in a sick bed at last. 

In the depth, of her affliction 
Martha now receiv'd conviction, 
That a true and faithful friend 
Can the surest comfort lend. 
Night and day, with friendship tried, 
Ever constant by her side 
Was her gentle Mary found, 
With a love that knew no bound ; 
And the solace she imparted 
Saved her dying broken-hearted. 

In this scene of earthly things 
Not one good unmixed springs. 
That which had to Martha proved 
A sweet consolation, moved 
Different feelings of regret 
In the mind of Margaret. 
She, whose love was not less dear, 
Nor affection less sincere 



To her friend, was, by occasion 
Of more distant habitation, 
Fewer visits forced to pay her ; 
When no other cause did stay her ; 
And her Mary living nearer, 
Margaret began to fear her, 
Lest her visits day by day 
Martha's heart should steal away. 
That whole heart she ill could spare her, 
Where till now she'd been a sharer. 
From this cause with grief she pined, 
Till at length her health declined. 
All her cheerful spirits flew, 
Fast as Martha's gather'd new ; 
And her sickness waxed sore, 
Just when Martha felt no more. 

Mary, who had quick suspicion 
Of her alter' d friend's condition, 
Seeing Martha's convalescence 
Less demanded now her presence, 
With a goodness, built on reason, 
Changed her measures with the season ; 
Turn'd her steps from Martha's door, 
Went where she was wanted more ; 
All her care and thoughts were set 
Now to tend on Margaret. 
Maiy living 'twixt the two, 
From her home could oft'ner go, 
Either of her friends to see, 
Than they could together be. 

Truth explain'd is to suspicion 
Evermore the best physician. 
Soon her visits had the effect; 
All that Margaret did suspect, 
From her fancy vanish'd clean ; 
She was soon what she had been. 
And the colour she did lack 
To her faded cheek came back. 
Wounds which love had made her feel, 
Love alone had power to heal. 

. Martha, who the frequent visit 
Now had lost, and sore did miss it, 
With impatience waxed cross, 
Counted Margaret's gain her loss : 
All that Mary did confer 
On her friend, thought due to her. 
In her girlish bosom rise 
Little foolish jealousies, 
Which into such rancour wrought, 
She one day for Margaret sought ; 
Finding her by chance alone, 
She began, with reasons shown, 
To insinuate a fear 
Whether Mary was sincere ; 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



595 



Wish'd that Margaret would take heed 

"Whence her actions did proceed. 

For herself, she'd long been minded 

Not with outsides to be blinded ; 

All that pity and compassion, 

She believed was affectation ; 

In her heart she doubted whether 

Mary cared a pin for either. 

She could keep whole weeks at distance, 

And not know of their existence, 

While all things remain'd the same ; 

But, when some misfortune came, 

Then she made a great parade 

Of her sympathy and aid, — 

Not that she did really grieve, 

It was only make-believe, 

And she cared for nothing, so 

She might her fine feelings show, 

And get credit, on her part, 

For a soft and tender heart. 



With such speeches, smoothly made, 
She found methods to persuade 
Margaret (who being sore 
From the doubts she'd felt before, 
Was prepared for mistrust) 
To believe her reasons just ; 
Quite destroy'd that comfort glad, 
Which in Mary late she had ; 
Made her, in experience' spite, 
Think her friend a hypocrite, 
And resolve, with cruel scoff, 
To renounce and cast her off.. 



See how good turns are rewarded ! 
She of both is now discarded, 
Who to both had been so late 
Their support in low estate, 
All their comfort, and their stay — 
Now of both is cast away. 
But the league her presence cherish'd, 
Losing its best prop, soon perish'd ; 
She, that was a link to either, 
To keep them and it together, 
Being gone, the two (no wonder) 
That were left, soon fell asunder ; — 
Some civilities were kept, 
But the heart of friendship slept ; 
Love with hollow forms was fed, 
But the life of love lay dead : — 
A cold intercourse they held, 
After Mary was expell'd. 



Two long years did intervene 
Since they'd either of them seen, 
Or, by letter, any word 
Of their old companion heard, — 
When, upon a day once walking, 
Of indifferent matters talking, 
They a female figure met ; 
Martha said to Margaret, 
" That young maid in face does carry 
A resemblance strong of Mary." 
Margaret, at nearer sight, 
Own'd her observation right ; 
But they did not far proceed 
Ere they knew 'twas she indeed. 
She — but, ah ! how changed they view her 
From that person which they' knew her ! 
Her fine face disease had scarr'd, 
And its matchless beauty marr'd : — 
But enough was left to trace 
Mary's sweetness — Mary's grace. 
When her eye did first behold them, 
How they blush'd ! — but, when she told them, 
How on a sick bed she lay 
Months, while they had kept away, 
And had no inquiries made 
If she were alive or dead ; — 
How, for want of a true friend, 
She was brought near to her end, 
And was like so to have died, 
With no friend at her bed-side ; — 
How the constant irritation, 
Caused by fruitless expectation 
Of their coming, had extended 
The illness, when she might have mended, — 
Then, then, how did reflection 
Come on them with recollection ! 
All that she had done for them, 
How it did their fault condemn ! 

But sweet Mary, still the same, 
Kindly eased them of their shame ; 
Spoke to them with accents bland, 
Took them friendly by the hand ; 
Bound them both with promise fast, 
Not to speak of troubles past; 
Made them on the spot declare 
A new league of friendship there ; 
Which, without a word of strife, 
Lasted thenceforth long as life. 
Martha now and Margaret 
Strove who most should pay the debt 
Which they owed her, nor did vary 
Ever after from their Marv. 



QQ 2 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



TO A RIVER IN" WHICH A CHILD WAS 
DROWNED. 

Smiling river, smiling river, 

On thy bosom sun-beams play ; 
Though they're fleeting, and retreating, 

Thou hast more deceit than they. 

In thy channel, in thy channel, 

Choked with ooze and grav'lly stones, 

Deep immersed, and unhearsed, 

Lies young Edward's corse : his bones 

Ever whitening, ever whitening, 
As thy waves against them dash ; 

What thy torrent, in the current, 
Swallow' d, now it helps to wash. 

As if senseless, as if senseless 

Things had feeling in this case ; 
What so blindly, and unkindly, 

It destroy'd, it now does grace. 



THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES. 

I have had playmates, I have had companions, 
In my days of childhood, in my joyful school 



All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. 

I have been laughing, I have been carousing, 
Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies, 
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. 

I loved a love once, fairest among women ; 
Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her — 
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. 

I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man ; 
Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly ; 
Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces. 

Ghost-like I paced round the haunts of my child- 
hood. 
Earth seem'd a desert I was bound to traverse, 
Seeking to find the old familiar faces. 

Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother, 
Why wert not thou born in my father's dwelling'? 
So might we talk of the old familiar faces — 

How some they have died, and some they have 

left me, 
And some are taken from me ; all are departed ; 
Ail, all are gone, the old familiar faces. 



HELEN. 

High-born Helen, round your dwelling 
These twenty years I've paced in vain 

Haughty beauty, thy lover's duty 
Hath been to glory in his pain. 

High-born Helen, proudly telling 

Stories of thy cold disdain ; 
I starve, I die, now you comply, 

And I no longer can complain. 

These twenty years I've lived on tears, 
Dwelling for ever on a frown ; 

On sighs I've fed, your scorn my bread ; 
I perish now you kind are grown. 

Can I, who loved my beloved 
But for the scorn " was in her eye," 

Can I be moved for my beloved, 

When she " returns me sigh for sigh ? 

In stately pride, by my bed-side, 

High-born Helen's portrait's hung ; , 

Deaf to my praise, my mournful lays 
Are nightly to the portrait sung. 

To that I weep, nor ever sleep, 

Complaining all night long to her — 

Helen, grown old, no longer cold, 
Said, " You to all men I prefer." 



A VISION OF REPENTANCE. 

I saw a famous fountain, in my dream, 
Where shady path-ways to a valley led ; 

A weeping willow lay upon that stream, 

And all around the fountain brink were spread 

Wide-branching trees, with dark green leaf rich 
clad, 

Forming a doubtful twilight — desolate and sad. 

The place was such, that whoso enter'd in, 
Disrobed was of every earthly thought, 

And straight became as one that knew not sin, 
Or to the world's first innocence was brought ; 

Enseem'd it now, he stood on holy ground, 

In sweet and tender melancholy wrapt around. 

A most strange calm stole o'er my soothed sprite ; 

Long time I stood, and longer had I staid, 
When lo ! I saw, saw by the sweet moon-light, 

Which came in silence o'er that silent shade, 
Where, near the fountain, something like despair 
Made, of that weeping willow, garlands for her hair. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



597 



And eke with painful fingers she inwove 
Many an uncouth stem of savage thorn — 

r The willow garland, that was for her love, 
And these her bleeding temples would adorn." 

With sighs her heart nigh burst, salt tears fast fel 1, 

As mournfully she bended o'er that sacred well. 

.To whom when I addrest myself to speak, 
She lifted up her eyes, and nothing said ; 

The delicate red came mantling o'er her cheek, 
And, gath'ring up her loose attire, she fled 

To the dark covert of that woody shade, 

And in her goings seem'd a timid gentle maid. 

Revolving in my mind what this should mean, 
And why that lovely lady plained so ; 

Perplex'd in thought at that mysterious scene, 
And doubting if 'twere best to stay or go, 

I cast mine eyes in wistful gaze around, 

When from the shades came slow a small and 
plaintive sound. 

" Psyche am I, who love to dwell 
In these brown shades, this woody dell, 
Where never busy mortal came, 
Till now, to pry upon my shame. 

At thy feet what thou dost see 
The waters of repentance be, 
Which, night and day, I must augment 
With tears, like a true penitent, 

If haply so my day of grace 
Be not yet past ; and this lone place, 
O'er-shadowy, dark, excludeth hence 
All thoughts but grief and penitence." 

" Why dost thou weep, thou gentle maid ! 
And wherefore in this barren shade 
Thy hidden thoughts with sorrow feed ! 
Can thing so fair repentance need?" 

" ! I have done a deed of shame, 
And tainted is my virgin fame, 
And stain'd the beauteous maiden white 
In which my bridal robes were dight." 

" And who the promised spouse ? declare: 
And what those bridal garments were." 

" Severe and saintly righteousness 
Composed the clear white bridal dress ; 
Jesus, the Son of Heaven's high King, 
Bought with his blood the marriage ring. 

A wretched sinful creature, I 
Deem'd lightly of that sacred tie, 



Gave to a treacherous world my heart, 
And play'd the foolish wanton's part. 
Soon to these murky shades I came, 
To hide from the sun's light my shame. 
And still I haunt this woody dell, 
And bathe me in that healing well, 
Whose waters clear have influence 
From sin's foul stains the soul to cleanse 
And, night and day, I them augment, 
With tears, like a true penitent, 
Until, due expiation made, 
And fit atonement fully paid, 
The Lord and Bridegroom me present, 
Where in sweet strains of high consent, 
God's throne before, the Seraphim 
Shall chant the ecstatic marriage hymn." 

" Now Christ restore thee soon " — I said, 
And thenceforth all my dream was fled. 



DIALOGUE BETWEEN A MOTHER AND 
CHILD. 



" lady, lay your costly robes aside, 
No longer may you glory in your pride." 



Wherefore to-day art singing in mine ear 
Sad songs were made so long ago, my dear ] 
This day I am to be a bride, you know, 
Why sing sad songs, were made so long ago 1 



mother, lay your costly robes aside, 
For you may never be another's bride. 
That line I learn'd not in the old sad song. 



I pray thee, pretty one, now hold thy tongue, 
Play with the bride-maids ; and be glad, my boy, 
For thou shalt be a second father's joy. 



One father fondled me upon his knee. 
One father is enough, alone, for me. 



QUEEN ORIANA'S DREAM. 

On a bank with roses shaded, 
Whose sweet scent the violets aided, 
Violets whose breath alone 
Yields but feeble smell or none, 
(Sweeter bed Jove ne'er reposed on 
When his eyes Olympus closed on,) 



598 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



While o'er head six slaves did hold 


In a costly palace if the child with a pin 


Canopy of cloth o' gold, 


Do but chance to prick a finger, straight the 


And two more did music keep, 


doctor is called in ; 


Which might Juno lull to sleep, 


In a wretched workhouse men are left to perish 


Oriana, who was queen 


For want of proper cordials, which their old age 


To the mighty Tamerlane, 


might cherish. 


That was lord of all the land 




Between Thrace and Samarchand, 


In a costly palace Youth enjoys his lust; 


While the noon-tide fervor beani'd, 


In a wretched workhouse Age, in corners thrust, 


Mused herself to sleep, and dream 'd. 


Thinks upon the former days, when he was well 




to do, 


Thus far, in magnific strain, 


Had children to stand by him, both friends and 


A young poet soothed his vein, 


kinsmen too. 


But he had nor prose nor numbers 




To express a princess' slumbers. — 


In a costly palace Youth his temples hides 


Youthful Richard had strange fancies, 


With a new-devised peruke that reaches to his 


Was deep versed in old romances, 


sides ; 


And could talk whole hours upon 


In a wretched workhouse Age's crown is bare, 


The Great Cham and Prester John, — 


With a few thin locks just to fence out the cold 


Tell the field in which the Sophi 


air. 


From the Tartar won a trophy — 




What he read with such delight of, 


In peace, as in war, 'tis our young gallants' 


Thought he could as eas'ly write of — 


pride, 


But his over-young invention 


To walk, each one i' the streets, with a rapier by 


Kept not pace with brave intention. 


his side, 


Twenty suns did rise and set, 


That none to do them injury may have pretence; 


And he could no further get; 


Wretched Age, in poverty, must brook offence. 


But, unable to proceed, 




Made a virtue out of need, 




And, his labours wiselier deem'd of, 




Did omit what the queen dream'd of. 






HYPOCHONDRIACUS. 
By myself walking, 


A BALLAD. 


NOTING THE DIFFERENCE OF RICH AND POOR, IN THE 


To myself talking, 


WAYS OF A RICH NOBLE'S PALACE AND A POOR 


When as I ruminate 


WORKHOUSE. 


On my untoward fate, 


To the Tune of the " Old and Young Courtier." 


Scarcely seem I 


In a costly palace Youth goes clad in gold ; 


Alone sufficiently, 


In a wretched workhouse Age's limbs are cold : 


Black thoughts continually 


There they sit, the old men by a shivering fire, 


Crowding my privacy ; 


Still close and closer cowering, warmth is their 


They come unbidden, 


desire. 


Like foes at a wedding, 




Thrusting their faces 


In a costly palace, when the brave gallants dine, 


In better guests' places, 


They have store of good venison, with old canary 


Peevish and malecontent, 


wine, 


Clownish, impertinent, 


With singing and music to heighten the cheer ; 


Dashing the merriment : 


Coarse bits, with grudging, are the pauper's best 


So in like fashions 


fare. 


Dim cogitations 




Follow and haunt me, 


In a costly palace Youth is still carest 


Striving to daunt me, 


By a train of attendants which laugh at my young 


In my heart festering, 


Lord's jest ; 


In my ears whispering, 


In a wretched workhouse the contraiy prevails : 


" Thy friends are treacherous, 


Does Age begin to prattle 1 — no man heark'neth 


Thy foes are dangerous, 


to his tales. 


Thy dreams ominous." 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



599 



Fierce Anthropophagi, 


And all about us does express 


Spectra, Diaboli, 


(Fancy and wit in richest dress) 


What scared St. Anthony, 


A Sicilian fruitfulness. 


Hobgoblins, Lemures, 


* 


Dreams of Antipodes, 


Thou through such a mist dost show us, 


Night-riding Incubi 


That our best friends do not know us, 


Troubling the fantasy, 


And, for those allowed features, 


All dire illusions 


Due to reasonable creatures, 


Causing confusions ; 


Liken'st us to fell Chimeras, 


Figments heretical, 


Monsters that, who see us, fear us ; 


Scruples fantastical, 


Worse than Cerberus or Geryon, 


Doubts diabolical ; 


Or, who first loved a cloud, Ixion. 


Abaddon vexeth me, 




Mahu perplexeth me, 


Bacchus we know, and we allow 


Lucifer teareth me 


His tipsy rites. But what art thou, 




That but by reflex canst show 


Jesuf Maria/ liberate nos ab his diris tentatio- 


What his deity can do, 


nibus Jnimici. 


As the false Egyptian spell 




Aped the true Hebrew miracle 1 




Some few vapours thou may'st raise, 




The weak brain may serve to amaze, 


A FAREWELL TO TOBACCO. 


But to the reins and nobler heart 


May the Babylonish curse 


Canst nor life nor heat impart. 


Straight confound my stammering verse, 


Brother of Bacchus, later born, 


If I can a passage see 


The old world was sure forlorn 


In this word-perplexity, 


Wanting thee, that aidest more 


Or a fit expression find, 


The god's victories than before 


Or a language to my mind, 


All his panthers, and the brawls 


(Still the phrase is wide or scant) 


Of his piping Bacchanals. 


To take leave of thee, great plant ! 


These, as stale, we disallow, 


Or in any terms relate 


Or judge of thee meant : only thou 


Half my love, or half my hate : 


His true Indian conquest art ; 


For I hate, yet love, thee so, 


And, for ivy round his dart, 


That, whichever thing I show, 


The reformed god now weaves 


The plain truth will seem to be 


A finer thyrsus of thy leaves. 


A constrain'd hyperbole, 




And the passion to proceed 


Scent to match thy rich perfume 


More from a mistress than a weed. 


Chemic art did ne'er presume 




Through her quaint alembic strain, 


Sooty retainer to the vine, 


None so sov'reign to the brain. 


Bacchus' black servant, negro fine ; 


Nature, that did in thee excel, 


Sorcerer, that mak'st us dote upon 


Framed again no second smell. 


Thy begrimed complexion, 


Roses, violets, but toys 


And, for thy pernicious sake, 


For the smaller sort of boys, 


More and greater oaths to break 


Or for greener damsels meant ; 


Than reclaimed lovers take 


Thou art the only manly scent. 


'Gainst women : thou thy siege dost lay 




Much too in the female way, 


Stinking'st of the stinking kind, 


While thou suck'st the lab' ring breath 


Filth of the mouth and fog of the mind, 


Faster than kisses or than death. 


Africa, that brags her foison, 




Breeds no such prodigious poison, 


Thou in such a cloud dost bind us, 


Henbane, nightshade, both together, 


Thai our worst foes cannot find us, 


Hemlock, aconite' 


And ill fortune, that would thwart us, 




Shoots at rovers, shooting at us ; 


Nay, rather, 


While each man, through thy height'ning steam, 


Plant divine, of rarest virtue ; 


Does like a smoking Etna seem, 


Blisters on the tongue would hurt you. 










600 MISCELLANEOUS. 


'Twas but in a sort I blamed thee : 


Sidelong odours, that give life 


None e'er prosper'd who defamed thee ; 


Like glances from a neighbour's wife ; 


Irony all, and feign d abuse, 


And still live in the by -places 


Such as perplex'd lovers use, 


And the suburbs of thy graces ; 


At a need, when, in despair 


And in thy borders take delight, 


To paint forth their fairest fair, 


An unconquer'd Canaanite. 


Or in part but to express 




That exceeding comeliness 






Which their fancies doth so strike, 




They borrow language of dislike ; 


TO T. L. H. 


And, instead of Dearest Miss, 




Jewel, Honey, Sweetheart, Bliss, 


A CHILD. 


And those forms of old admiring, 


Model of thy parent dear, 


Call her Cockatrice and Siren, 


Serious infant worth a fear : 


Basilisk, and all that's evil, 


In thy unfaltering visage well 


"Witch, Hyena, Mermaid, Devil, 


Picturing forth the son of Tell, 


Ethiop, Wench, and Blackamoor, 


When on his forehead, firm and good, 


Monkey, Ape, and twenty more ; 


Motionless mark, the apple stood ; 


Friendly Trait'ress, loving Foe, — 


Guileless traitor, rebel mild, 


Not that she is truly so, 


Convict unconscious, culprit child ! 


But no other way they know 


Gates that close with iron roar 


A contentment to express, 


Have been to thee thy nursery door ; 


Borders so upon excess, 


Chains that chink in cheerless cells 


That they do not rightly wot 


Have been thy rattles and thy bells ; 


Whether it be pain or not. 


Walls contrived for giant sin 




Have hemm'd thy faultless weakness in ; 


Or, as men, constrain' d to part 


Near thy sinless bed black Guilt 


With what's nearest to their heart, 


Her discordant house hath built, 


While their sorrow's at the height, 


And fill'd it with her monstrous brood — 


Lose discrimination quite, 


Sights, by thee not understood — 


And their hasty wrath let fall, 


Sights of fear, and of distress, 


To appease their frantic gall, 


That pass a harmless infant's guess ! 


On the darling thing whatever, 




Whence they feel it death to sever, 


But the clouds, that overcast 


Though it be, as they, perforce, 


Thy young morning, may not last ; 


Guiltless of the sad divorce. 


Soon shall arrive the rescuing hour 




That yields thee up to Nature's power : 


For I must (nor let it grieve thee, 


Nature, that so late doth greet thee, 


Friendliest of plants, that I must) leave thee. 


Shall in o'erflowing measure meet thee. 


For thy sake, tobacco, I 


She shall recompense with cost 


Would do anything but die, 


For every lesson thou hast lost. 


And but seek to extend my days 


Then wandering up thy sire's loved hill,* 


Long enough to sing thy praise. 


Thou shalt take thy airy fill 


But, as she, who once hath been 


Of health and pastime. Birds shall sing 


A king's consort, is a queen 


For thy delight each May morning. 


Ever after, nor will bate 


'Mid new-yean'd lambkins thou shalt play, 


Any tittle of her state, 


Hardly less a lamb than they. 


Though a widow, or divorced, 


Then thy prison's lengthen'd bound 


So I, from thy converse forced, 


Shall be the horizon skirting round : 


The old name and style retain, 


And, while thou fillest thy lap with flowers, 


A right Katherine of Spain ; 


To make amends for wintry hours, 


And a seat, too, 'mongst the joys 


The breeze, the sunshine, and the place, 


Of the blest Tobacco Boys ; 


Shall from thy tender brow efface 


Where, though I, by sour physician, 


Each vestige of untimely care, 


Am debarr'd the full fruition 


That sour restraint had graven there ; 


Of thy favours, I may catch 




Some collateral sweets, and snatch 


* Hampstead. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



601 



And on thy every look impress 
A more excelling childishness. 

So shall be thy days beguiled, 
Thornton Hunt, my favourite child. 



BALLAD. 

FROM THE GERMAN. 



The clouds are blackening, the storms threatening, 
And ever the forest maketh a moan : 

Billows are breaking, the damsel's heart aching, 
Thus by herself she singeth alone, 
Weeping right plenteously. 

" The world is empty, the heart is dead surely, 
In this world plainly all seemeth amiss : 

To thy breast, holy one, take now thy little one, 
I have had earnest of all earth's bliss, 
Living right lovingly." 



DAVID IN THE CAVE OF ADULLAM. 

David and his three captains bold 

Kept ambush once within a hold. 

It was in Adullam's cave, 

Nigh which no water they could have, 

Nor spring, nor running brook was near 

To quench the thirst that parch'd them there. 

Then David, king of Israel, 

Straight bethought him of a well, 

"Which stood beside the city gate, 

At Bethlem ; where, before his state 

Of kingly dignity, he had 

Oft drunk his fill, a shepherd lad ; 

But now his fierce Philistine foe 

Encamp'd before it he does know. 

Yet ne'er the less, with heat opprest, 

Those three bold captains he addrest ; 

And wish'd that one to him would bring 

Some water from his native spring. 

His valiant captains instantly 

To execute his will did fly. 

The mighty Three the ranks broke through 

Of armed foes, and water drew 

For David, their beloved king, 

At his own sweet native spring. 

Back through their arm'd foes they haste, 

With the hard-earn'd treasure graced. 

But when the good king David found 

What they had done, he on the ground 

The water pour'd. " Because," said he, 

" That it was at the jeopardy 

Of your three lives this thing ye did, 

That I should drink it, God forbid." 



SALOME. 

Once on a charger there was laid, 
And brought before a royal maid, 
As price of attitude and grace, 
A guiltless head, a holy face. 

It was on Herod's natal day, 
Who o'er Judea's land held sway. 
He married his own brother's wife, 
Wicked Herodias. She the life 
Of John the Baptist long had sought, 
Because he openly had taught 
That she a life unlawful led, 
Having her husband's brother wed. 

This was he, that saintly John, 
Who in the wilderness alone 
Abiding, did for clothing wear 
A garment made of camel's hair ; 
Honey and locusts were his food, 
And he was most severely good. 
He preached penitence and tears, 
And waking first the sinner's fears, 
Prepared a path, made smooth a way, 
For his diviner Master's day. 

Herod kept in princely state 
His birth-day. On his throne he sate, 
After the feast, beholding her 
Who danced with grace peculiar ; 
Fair Salome, who did excel 
All in that land for dancing well. 
The feastful monarch's heart was fired, 
And whatsoe'er thing she desired, 
Though half his kingdom it should be, 
He in his pleasure swore that he 
Would give the graceful Salome. 
The damsel was Herodias' daughter : 
She to the queen hastes, and besought her 
To teach her what great gift to name. 
Instructed by Herodias, came 
The damsel back : to Herod said, 
" Give me John the Baptist's head ; 
And in a charger let it be 
Hither straightway brought to me." 
Herod her suit would fain deny, 
But for his oath's sake must comply. 

When painters would by art express 
Beauty in unloveliness, 
Thee, Herodias' daughter, thee, 
They fittest subject take to be. 
They give thy form and features grace ; 
But ever in thy beauteous face 
They show a steadfast cruel gaze, 
An eye unpitying ; and amaze 



602 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



In all beholders deep they mark, 
That thou betrayest not one spark 
Of feeling for the ruthless deed, 
That did thy praiseful dance succeed. 
For on the head they make you look, 
As if a sullen joy you took, 
A cruel triumph, wicked pride, 
That for your sport a saint had died. 



LINES 

SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE OF TWO FEMALES BY LIONARDO 
DA VINCI. 

The lady Blanch, regardless of all her lover's fears, 
To the Urs'line convent hastens, and long the 

Abbess hears, 
" Blanch, my child, repent ye of the courtly 

life ye lead." 
Blanch look'd on a rose-bud and little seem'd to 

heed. 
She look'd on the rose-bud, she look'd round, 

and thought 
On all her heart had whisper' d, and all the Nun 

had taught. 
" I am worshippd by lovers, and brightly shines 

my fame, 
" All Christendom resoundeth the noble Blanch's 

name. 
" Nor shall I quickly wither like the rose-bud 

from the tree, 
" My queen-like graces shining when my beauty's 

gone from me. 
" But when the sculptured marble is rais'd o'er 

my head, 
" And the matchless Blanch lies lifeless among 

the noble dead, 
" This saintly lady Abbess hath made me justly 

fear, 
" It nothing will avail me that I were worshipp'd 

here." 



LINES 

ON THE SAME PICTURE BEING REMOVED TO MAKE PLACE 
FOR A PORTRAIT OF A LADY BY TITIAN. 

Who art thou, fair one, who usurp' st the place 
Of Blanch, the lady of the matchless grace ? 
Come, fair and pretty, tell to me, 
Who, in thy life-time, thou might'st be. 



Thou pretty art and fair, 

But with the lady Blanch thou never must com- 
pare. 

No need for Blanch her history to tell ; 

Whoever saw her face, they there did read it 
well. 

But when I look on thee, I only know 

There lived a pretty maid some hundred years 
ago. 



LINES 

ON THE CELEBRATED PICTURE BY LIONARDO D& VINCI, 
CALLED THE VIRGIN OF THE ROCKS. 

While young John runs to greet 

The greater Infant's feet, 

The Mother standing by, with trembling- 
passion 

Of devout admiration, 

Beholds the engaging mystic play, and pretty 
adoration ; 

Nor knows as yet the full event 

Of those so low beginnings, 

From whence we date our winnings, 

But wonders at the intent 

Of those new rites, and what that strange child- 
worship meant. 

But at her side 

An angel doth abide, 

With such a perfect joy 

As no dim doubts alloy, 

An intuition, 

A glory, an amenity, 

Passing the dark condition 

Of blind humanity, 

As if he surely knew 

All the blest wonder should ensue, 

Or he had lately left the upper sphere, 

And had read all the sovran schemes and divine 
riddles there. 



ON THE SAME. 

Maternal lady with the virgin grace, 

Heaven-born thy Jesus seemeth sure, 

And thou a virgin pure. 

Lady most perfect, when thy sinless face 

Men look upon, they wish to be 

A Catholic, Madonna fair, to worship thee. 



SONNETS. 



603 



SONNETS. 



TO MISS KELLY. 

You are not, Kelly, of the common strain, 
That stoop their pride and female honour down 
To please that many-headed beast the town, 
And vend their lavish smiles and tricks for gain ; 
By fortune thrown amid the actors' train, 
You keep your native dignity of thought ; 
The plaudits that attend you come unsought, 
As tributes due unto your natural vein. 
Your tears have passion in them, and a grace 
Of genuine freshness, which our hearts avow ; 
Your smiles are winds whose ways we cannot 

trace, 
That vanish and return we know not how — 
And please the better from a pensive face, 
A thoughtful eye, and a reflecting brow. 



ON THE SIGHT OF SWANS IN KENSINGTON 
GARDEN. 
Queen-bird that sittest on thy shining-nest, 
And thy young cygnets without sorrow hatchest, 
And thou, thou other royal bird, that watchest 
Lest the white mother wandering feet molest : 
Shrined are your offspring in a crystal cradle, 
Brighter than Helen's ere she yet had burst 
Her shelly prison. They shall be born at first 
Strong, active, graceful, perfect, swan-like able 
To tread the land or waters with security. 
Unlike poor human births, conceived in sin, 
In grief brought forth, both outwardly and in 
Confessing weakness, error, and impurity. 
Did heavenly creatures own succession's line, 
The births of heaven like to yours would shine. 



Was it some sweet device of Faery 
That mock'd my steps with many a lonely glade, 
And fancied wanderings with a fair-hair'd maid 1 
Have these things been ? or what rare witchery, 
Impregning with delights the charmed air, 
Enlighted up the semblance of a smile 
In those fine eyes 1 methought they spake the while 
Soft soothing things, which might enforce despair 
To drop the murdering knife, and let go by 
His foul resolve. And does the lonely glade 
Still court the footsteps of the fair-hair'd maid 1 
Still in her locks the gales of summer sigh ? 
"While I forlorn do wander reckless where, 
And 'mid my wanderings meet no Anna there. 



Methinks how dainty sweet it were, reclined 

Beneath the vast out-stretching branches high 

Of some old wood, in careless sort to lie, 

Nor of the busier scenes we left behind 

Aught envying. And, Anna ! mild-eyed maid ! 

Beloved ! I were well content to play 

With thy free tresses all a summer's day, 

Losing the time beneath the greenwood shade. 

Or we might sit and tell some tender tale 

Of faithful vows repaid by cruel scorn, 

A tale of true love, or of friend forgot ; 

And I would teach thee, lady, how to rail 

In gentle sort, on those who practise not 

Or love or pity, though of woman born. 



When last I roved these winding wood- walks green, 
Green winding walks, and shady pathways sweet, 
Oft-times would Anna seek the silent scene, 
Shrouding her beauties in the lone retreat. 
No more I hear her footsteps in the shade : 
Her image only in these pleasant ways 
Meets me self-wandering, where in happier days 
I held free converse with the fair-hair'd maid. 
I pass'd the little cottage which she loved, 
The cottage which did once my all contain ; 
It spake of days which ne'er must come again, 
Spake to my heart, and much my heart was moved. 
" Now fair befall thee, gentle maid ! " said I, 
And from the cottage turn'd me with a sigh. 



THE FAMILY NAME. 

What reason first imposed thee, gentle name, 
Name that my father bore, and his sire's sire, 
Without reproach? we trace our stream no 

higher ; 
And I, a childless man, may end the same. 
Perchance some shepherd on Lincolnian plains, 
In manners guileless as his own sweet flocks, 
Received thee first amid the merry mocks 
And arch allusions of his fellow swains. 
Perchance from Salem's holier fields return'd, 
With glory gotten on the heads abhorr'd 
Of faithless Saracens, some martial lord 
Took his meek title, in whose zeal he burn'd, 
Whate'er the fount whence thy beginnings came, 
No deed of mine shall shame thee, gentle name. 



604 



SONNETS. 



If from my lips some angry accents fell, 

Peevish complaint, or harsh reproof unkind, 

'Twas but the error of a sickly mind 

And troubled thoughts, clouding the purer well, 

And waters clear, of Reason ; and for me 

Let this my verse the poor atonement be — 

My verse, which thou to praise wert ever inclined 

Too highly, and with a partial eye to see 

No blemish. Thou to me didst ever show 

Kindest affection ; and would oft-times lend 

An ear to the desponding love-sick lay, 

Weeping my sorrows with me, who repay 

But ill the mighty debt of love I owe, 

Mary, to thee, my sister and my friend. 



A timid grace sits trembling in her eye, 

As loath to meet the rudeness of men's sight, 

Yet shedding a delicious lunar light, 

That steeps in kind oblivious ecstacy 

The care-crazed mind, like some still melody : 

Speaking most plain the thoughts which do 



Her gentle sprite : peace, and meek quietness, 
And innocent loves, and maiden purity : 
A look whereof might heal the cruel smart 
Of changed friends, or fortune's wrongs unkind ; 
Might to sweet deeds of mercy move the heart 
Of him who hates his brethren of mankind. 
Turn'd are those lights from me, who fondly yet 
Past joys, vain loves, and buried hopes regret. 



TO JOHN LAMB, ESQ., OF THE SOUTH-SEA- 
HOUSE. 

John, you were figuring in the gay career 
Of blooming manhood with a young man's joy, 
When I was yet a little peevish boy — 
Though time has made the difference disappear 



Betwixt our ages, which then seem'd so great — 
And still by rightful custom you retain 
Much of the old authoritative strain, 
And keep the elder brother up in state. 
! you do well in this. 'Tis man's worst deed 
To let the "things that have been" run to waste, 
And in the unmeaning present sink the past : 
In whose dim glass even now I faintly read 
Old buried forms, and faces long ago, 
Which you, and I, and one more, only know. 



! I could laugh to hear the midnight wind, 
That, rushing on its way with careless sweep, 
Scatters the ocean waves. And I could weep 
Like to a child. For now to my raised mind 
On wings of winds comes wild-eyed Phantasy, 
And her rude visions give severe delight. 
winged bark ! how swift along the night 
Pass'd thy proud keel ! nor shall I let go by 
Lightly of that drear hour the memory, 
When wet and chilly on thy deck I stood, 
Unbonnetted, and gazed upon the flood, 
Even till it seem'd a pleasant thing to die, — 
To be resolv'd into th' elemental wave, 
Or take my portion with the winds that rave. 



We were two pretty babes, the youngest she, 
The youngest, and the loveliest far, I ween, 
And Innocence her name. The time has been, 
We two did love each other's company ; 
Time was, we two had wept to have been apart. 
But when by show of seeming good beguiled, 
I left the garb and manners of a child, 
And my first love for man's society, 
Defiling with the world my virgin heart — 
My loved companion dropp'd a tear, and fled, 
And hid in deepest shades her awful head. 
Beloved, who shall tell me where thou art — 
In what delicious Eden to be found — 
That I may seek thee the wide world around] 



BLANK VERSE. 



605 



BLANK VERSE. 



CHILDHOOD. 

In my poor mind it is most sweet to muse 

Upon the days gone by ; to act in thought 

Past seasons o'er, and be again a child ; 

To sit in fancy on the turf-clad slope, 

Down which the child would roll ; to pluck gay 

flowers, 
Make posies in the sun, which the child's hand 
(Childhood offended soon, soon reconciled), 
Would throw away, and straight take up again, 
Then fling them to the winds, and o'er the lawn 
Bound with so playful and so light a foot, 
That the press'd daisy scarce declined her head. 



THE GRANDAME. 



On the green hill top, 
Hard by the house of prayer, a modest roof, 
And not distinguish'd from its neighbour-barn, 
Save by a slender-tapering length of spire, 
The Grandame sleeps. A plain stone barely tells 
The name and date to the chance passenger. 
For lowly born was she, and long had eat, 
Well-earn'd, the bread of service : — hers was else 
A mountain spirit, one that entertain'd 
Scorn of base action, deed dishonourable, 
Or aught unseemly. I remember well 
Her reverend image ; I remember, too, 
With what a zeal she served her master's house ; 
And how the prattling tongue of garrulous age 
Delighted to recount the oft-told tale 
Or anecdote domestic. Wise she was, 
And wondrous skill'd in genealogies, 
And could in apt and voluble terms discourse 
Of births, of titles, and alliances ; 
Of marriages, and intermarriages ; 
Relationship remote, or near of kin ; 
Of friends offended, family disgraced — 
Maiden high-born, but wayward, disobeying 
Parental strict injunction, and regardless 
Of unmix' d blood, and ancestry remote, 
Stooping to wed with one of low degree, 
i But these are not thy praises ; and I wrong 
Thy honour' d memory, recording chiefly 
Things light or trivial. Better 'twere to tell, 
How with a nobler zeal, and warmer love, 
She served her heavenly Master. I have seen 



That reverend form bent down with age and 

pain, 
And rankling malady. Yet not for this 
Ceased she to praise her Maker, or withdrew 
Her trust in him, her faith, an humble hope — 
So meekly had she learn'd to bear her cross — 
For she had studied patience in -the school 
Of Christ ; much comfort she had thence derived, 
And was a follower of the Nazarene. 



THE SABBATH BELLS. 

The cheerful sabbath bells, wherever heard, 

Strike pleasant on the sense, most like the voice 

Of one, who from the far-off hills proclaims 

Tidings of good to Zion : chiefly when 

Their piercing tones fall sudden on the ear 

Of the contemplant, solitary man, 

Whom thoughts abstruse or high have chanced 

to lure 
Forth from the walks of men, revolving oft, 
And oft again, hard matter, which eludes 
And baffles his pursuit — thought-sick and tired 
Of controversy, where no end appears, 
No clue to his research, the lonely man 
Half wishes for society again. 
Him, thus engaged, the sabbath bells salute 
Sudden ! his heart awakes, his ears drink in 
The cheering music ; his relenting soul 
Yearns after all the joys of social life, 
And softens with the love of human kind. 



FANCY EMPLOYED ON DIVINE SUBJECTS. 

The truant Fancy was a wanderer ever, 
A lone enthusiast maid. She loves to walk 
In the bright visions of empyreal light, 
By the green pastures, and the fragrant meads, 
Where the perpetual flowers of Eden blow ; 
By crystal streams, and by the living waters, 
Along whose margin grows the wondrous tree 
Whose leaves shall heal the nations ; underneath 
Whose holy shade a refuge shall be found 
From pain and want, and all the ills that wait 
On mortal life, from sin and death for ever. 



606 



BLANK VERSE. 



COMPOSED AT MIDNIGHT. 

From broken visions of perturbed rest 

I wake, and start, and fear to sleep again. 

How total a privation of all sounds, 

Sights, and familiar objects, man, bird, beast, 

Herb, tree, or flower, and prodigal light of 

heaven. 
'Twere some relief to catch the drowsy cry 
Of the mechanic watchman, or the noise 
Of revel reeling home from midnight cups. 
Those are the moanings of the dying man, 
Who lies in the upper chamber ; restless moans, 
And interrupted only by a cough 
Consumptive, torturing the wasted lungs. 
So in the bitterness of death he lies, 
And waits in anguish for the morning's light. 
What can that do for him, or what restore ? 
Short taste, faint sense, affecting notices, 
And little images of pleasures past, 
Of health, and active life — hearth not yet slain, 
Nor the other grace of life, a good name, sold 
For sin's black wages. On his tedious bed 
He writhes, and turns him from the accusing 

light, 
And finds no comfort in the sun, but says 
" When night comes I shall get a little rest." 
Some few groans more, death comes, and there 

an end. 
'Tis darkness and conjecture all beyond ; 
Weak Nature fears, though Charity must hope, 
And Fancy, most licentious on such themes 
Where decent reverence well had kept her 

mute, 



Hath o'er-stock'd hell with devils, and brought 

down 
By her enormous fablings and mad lies, 
Discredit on the gospel's serious truths 
And salutary fears. The man of parts, 
Poet, or prose declaimer, on his couch 
Lolling, like one indifferent, fabricates 
A heaven of gold, where he, and such as he, 
Their heads encompassed with crowns, their 

heels 
With fine wings garlanded, shall tread the stars 
Beneath their feet, heaven's pavement, far re- 
moved 
From damned spirits, and the torturing cries 
Of men, his breth'ren, fashion'd of the earth, 
As he was, nourish'd with the self-same bread, 
Belike his kindred or companions once — 
Through everlasting ages now divorced, 
In chains and savage torments to repent 
Short years of folly on earth. Their groans 

unheard 
In heav'n, the saint nor pity feels, nor care, 
For those thus sentenced — pity might disturb 
The delicate sense and most divine repose 
Of spirits angelical. Blessed be God, 
The measure of his judgments is not fix'd 
By man's erroneous standard. He discerns 
No such inordinate difference and vast 
Betwixt the sinner and the saint, to doom 
Such disproportion^ fates. Compared with him, 
No man on earth is holy call'd : they best 
Stand in his sight approved, who at his feet 
Their little crowns of virtue cast, and yield 
To him of his own works the praise, his due. 



JOHN WOODVIL. 



A TRAGEDY. 



CHARACTERS. 



Sir Walter. Woodvil. 

John, 1 , . 

V- his sons. 
Simon, J 

Lovel, 

Gray, 



pretended friends of John. 



Sandford. Sir Walter's old steward. 
Margaret. Orphan ward of Sir Walter. 
Four Gentlemen. John's riotous companions. 
Servants. 



Scene — for the most part at Sir Walter's mansion in Devonshire : 
at other times in the Forest of Sherwood. 

Time — soon after the Restoration. 



ACT THE FIRST. 

Scene — A Servants' Apartment in Woodvil Hall. Servants 
drinking — Time, the Horning. 

A Song, by Daniel. 
" When the King enjoys his own again." 

Peter. A delicate song. Where didst learn it, 
fellow? 

Dan. Even there, where thou learnest thy 
oaths and thy politics — at our master's table. — 
Where else should a serving-man pick up his 
poor accomplishments ? 

Mar. Well spoken, Daniel. rare Daniel ! 
his oaths and his politics ! excellent ! 

Fran. And where didst pick up thy knavery, 
Daniel ? 

Peter. That came to him by inheritance. His 
family have supplied the shire of Devon, time 
out of mind, with good thieves and bad serving- 
men. All of his race have come into the world 
without their conscience. 

Mar. Good thieves, and bad serving -men ! 
Better and better. I marvel what Daniel hath 
got to say in reply. 

Dan. I marvel more when thou wilt say any 
thing to the purpose, thou shallow serving-man, 
whose swiftest conceit carries thee no higher 



than to apprehend with difficulty the stale jests 
of us thy compeers. When was't ever known to 
club thy Own particular jest among us? 

Mar. Most unkind Daniel, to speak such biting 
things of me ! 

Fran. See — if he hath not brought tears into 
the poor fellow's eyes with the saltness of his 
rebuke. 

Dan. No offence, brother Martin — I meant 
none. 'Tis true, Heaven gives gifts, and with- 
holds them. It has been pleased to bestow upon 
me a nimble invention to the manufacture of a 
jest; and upon thee, Martin, an indifferent bad 
capacity to understand my meaning. 

Mar. Is that all? I am content. Here's my 
hand. 

Fran. Well, I like a little innocent mirth 
myself, but never could endure bawdry. 

Dan. Quot homines tot sententice. 

Mar. And what is that ! 

Dan. 'Tis Greek, and argues difference of 
opinion. 

Mar. I hope there is none between us. 

Dan. Here's to thee, brother Martin. (Drinks.) 

Mar. And to thee, Daniel. (Drinks.) 

Fran. And to thee, Peter. (Drinks.) 

Peter. Thank you, Francis. And here's to 
thee. (Drinks.) 

Mar. I shall be fuddled anon. 



JOHN WOODVIL, A TRAGEDY. 



Dan. And drunkenness I hold to be a very 
despicable vice. 

All. ! a shocking vice. {They drink round.) 

Peter. In as much as it taketh away the 
understanding. 

Dan. And makes the eyes red. 

Peter. And the tongue to stammer. 

Dan. And to blab out secrets. 

[During this conversation they continue drinking. 

Peter. Some men do not know an enemy from 
a friend when they are drunk. 

Dan. Certainly sobriety is the health of the 
soul. 

Mar. Now I know I am going to be drunk. 

Dan. How canst tell, dry-bones ? 

Mar. Because I begin to be melancholy. 
That's always a sign. 

Fran. Take care of Martin, he'll topple off his 
Seat else. [Martin drops asleep. 

Peter. Times are greatly altered, since young 
master took upon himself the government of 
this household. 

All. Greatly altered. 

Fran. I think every thing be altered for the 
better since His Majesty's blessed restoration. 

Peter. In Sir "Walter's days there was no 
encouragement given to good house-keeping. 

All. None. 

Dan. For instance, no possibility of getting 
drunk before two in the afternoon. 

Peter. Every man his allowance of ale at break- 
fast — his quart ! 

All. A quart ! ! (j„ derision.) 

Dan. Nothing left to our own sweet discretions. 

Peter. Whereby it may appear, we were treated 
more like beasts than what we were — discreet 
and reasonable serving-men. 

All. Like beasts. 

Mar. {Opening his eyes.) Like beasts. 

Dan. To sleep, wagtail ! 

Fran. I marvel all this while where the old 
gentleman has found means to secrete himself. 
It seems no man has heard of him since the day 
of the King's return. Can any tell why our 
young master, being favoured by the court, 
should not have interest to procure his father's 
pardon ? 

Dan. Marry, I think 'tis the obstinacy of the 
old Knight, that will not be beholden to the 
court for his safety. 

Mar. Now that is wilful. 

Fran. But can any tell me the place of his 
concealment ? 

Peter. That cannot I ; but I have my con- 
j ectures. 

Dan. Two hundred pounds, as I hear, to the 
man that shall apprehend him. 



Fran. "Well, I have my suspicions. 

Peter. And so have I. 

Mar. And I can keep a secret. 

Fran, {to Peter.) Warwickshire, you mean. 

[Aside. 

Peter. Perhaps not. 

Fran. Nearer, perhaps. 

Peter. I say nothing. 

Dan. I hope there is none in this company 
would be mean enough to betray him. 

All. Lord surely not. 

[They drink to Sir Walter's safety. 

Fran. I have often wondered how our master 
came to be excepted by name in the late Act of 
Oblivion. 

Dan. Shall I tell the reason 1 

All. Ay, do. 

Dan. 'Tis thought he is no great friend to the 
present happy establishment. 

All. ! monstrous ! 

Peter. Fellow servants, a thought strikes me. 
— Do we, or do we not, come under the penalties 
of the treason-act, by reason of our being privy 
to this man's concealment 1 

All. Truly a sad consideration. 

To them enters Sandford suddenly. 

Sand. You well-fed and unprofitable grooms^ 
Maintain'd for state, not use ; 
You lazy feasters at another's cost, 
That eat like maggots into an estate, 
And do as little work, 
Being indeed but foul excrescences, 
And no just parts in a well-order'd family ; 
You base and rascal imitators, 
Who act up to the height your master's vices, 
But cannot read his virtues in your bond : 
Which of you, as I enter'd, spake of betraying 1 
"Was it you, or you, or thin-face, was it you ? 
Mar. Whom does he call thin-face 1 
Sand. No prating, loon, but tell me who he 

was, 
That I may brain the villain with my staff, 
That seeks Sir Walter's life ! 
You miserable men, 

With minds more slavish than your slave's estate, 
Have you that noble bounty so forgot, 
Which took you from the looms, and from the 

ploughs, 
Which better had ye follow'd, fed ye, clothed ye, 
And entertain'd ye in a worthy service, 
Where your best wages was the world's repute, 
That thus ye seek his life, by whom ye live. 
Have you forgot too, 
How often in old times 
Your drunken mirths have stunn'd day's sober 

ears, 



JOHN WOODVIL, A TRAGEDY. 



609 



Carousing full cups to Sir Walter's health ? — 
Whom now ye would betray, but that he lies 
Out of the reach of your poor treacheries. 
This learn from me, 

Our master's secret sleeps with trustier tongues, 
Than will unlock themselves to carls like you. 
Go, get you gone, you knaves. Who stirs? this 

staff' 
Shall teach you better manners else. 

A 11. Well, we are going. 

Sand. And quickly too, ye had better, for I see 
Young mistress Margaret coming this way. 

\_Exeunt all but Sandford. 

Enter Margaret, as in a fright, pursued by a Gentleman, 
who, seeing Sandford, retires muttering a curse. 

Sand. Good morrow to my fair mistress. 'Twas 

a chance 
I saw you, lady, so intent was I 
On chiding hence these graceless serving-men, 
Who cannot break their fast at morning meals 
Without debauch and mis-timed riotings. 
This house hath been a scene of nothing else 
But atheist riot and profane excess, 
Since my old master quitted all his rights here. 
Marg. Each day I endure fresh insult from the 

scorn 
Of Woodvil's friends, the uncivil jests 
And free discourses of the dissolute men 
That haunt this mansion, making me their 

mirth. 
Sand. Does my young master know of these 

affronts ? 
Marg. I cannot tell. Perhaps he has not been 

told. 
Perhaps he might have seen them if he would. 
I have known him more quick -sighted. Let that 

pass. 
All things seem changed, I think. I had a 

friend, 
(I can't but weep to think him alter'd too,) 
These things are best forgotten ; but I knew 
A man, a young man, young, and full of 

honour, 
That would have pick'd a quarrel for a straw, 
And fought it out to the extremity, 
E'en with the dearest friend he had alive, 
On but a bare surmise, a possibility, 
That Margaret had suffer' d an affront. 
Some are too tame, that were too splenetic 

once. 
Sand. 'Twere best he should be told of these 

affronts. 
Marg. I am the daughter of his father's friend, 
Sir Walter's orphan ward. 
I am not his servant maid, that I should wait 
The opportunity of a gracious hearing, 



Enquire the times and seasons when to put 
My peevish prayer up at young Woodvil's feet, 
And sue to him for slow redress, who was 
Himself a suitor late to Margaret. 
I am somewhat proud : and Woodvil taught me 

pride. 
I was his favourite once, his playfellow in infancy, 
And joyful mistress of his youth. 
None once so pleasant in his eyes as Margaret. 
His conscience, his religion, Margaret was, 
His dear heart's confessor, a heart within that 

heart, 
And all dear things summ'd up in her alone. 
As Margaret smil'd or frown'd John liv'd or 

died; 
His dress, speech, gesture, studies, friendships, 

all 
Being fashion'd to her liking. 
His flatteries taught me first this self-esteem, 
His flatteries and caresses, while he loved. 
The world esteem'd her happy, who had won 
His heart, who won all hearts ; 
And ladies envied me the love of Woodvil. 
Sand. He doth affect the courtier's life too 

much, 
Whose art is to forget, 
And that has wrought this seeming change in 

him, 
That was by nature noble. 
'Tis these court-plagues, that swarm about our 

house, 
Have done the mischief, making his fancy giddy 
With images of state, preferment, place, 
Tainting his generous spirits with ambition. 

Marg. I know not how it is ; 
A cold protector is John grown to me. 
The mistress, and presumptive wife, of Woodvil 
Can never stoop so low to supplicate 
A man, her equal, to redress those wrongs, 
Which he was bound first to prevent ; 
But which his own neglects have sanction'd 

rather, 
Both sanction'd and provok'd : a mark'd neglect, 
And strangeness fastening bitter on his love, 
His love, which long has been upon the wane. 
For me, I am determined what to do : 
To leave this house this night, and lukewarm 

John, 
And trust for food to the earth and Providence. 

Sand. lady, have a care 
Of these indefinite and spleen-bred resolves. 
You know not half the dangers that attend 
Upon a life of wand'ring, which your thoughts 

now, 
Feeling the swellings of a lofty anger, 
To your abused fancy, as 'tis likely, 
Portray without its terrors, painting lies 



R R 



610 



JOHN WOODVIL, A TRAGEDY, 



And representments of fallacious liberty — 
You know not what it is to leave the roof that 
shelters you. 
Marg. I have thought on every possible event, 
The dangers and discouragements you speak of, 
Even till my woman's heart hath ceased to fear 

them, 
And cowardice grows enamour 'd of rare accidents; 
Nor am I so unfurnish'd, as you think, 
Of practicable schemes. 
Sand. Now God forbid ; think twice of this, 

dear lady. 
Marg. I pray you spare me, Mr. Sandford. 
And once for all believe, nothing can shake my 
purpose. 
Sand. But what course have you thought on 1 
Marg. To seek Sir Walter in the forest of 
Sherwood. 
I have letters from young Simon, 
Acquainting me with all the circumstances 
Of their concealment, place, and manner of life, 
And the merry hours they spend in the green 

haunts 
Of Sherwood, nigh which place they have ta'en a 

house 
In the town of Nottingham, and pass for 

foreigners, 
Wearing the dress of Frenchmen. — 
All which I have perused with so attent 
And child-like longings, that to my doting ears 
Two sounds now seem like one, 
One meaning in two words, Sherwood and 

Liberty. 
And, gentle Mr. Sandford, 
'Tis you that must provide now 
The means of my departure, which for safety 
Must be in boy's apparel. 

Sand. Since you will have it so 
(My careful age trembles at all may happen), 
I will engage to furnish you. 
I have the keys of the wardrobe, and can fit you 
With garments to your size. 
I know a suit 
Of lively Lincoln green, that shall much grace 

you 
In the wear, being glossy fresh, and worn but 

seldom. 
Young Stephen Woodvil wore them while he 

lived. 
I have the keys of all this house and passages, 
And ere day-break will rise and let you forth. 
What things soe'er you have need of I can furnish 

you; 
And will provide a horse and trusty guide, 
To bear you on your way to Nottingham. 

Marg. That once this day aud night were 
fairly past ! 



For then I'll bid this house and love farewell ; 
Farewell, sweet Devon; farewell, lukewarm 

John; 
For with the morning's light will Margaret be 

gone. 
Thanks, courteous Mr. Sandford. — 

[Exeunt divers ways. 



ACT THE SECOND, 



Scene. — An Apartment in Woodvil Hall. 
John Woodvil — alone. {Reading parts of a letter.) 

" When Love grows cold, and indifference has 
usurped upon old Esteem, it is no marvel if the 
world begin to account that dependence, which 
hitherto has been esteemed honourable shelter. 
The course I have taken, (in leaving this house, 
not easily wrought thereunto,) seemed to me best 
for the once-for-all releasing of yourself (who in 
times past have deserved well of me) from the 
now daily, and not-to-be-endured tribute of 
forced love, and ill-dissembled reluctance of 
affection. Margaret." 

Gone ! gone ! my girl ? so hasty, Margaret ! 
And never a kiss at parting ? shallow loves, 
And likings of a ten days' growth, use courtesies, 
And show red eyes at parting. Who bids 

" Farewell " 
In the same tone he cries " God speed you, 

sir?" 
Or tells of joyful victories at sea, 
Where he hath ventures; does not rather 

muffle 
His organs to emit a leaden sound, 
To suit the melancholy dull " farewell," 
Which they in Heaven not use ? — 
So peevish, Margaret 1 
But 'tis the common error of your sex 
When our idolatry slackens, or grows less, 
(As who of woman born can keep his faculty 
Of Admiration, being a decaying faculty, 
For ever strain'd to the pitch? or can at 

pleasure 
Make it renewable, as some appetites are, 
As, namely, Hunger, Thirst ! — ) this being the 

case, 
They tax us with neglect, and love grown cold, 
Coin plainings of the perfidy of men, 
Which into maxims pass, and apothegms 
To be retail'd in ballads. — 

I know them all. 
They are jealous, when our larger hearts receive 



JOHN WOODVIL, A TRAGEDY. 



611 



More guests than one. (Love in a woman's 

heart 
Being all in one.) For me, I am sure I have 

room here 
For more disturbers of my sleep than one. 
Love shall have part, but love shall not have 

all. 
Ambition,- Pleasure, Vanity, all by turns, 
Shall lie in my bed, and keep me fresh and 

waking ; 
Yet Love not be excluded. — Foolish wench, 
I could have loved her twenty years to come, 
And still have kept my liking. But since 'tis so, 
Why, fare thee well, old play -fellow ! I'll try 
To squeeze a tear for old acquaintance' sake. 
I shall not grudge so much. 

To him enters Lovel. 

Lovel. Bless us, Woodvil ! what is the matter 1 
I protest, man, I thought you had been weeping. 

Wood. Nothing is the matter ; only the wench 
has forced some water into my eyes, which will 
quickly disband. 

Lovel. I cannot conceive you. 

Wood. Margaret is flown. 

Lovel. Upon what pretence ?• 

Wood. Neglect on my part : which it seems 
she has had the wit to discover, mangre all my 
pains to conceal it. 

Lovel. Then, you confess the charge ? 

Wood. To say the truth, my love for her has 
of late stopped short on this side idolatry. 

Lovel. As all good Christians' should, I think. 

Wood. I am sure, I could have loved her still 
within the limits of warrantable love. 

Lovel. A kind of brotherly affection, I take it. 

Wood. We should have made excellent man 
and wife in time. 

Lovel. A good old couple, when the snows fell, 
to crowd about a sea-coal fire, and talk over old 
matters. 

Wood. While each should feel, what neither 
cared to acknowledge, that stories oft repeated 
may, at last, come to lose some of their grace by 
the repetition. 

Lovel. Which both of you may yet live long 
enough to discover. For, take my word for it, 
Margaret is a bird that will come back to you 
without a lure. 

Wood. Never, never, Lovel. Spite of my levity, 
with tears I confess it, she was a lady of most 
confirmed honour, of an unmatchable spirit, and 
determinate in all virtuous resolutions ; not 
hasty to anticipate an affront, nor slow to feel, 
where just provocation was given. 

Lovel. What made you neglect her, then ? 
Wood. Mere levity and youthfulness of blood, 



a malady incident to young men ; physicians 
call it caprice. Nothing else. He that slighted 
her knew her value : and 'tis odds, but, for thy 
sake, Margaret, John will yet go to his grave a 
bachelor. {A noise heard, as of one drunk and singing. 

Lovel. Here comes one, that will quickly dissi- 
pate these humours. 

Enter one drunk. 

Drunken Man. Good-morrow to you, gentle- 
men. Mr. Lovel, I am your humble servant. 
Honest Jack Woodvil, I will get drunk with you 
to-morrow. 

Wood. And why to-morrow, honest Mr. Free- 
man? 

Drunken Man. I scent a traitor in that question. 
A beastly question. Is it not his Majesty's birth- 
day ? the day of all days in the year, on which 
King Charles the Second was graciously pleased 
to be born. (Sings.) " Great pity 'tis such days 
as those should come but once a year." 

Lovel. Drunk in a morning ! foh ! how he 
stinks ! 

Drunken Man. And why not drunk in a 
morning ? canst tell, bully 1 

Wood. Because, being the sweet and tender 
infancy of the day, methinks, it should ill endure 
such early blightings. 

Drunken Man. I grant you, 'tis in some sort 
the youth and tender nonage of the day. Youth 
is bashful, and I give it a cup to encourage it. 
(Sings.) "Ale that will make Grimalkin prate." — 
At noon I drink for thirst, at night for fellow- 
ship, but, above all, I love to usher in the bashful 
morning under the auspices of a freshening stoop 
of liquor. (Sings.) " Ale in a Saxon rumkin then, 
makes valour burgeon in tall men." — But, I crave 
pardon. I fear I keep that gentleman from 
serious thoughts. There be those that wait for 
me in the cellar. 

Wood. Who are they ? 

Drunken Man. Gentlemen, my good friends, 
Cleveland, Delaval, and Truby. I know by this 
time they are all clamorous for me. [?&& singing. 

Wood. This keeping of open house acquaints a 
man with strange companions. 

Enter, at another door, Tliree calling for Harry Freeman. 
Harry Freeman, Harry Freeman. 
He is not here. Let us go look for him. 
Where is Freeman ? 

Where is Harry ? {Exeunt the Three, calling for 

Freeman. 

Wood. Did you ever see such gentry ? (laughing.) 
These are they that fatten on ale and tobacco 
in a moruing, drink burnt brandy at noon to 
promote digestion, and piously conclude with 



R R 2 



612 



JOHN WOODVIL, A TKAGEDY. 



quart bumpers after supper, to prove their 
loyalty. 

Lovel. Come, shall we adjourn to the Tennis 
Court? 

Wood. No, you shall go with me into the 
gallery, where I will show you the Vandyke I 
have purchased. " The late King taking leave of 
his children." 

Lovel. I will but adjust my dress, and attend 
you. [Exit Lovel. 

John Wood, (alone.) Now Universal England 

getteth drunk 
For joy, that Charles, her monarch, is restored : 
And she, that sometime wore a saintly mask, 
The stale-grown vizor from her face doth pluck, 
And weareth now a suit of morris bells, 
With which she jingling goes through all her 

towns and villages. 
The baffled factions in their houses skulk ; 
The commonwealthsman, and state machinist, 
The cropt fanatic, and fifth-monarchy-man, 
Who heareth of these visionaries now ? 
They and their dreams have ended. Fools do 

sing, 
Where good men yield God thanks ; but politic 

spirits, 
Who live by observation, note these changes 
Of the popular mind, and thereby serve their 

ends. 
Then why not 1 1 What's Charles to me, or 

Oliver, 
But as my own advancement hangs on one of 

them? 

I to myself am chief. 1 know, 

Some shallow mouths cry out, that I am smit 
With the gauds and show of state, the point of 

place, 
And trick of precedence, the ducks, and nods 
Which weak minds pay to rank. 'Tis not to sit 
In place of worship at the royal masques, 
Their pastimes, plays, and Whitehall banquetings, 
For none of these, 
Nor yet to be seen whispering with some great 

one, 
Do I affect the favours of the court. 
I would be great, for greatness hath great power, 
And that's the fruit I reach at. — 
Great spirits ask great play -room. Who could sit, 
With these prophetic swellings in my breast, 
That prick and goad me on, and never cease, 
To the fortunes something tells me I was born to 1 
Who, with such monitors within to stir him, 
Would sit him down, with lazy arms across, 
A unit, a thing without a name in the state, 
A something to be govern'd, not to govern, 
A fishing, hawking, hunting, country gentleman ] 

[Exit. 



Scene. — Sherwood Forest. 

Sik Walteb "Woodvil. Simon Woodvil. (Disguised as 
Frenchmen.) 

Sir W. How fares my boy, Simon, my youngest 
born, 
My hope, my pride, young Woodvil, speak to me 1 
Some grief untold weighs heavy at thy heart : 
I know it by thy alter'd cheer of late. 
Thinkest thy brother plays thy father false ? 
It is a mad and thriftless prodigal, 
Grown proud upon the favours of the court ; 
Court manners, and court fashions, he affects, 
And in the heat and uncheck'd blood of youth, 
Harbours a company of riotous men, 
All hot, and young, court-seekers, like himself, 
Most skilful to devour a patrimony ; 
And these have eat into my old estates, 
And these have drain'd thy father's cellars dry ; 
But these so common faults of youth not named, 
(Things which themselves outgrow, left to them- 
selves,) 
I know no quality that stains his honour. 
My life upon his faith" and noble mind, 
Son John could never play thy father false. 

Simon,^! nevef thought but nobly of my 
brothir, 
Touching Ms honour and fidelitj'-. 
Still I coul&WLsh him charier of his person, 
And of his time more frugal, than to spend 
In riotous living, graceless society, 
And mirth unpalatable, hours better employ'd 
(With those persuasive graces nature lent him) 
In. fervent pleadings for a father's life. 

Sir W. I would not owe my life to a jealous 
court, 
Whose shallow policy I know it is, 
On some reluctant acts of prudent mercy, 
(Not voluntary, but extorted by the times, 
In the first tremblings of new-fixed power, 
And recollection smarting from old wounds,) 
On these to build a spurious popularity. 
Unknowing what free grace or mercy mean, 
They fear to punish, therefore do they pardon. 
For this cause have I oft forbid my son, 
By letters, overtures, open solicitings, 
Or closet tamperings, by gold or fee, 
To beg or bargain with the court for my life. 

Simon. And John has ta'en you, father, at 
your word, 
True to the letter of his paternal charge. 

Sir W. Well, my good cause, and my good 
conscience, boy, 
Shall be for sons to me, if John prove false. 
Men die but once, and the opportunity 
Of a noble death is not an every-day fortune : 
It is a gift which noble spirits pray for. 



JOHN WOODVIL, A TRAGEDY. 



613 



Simon. I would not wrong my brother by 
surmise ; 
I know him generous, full of gentle qualities, 
Incapable of base compliances, 
No prodigal in his nature, but affecting 
This show of bravery for ambitious ends. 
He drinks, for 'tis the humour of the court, 
And drink' may one day wrest the secret from 

him, 
And pluck you from your hiding-place in the 
sequel. 

Sir W. Fair death shall be my doom, and foul 
life his. 
Till when, we'll live as free in this green forest, 
As yonder deer, who roam unfearing treason : 
Who seem the aborigines of this place, 
Or Sherwood theirs by tenure. 

Simon. 'Tis said, that Robert Earl of Hunting- 
don, 
Men call'd him Robin Hood, an outlaw bold, 
With a merry crew of hunters here did haunt, 
Not sparing the king's venison. May one believe 
The antique tale 1 

Sir W. There is much likelihood, 

Such bandits did in England erst abound, 
When polity was young. I have read of the 

pranks 
Of that mad archer, and of the tax he levied 
On travellers, whatever their degree, 
Baron, or knight, whoever pass'd these woods, 
Layman, or priest, not sparing the bishop's 

mitre 
For spiritual regards ; nay, once, 'tis said, 
He robb'd the king himself. 

Simon. A perilous man (smiling). 

Sir W. How quietly we live here, 
Unread in the world's business, 
And take no note of all its slippery changes. 
'Twere best we make a world among ourselves, 
A little world, 

Without the ills and falsehoods of the greater ; 
We too being all the inhabitants of ours, 
And kings and subjects both in one. 

Simon. Only the dangerous errors, fond conceits, 
Which make the business of that greater world, 
Must have no place in ours : 

As, namely, riches, honours, birth, place, courtesy, 
Good fame and bad, rumours and popular noises, 
Books, creeds, opinions, prejudices national, 
Humours particular, 

Soul-killing lies, and truths that work small good, 
Feuds, factions, enmities, relationships, 
Loves, hatreds, sympathies, antipathies, 
And all the intricate stuff quarrels are made of. 

Margaret enters in toy's apparel. 
Sir W. What pretty boy have we here 1 



Marg. Bon jour, messieurs. Ye have handsome 
English faces, 
I should have ta'en ye else for other two, 
I came to seek in the forest. 

Sir W. Who are they ? 
Marg. A gallant brace of Frenchmen, cuiTd 
monsieurs, 
That, men say, haunt these woods, affecting 
privacy, 
I More than the manner of their countrymen. 

Simon. We have here a wonder. 
j The face is Margaret's face. 

Sir W. The face is Margaret's, but the dress 
the same 
My Stephen sometime wore. [To Margaret. 

Suppose us them ; whom do men say we are 1 
Or know you what you seek 1 

Marg. A worthy pair of exiles, 
Two whom the politics of state revenge, 
In final issue of long civil broils, 
Have houseless driven from your native France, 
To wander idle in these English woods, 
Where now ye live ; most part 
Thinking on home, and all the joys of France, 
Where grows the purple vine. 

Sir W. These woods, young stranger, 
And grassy pastures, which the slim deer loves, 
Are they less beauteous than the land of France, 
Where grows the purple vine 1 

Marg. I cannot tell. 

To an indifferent eye both show alike. 
Tis not the scene, 

'But all familiar objects in the scene, 
Which now ye miss, that constitute a difference. 
Ye had a country, exiles, ye have none now ; 
Friends had ye, and much wealth, ye now have 

nothing ; 
Our manners, laws, our customs, all are foreign 

to you, 
I know ye loathe them, cannot learn them readily ; 
And there is reason, exiles, ye should love 
Our English earth less than your land of France, 
Where grows the purple vine ; where all delights 

grow 
Old custom has made pleasant. 

Sir W. You, that are read 

So deeply in our story, what are you 1 

Marg. A bare adventurer ; in brief a woman, 
That put strange garments on, and came thus far 
To seek an ancient friend : 
And having spent her stock of idle words, 
And feeling some tears coming, 
Hastes now to clasp Sir Walter Woodvil's knees, 
And beg a boon for Margaret ; bis poor ward. 

[Kneeling. 

Sir W. Not at my feet, Margaret ; not at my 
feet. 



6U 



JOHN WOODVIL, A TRAGEDY. 



Marg. Yes, till her suit is answered. 

Sir W. Name it. 

Marg. A little boon, and yet so great a grace, 
She fears to ask it. 

Sir W. Some riddle, Margaret ? 

Marg. No riddle, but a plain request. 

Sir W. Name it. 

Marg. Free liberty of Sherwood, 

And leave to take her lot with you in the forest. 

Sir W. A scant petition, Margaret ; but take it, 
Seal'd with an old man's tears. — 
Rise, daughter of Sir Rowland. 

[Addressing them both. 

you most worthy, 
You constant followers of a man proscribed, 
Following poor misery in the throat of danger ; 
Fast servitors to crazed and penniless poverty, 
Serving poor poverty without hope of gain ; 
Kind children of a sire unfortunate ; 
Green clinging tendrils round a trunk decay'd, 
"Which needs must bring on you timeless decay ; 
Fair living forms to a dead carcase join'd ; — 
What shall I say? 

Better the dead were gather'd to the dead, 
Than death and life in disproportion meet. — 
Go, seek your fortunes, children. — 

Simon. Why, whither should we go ? 

Sir W, You to the Court, where now your 
brother John 
Commits a rape on Fortune. 

Simon. Luck to John ! 

A light-heel'd strumpet, when the sport is done. 

Sir W. You to the sweet society of your equals, 
Where the world's fashion smiles on youth and 
beauty. 

Marg. Where young men's flatteries cozen 
young maids' beauty. 
There pride oft gets the vantage hand of duty, 
There sweet humility withers. 

Simon. Mistress Margaret, 

How fared my brother John, when you left 
Devon 1 

Marg. John was well, sir. 

Simon. 'Tis now nine months almost, 

Since I saw home. What new friends has John 

made? 
Or keeps he his first love 1 — I did suspect 
Some foul disloyalty. Now do I know, 
John has proved false to her, for Margaret 

weeps. 
It is a scurvy brother. 

Sir W. Fie upon it. 

All men are false, I think. The date of love 
Is out, expired ; its stories all grown stale, 
O'erpast, forgotten, like an antique tale 
Of Hero and Leander. 

Simon. I have known some men that are too 



general-contemplative for the narrow passion. I 
am in some sort a general lover. 

Marg. In the name of the boy God, who plays 
at hoodman blind with the Muses, and cares not 
whom he catches : what is it you love ? 

Simon, Simply, all things that live, 
From the crook'd worm to man's imperial form, 
And God-resembling likeness. The poor fly, 
That makes short holiday in the sun beam, 
And dies by some child's hand. The feeble bird 
With little wings, yet greatly ventixrous 
In the upper sky. The fish in th' other element, 
That knows no touch of eloquence. What else 1 
Yon tall and elegant stag, 
Who paints a dancing shadow of his horna 
In the water, where he drinks. 

Marg. I myself love all these things, yet so as 
with a difference : — for example, some animals 
better than others, some men rather than other 
men ; the nightingale before the cuckoo, the 
swift and graceful palfrey before the slow and 
asinine mule. Your humour goes to confound 
all qualities. What sports do you use in the 
forest 1 — 

Simon. Not many ; some few, as thus : — 
To see the sun to bed, and to arise, 
Like some hot amourist with glowing eyes, 
Bursting the lazy bands of sleep that bound him, 
With all his fires and travelling glories round him. 
Sometimes the moon on soft night clouds to rest, 
Like beauty nestling in a young man's breast, 
And all the winking stars, her handmaids, keep 
Admiring silence, while those lovers sleep. 
Sometimes outstretcht, in very idleness, 
Nought doing, saying little, thinking less, 
To view the leaves, thin dancers upon air, 
Go eddying round; and small birds, how they 

fare, 
When mother Autumn fills their beaks with corn, 
Filch'd from the careless Amalthea's horn ; 
And how the woods berries and worms provide 
Without their pains, when earth has nought be- 
side 
To answer their small wants. 
To view the graceful deer come tripping by, 
Then stop, and gaze, then turn, they know not 

why, 
Like bashful younkers in society. 
To mark the structure of a plant or tree, 
And all fair things of earth, how fair they be. 

Marg. (smiling.) And, afterwards, them paint 
in simile. 

Sir W. Mistress Margaret will have need of 
some refreshment. Please you, we have some 
poor viands within. 

Marg. Indeed I stand in need of them. 

Sir W. Under the shade of a thick-spreading tree, 



JOHN WOODVIL, A TRAGEDY. 



611 



Upon the grass, no better carpeting, 

We'll eat our noon-tide meal ; and, dinner done, 

One of us shall repair to Nottingham, 

To seek some safe night -lodging in the town, 

Where you may sleep, while here with us you 

dwell, 
By day, in the forest, expecting better times, 
And gentler habitations, noble Margaret. 
Simon. Allons, young Frenchman — 
Marg. Allons, Sir Englishman. The time has 

been 
I've studied love-lays in the English tongue, 
And been enamour'd of rare poesy : 
Which now I must unlearn. Henceforth, 
Sweet mother-tongue, old English speech, adieu ; 
For Margaret has got new name and language 

new. [Exeunt. 



ACT THE THIRD. 

Scene. — An Apartment of State in Woodvil Hall. 

Cavaliers drinking. 
John Woodvil, Lovel, Gray, and four more. 

John. More mirth, I beseech you, gentlemen — 
Mr. Gray, you are not merry. — 

Gray. More wine, say I, and mirth shall ensue 
in course. What ! we have not yet above three 
half pints a man to answer for. Brevity is the 
soul of drinking, as of wit. Despatch, I say. 
More wine. (Fills.) 

1st Gent. I entreat you, let there be some order, 
some method, in our drinkings. I love to lose 
my reason with my eyes open, to commit the 
deed of drunkenness with forethought and deli- 
beration. I love to feel the fumes of the liquor 
gathering here, like clouds. 

2nd Gent. And I am for plunging into madness 
at once. Damn order, and method, and steps, 
and degrees, that he speaks of. Let confusion 
have her legitimate work. 

Lovel. I marvel why the poets, who, of all men, 
methinks, should possess the hottest livers, and 
most empyreal fancies, should affect to see such 
virtues in cold water. 

Gray. Virtue in cold water ! ha ! ha ! ha ! — 

John. Because your poet-born hath an internal 
wine, richer than lippara or canaries, yet un- 
crushed from any grapes of earth, unpressed in 
mortal wine-presses. 

3rd Gent. What may be the name of this wine 1 

John. It hath as many names as qualities. It 
is denominated indifferently, wit, conceit, inven- 
tion, inspiration, but its most royal and compre- 
hensive name is fancy. 



Zrd Gent. And where keeps he this sovereign 
liquor ] 

John. Its cellars are in the brain, whence your 
true poet deriveth intoxication at will ; while his 
animal spirits, catching a pride from the quality 
and neighbourhood of their noble relative, the 
brain, refuse to be sustained by wines and fermen- 
tations of earth. 

Zrd Gent. But is your poet-born always tipsy 
with this liquor 1 ? 

John. He hath his stoopings and reposes ; but 
his proper element is the sky, and in the suburbs 
of the empyrean. 

Zrd Gent. Is your wine-intellectual so exquisite ] 
henceforth, I, a man of plain conceit, will, in all 
humility, content my mind with canaries. 

Uh Gent. I am for a song or a catch. When 
will the catches come on, the sweet wicked 
catches 1 

John. They cannot be introduced with pro- 
priety before midnight. Every man must commit 
his twenty bumpers first. We are not yet well 
roused. Frank Lovel, the glass stands with you. 

Jjovel. Gentlemen, the Duke. (Fills.) 

All. The Duke. (They drink) 

Gray. Can any tell, why his Grace, being a 
Papist — 

John. Pshaw ! we will have no questions of 
state now. Is not this his Majesty's birth-day 1 

Gray. What follows 1 

John. That every man should sing, and be 
joyful, and ask no questions. 

2nd Gent. Damn politics, they spoil drinking. 

Zrd Gent. For certain, 'tis a blessed monarchy. 

2nd Gent. The cursed fanatic days we have 
seen ! The times have been when swearing was 
out of fashion. 

Zrd Gent. And drinking. 

1st Gent. And wenching. 

Gray. The cursed yeas and forsooths, which 
we have heard uttered, when a man could not 
rap out an innocent oath, but straight the air was 
thought to be infected. 

Lovel. 'Twas a pleasant trick of the saint, which 
that trim puritan Swear -not-at-all Smooth-speech 
used, when his spouse chid him with an oath for 
committing with his servant maid, to cause his 
house to be fumigated with burnt brandy, and 
ends of scripture, to disperse the devil's breath, 
as he termed it. 

All. Ha ! ha ! ha ! 

Gray. But 'twas pleasanter, when the other 
saint Fesist-the-devil-and-he-will-flee-from-thee Pure- 
man was overtaken in the act, to plead an illusio 
visus, and maintain his sanctity upon a supposed 
power in the adversary to counterfeit the shapes 
of things. 



616 



JOHN WOODVIL, A TRAGEDY. 



All. Ha ! ha ! ha ! 

John. Another round, and then let every man 
devise what trick he can in his fancy, for the 
better manifesting our loyalty this day. 

Gray. Shall we hang a puritan 1 

John. No, that has been done already in Cole- 
man-street. 

2nd Gent. Or fire a conventicle ? 

John. That is stale too. 

2>rd Gent. Or burn the Assembly's catechism 1 

4th Gent. Or drink the king's health, every 
man standing upon his head naked 1 

John (to Lovel). We have here some pleasant 
madness. 

3rd Gent. Who shall pledge me in a pint 
bumper, while we drink to the king upon our 
knees ] 

Lovel. Why on our knees, Cavalier ] 

John (smiling). For more devotion, to be sure. 
(To a servant.) Sirrah, fetch the gilt goblets. 

{The goblets are brought. They drink the Kiiig's health, 
kneeling. A shout of general approbation following 
the first appearance of the goblets. 

John. We have here the unchecked virtues of 
the grape. How the vapours curl upwards ! It 
were a life of gods to dwell in such an element : 
to see, and hear, and talk brave things. Now fie 
upon these casual potations. That a man's most 
exalted reason should depend upon the ignoble 
fermenting of a fruit, which sparrows pluck at as 
well as we ! 

Gray (aside to Lovel). Observe how he is 
ravished. 

Lovel. Vanity and gay thoughts of wine do 
meet in him and engender madness. 

{Wliile the rest are engaged in a wild kind of talk, John 
advances to the front of the stage, and soliloquises. 

John. My spirits turn to fire, they mount so 
fast. 
My joys are turbulent, my hopes show like 

fruition. 
These high and gusty relishes of life, sure, 
Have no allayings of mortality in them. 
I am too hot now, and o'ercapable, 
For the tedious processes, and creeping wisdom, 
Of human acts, and enterprises of a man. 
I want some seasonings of adversity, 
Some strokes of the old mortifier Calamity, 
To take these swellings down, divines call vanity. 

1st Gent. Mr. Woodvil, Mr. Woodvil. 

2nd Gent. Where is Woodvil? 

Gray. Let him alone. I have seen him in these 
lunes before. His abstractions must not taint the 
good mirth. 

John (continuing to soliloquise). for some 
friend now, 
To conceal nothing from, to have no secrets. 



How fine and noble a thing is confidence, 
How reasonable too, and almost godlike ! 
Fast cement of fast friends, band of society, 
Old natural go-between in the world's business, 
Where civil life and order, wanting this cement, 
Would presently rush back 
Into the pristine state of singularity, 
And each man stand alone. 

(A servant enters.) 

Servant. Gentlemen, the fireworks are ready. 

1st Gent. What be they ? 

Lovel. The work of London artists, which our 
host has provided in honour of this day. 

2nd Gent. 'Sdeath, who would part with his 
wine for a rocket 1 

Lovel. Why truly, gentlemen, as our kind host 
has been at the pains to provide this spectacle, 
we can do no less than be present at it. It will 
not take up much time. Every man may return 
fresh and thirsting to his liquor. 

3rd Gent. There's reason in what he says. 

2nd Gent. Charge on then, bottle in hand. 
There's husbandry in that. 

[They go out, singing. Only Lovel remains, who observes 
Woodvil. 

John (still talking to himself.) This Lovel here's 
of a tough honesty, 
Would put the rack to the proof. He is not of 

that sort 
Which haunt my house, snorting the liquors, 
And when their wisdoms are afloat with wine, 
Spend vows as fast as vapours, which go off 
Even with the fumes, their fathers. He is one, 
Whose sober morning actions 
Shame not his o'ernight's promises ; 
Talks little, flatters less, and makes no promises ; 
Why this is he, whom the dark-wisdom'd fate 
Might trust her counsels of predestination 

with, 
And the world be no loser. 

Why should I fear this man 1 {Seeing Lovel. 

Where is the company gone ? 

Lovel. To see the fireworks, where you will be 
expected to follow. But I perceive you are 
better engaged. 

John. I have been meditating this half hour 
On all the properties of a brave friendship, 
The mysteries that are- in it, the noble uses, 
Its limits withal, and its nice boundaries. 
Exempli gratid, how far a man 
May lawfully forswear himself for his friend ; 
What quantity of lies, some of them brave ones, 
He may lawfully incur in a friend's behalf; 
What oaths, blood-crimes, hereditary quarrels, 
Night brawls, fierce words, and duels in the 
morning, 



JOHN WOODVIL, A TRAGEDY. 



6i : 



He need not stick at, to maintain his friend's 
honour, or his cause. 
Lovel. I think many men would die for their 

friends. 
John. Death ! why 'tis nothing. We go to it for 
sport, 
To gain a name, or purse, or please a sullen 

humour, 
When one has worn his fortune's livery thread- 
bare, 
Or his spleen'd mistress frowns. Husbands will 

venture on it, 
To cure the hot fits and cold shakings of jealousy. 
A friend, sir, must do more. 

Lovel. Can he do more than die 1 
John. To serve a friend this he may da Pray 
mark me. 
Having a law within (great spirits feel one) 
He cannot, ought not, to be bound by any 
Positive laws or ord'nances extern, 
But may reject all these: by the law of friend- 
ship 
He may do so much, be they, indifferently, 
Penn'd statutes, or the land's unwritten usages, 
As public fame, civil compliances, 
Misnamed honour, trust in matter of secrets, 
All vows and promises, the feeble mind's 

religion, 
(Binding our morning knowledge to approve 
What last night's ignorance spake ;) 
The ties of blood withal, and prejudice of kin. 
Sir, these weak terrors 

Must never shake me. I know what belongs 
To a worthy friendship. Come, you shall have 
my confidence. 
Lovel. I hope you think me worthy. 
John. You will smile to hear now — 
Sir Walter never has been out of the island. 
Lovel. You amaze me. 

John. That same report of his escape to France 
Was a fine tale, forged by myself — 
Ha ! ha ! 
I knew it would stagger him. 

Lovel. Pray, give me leave. 

Where has he dwelt, how lived, how lain con- 

ceal'd 1 
Sure I may ask so much. 

John. From place to place, dwelling in no 
place long, 
My brother Simon still hath borne him company, 
('Tis a brave youth, I envy him all his virtues). 
Disguised in foreign garb, they pass for French- 
men, 
Two Protestant exiles from the Limousin 
Newly arrived. Their dwelling's now at Not- 
tingham, 
Where no soul knows them. 



Lovel. Can you assign any reason, why a gen- 
tleman of Sir Walter's known prudence should 
expose his person so lightly 1 

John. I believe, a certain fondness, 
A child-like cleaving to the land that gave him 

birth, 
Chains him like fate. 

Lovel. I have known some exiles thus 

To linger out the term of the law's indulgence, 
To the hazard of being known. 

John. You may suppose sometimes 
They use the neighb'ring Sherwood for their 

sport, 
Their exercise and freer recreation. — 
I see you smile. Pray now, be careful. 

Lovel. I am no babbler, sir ;, you need not fear 

me. 
John. But some men have been known to talk 
in their sleep, 
And tell fine tales that way. 

Lovel. I have heard so much. But, to say 

truth, I mostly sleep alone. 
John. Or drink, sir ? do you never drink too 
freely 1 
Some men will drink, and tell you all their 
secrets. 
Lovel. Why do you question me, who know 

my habits 1 
John. I think you are no sot, 
No tavern -troubler, worshipper of the grape ; 
But all men drink sometimes, 
And veriest saints at festivals relax, 
The marriage of a friend, or a wife's birth-day. 
Lovel. How much, sir, may a man with safety 
drink ] [Smiling. 

John. Sir, three half pints a day is reason- 
able ; 
I care not if you never exceed that quantity. 

Lovel. I shall observe it ; 
On holidays two quarts. 
John. Or stay ; you keep no wench ? 
Lovel. Ha ! 

John. No painted mistress for your private 
hours ] 
You keep no whore, sir 1 

Lovel. What does he mean 1 

John. Who for a close embrace, a toy of sin, 
And amorous praising of your worship's breath, 
In rosy junction of four melting lips, 
Can kiss out secrets from you ] 

Lovel. How strange this passionate behaviour 
shows in you ! 
Sure you think me some weak one. 

John. Pray pardon me some fears. 
You have now the pledge of a dear father's life. 
I am a son — would fain be thought a loving 



618 



JOHN WOODVIL, A TRAGEDY. 



You may allow me some fears : do not despise 

me, 
If, in a posture foreign to my spirit, 
And by our well-knit friendship I conjure you, 
Touch not Sir Walter's life. [Kneels. 

You see these tears. My father's an old man. 
Pray let him live. 

Lovel. I must be bold to tell you, these new 
freedoms 
Show most unhandsome in you. 

John prising). Ha ! do you say so 1 

Sure, you are not grown proud upon my 

secret ! 
Ah ! now I see it plain. He would be babbling. 
No doubt a garrulous and hard-faced traitor— 
But I'll not give you leave. [Draws. 

Lovel. What does this madman mean ] 

John. Come, sir; here is no subterfuge; 
You must kill me, or I kill you. 

Lovel (drawing). Then self-defence plead my 
excuse. 
Have at you, sir. [They fight. 

John. Stay, sir. 

I hope you have made your will. 
If not, 'tis no great matter. 
A broken cavalier has seldom much 
He can bequeath : an old worn peruke, 
A snuff-box with a picture of Prince Rupert, 
A rusty sword he'll swear was used at Naseby, 
Though it ne'er came within ten miles of the 

place ; 
And, if he's very rich, 
A cheap edition of the Icon Basilike, 
Is mostly all the wealth he dies possest of. 
You say few prayers, I fancy ; — 
So to it again. [They fight again. Lovel is disarmed. 

Lovel. You had best now take my life. I guess 
you mean it. 

John (musing). No : — Men will say I fear'd 
him, if I kill'd him. 
Live still, and be a traitor in thy wish, 
But never act thy thought, being a coward. 
That vengeance, which thy soul shall nightly 

thirst for, 
And this disgrace I've done you cry aloud for, 
Still have the will without the power to execute. 
So now I leave you, 
Feeling a sweet security. No doubt 
My secret shall remain a virgin for you ! — 

[ Goes out smiling, in scorn. 

Lovel (rising). For once you are mistaken in 
your man. 
The deed you wot of shall forthwith be done. 
A bird let loose, a secret out of hand, 
Returns not back. Why, then 'tis baby policy 
To menace him who hath it in his keeping. 
I will go look for Gray ; 



Then, northward ho ! such tricks as we shall 

play 
Have not been seen, I think, in merry Sherwood, 
Since the days of Robin Hood, that archer good. 



ACT THE FOURTH. 

Scene. — An Apartment in Woodvil Hall. 

John Woodvil. [Alone.) 

A weight of wine lies heavy on my head, 

The unconcocted follies of last night. 

Now all those jovial fancies, and bright hopes, 

Children of wine, go off like dreams. 

This sick vertigo here 

Preacheth of temperance, no sermon better. 

These black thoughts, and dull melancholy, 

That stick like burrs to the brain, will they ne'er 

leave me 1 
Some men are full of choler, when they are 

drunk ; 
Some brawl of matter foreign to themselves ; 
And some, the most resolved fools of all, 
Have told their dearest secrets in their cups. 

Scene.— The Forest. 
Sir Waltee. Simon. Lovel. Gray. 

Lovel. Sir, we are sorry we cannot return your 
French salutation. 

Gray. Nor otherwise consider this garb you 
trust to than as a poor disguise. 

Lovel. Nor use much ceremony with a traitor. 

Gray. Therefore, without much induction of 
superfluous words, I attach you, Sir Walter 
Woodvil, of High Treason, in the King's name. 

Lovel. And of taking part in the great Rebellion 
against our late lawful Sovereign, Charles the 
First, 

Simon. John has betrayed us, father. 

Lovel. Come, sir, you had best surrender fairly. 
We know you, sir. 

Simon. Hang ye, villains, ye are two better 
known than trusted. I have seen those faces 
before. Are ye not two beggarly retainers, 
trencher-parasites, to John ? I think ye rank 
above his footmen. A sort of bed and board 
worms — locusts that infest our house ; a leprosy 
that long has hung upon its walls and princely 
apartments, reaching to fill all the corners of my 
brother's once noble heart. 

Gray. We are his friends. 

Simon. Fie, sir, do not weep. How these 
rogues will triumph ! Shall I whip off their 
heads, father"? [Draws. 



JOHN WOODVIL, A TRAGEDY. 



619 



Lovel. Come, sir, though this show handsome 
in you, being his son, yet the law must have its 
course. 

Simon. And if I tell ye the law shall not have 
its course, cannot ye be content ? Courage, 
father ; shall such things as these apprehend a 
man 1 Which of ye will venture upon me ] — 
Will you, Mr. Constable self-elect? or you, sir, 
with a pimple on your nose, got at Oxford by 
hard drinking, your only badge of loyalty? 

Gray, Tis a brave youth — I cannot strike at 
him. 

Simon. Father, why do you cover your face 
with your hands ? Why do you fetch your 
breath so hard ? See, villains, his heart is burst ! 
villains, he cannot speak. One of you run for 
some water ; quickly, ye knaves ; will ye have 
your throats cut 1 [They both slink off. 

How is it with you, Sir Walter ? Look up, sir, 
the villains are gone. He hears me not, and this 
deep disgrace of treachery in his son hath touched 
him even to the death. most distuned and 
distempered world, where sons talk their aged 
fathers into their graves ! Garrulous and diseased 
world, and still empty, rotten and hollow talking 
world, where good men decay, states turn round 
in an endless mutability, and still for the worse ; 
nothing is at a stay, nothing abides but vanity, 
chaotic vanity. — Brother, adieu ! 

There lies the parent stock which gave us life, 
Which I will see consign'd with tears to earth. 
Leave thou the solemn funeral rites to me, 
Grief and a true remorse abide with thee. 

[Bears in the tody. 

Scene.— Another Part of the Forest. 
Marg. {alone.) It was an error merely, and no 

crime, 
An unsuspecting openness in youth, 
That from his lips the fatal secret drew, 
Which should have slept like one of nature's 

mysteries, 
Unveil'd by any man. 
Well, he is dead ! 

And what should Margaret do in the forest 1 
ill-starr'd John ! 

Woodvil, man enfeoff 'd to despair ! 
Take thy farewell of peace. 
never look again to see good days, 
Or close thy lids in comfortable nights, 
Or ever think a happy thought again, 
If what I have heard be true. — 
Forsaken of the world must Woodvil live, 
If he did tell these men. 

No tongue must speak to him, no tongue of man 
Salute him, when he wakes up in a morning ; 



Or bid "good night " to John. Who seeks to live 
In amity with thee, must for thy sake 
Abide the world's reproach. What then ? 
Shall Margaret join the clamours of the world 
Against her friend ? undiscerning world, 
That cannot from misfortune separate guilt, 
No, not in thought ! never, never, John. 
Prepared to share the fortunes of her friend 
For better or for worse thy Margaret comes, 
To pour into thy wounds a healing love, 
And wake the memory of an ancient friendship. 
And pardon me, thou spirit of Sir Walter, 
Who, in compassion to the wretched living, 
Have but few tears to waste upon the dead. 

Scene. — Woodvil Hall. 
Sandford. Margaret. (As from a Journey.) 

Sand. The violence of the sudden mischance 
hath so wrought in him, who by nature is allied 
to nothing less than a self-debasing humour of 
dejection, that I have never seen anything more 
changed and spirit-broken. He hath, with a 
peremptory resolution, dismissed the partners of 
his riots and late hours, denied his house and 
person to their most earnest solicitings, and will 
be seen by none. He keeps ever alone, and his 
grief (which is solitary) does not so much seem 
to possess and govern in him, as it is by him, 
with a wilfulness of most manifest affection, 
entertained and cherished. 

Marg. How bears he up against the common 
rumour 1 

Sand. With a strange indifference, which who- 
soever dives not into the niceness of his sorrow 
might mistake for obdurate and insensate. Yet 
are the wings of his pride for ever dipt ; and yet 
a virtuous predominance of filial grief is so ever 
uppermost, that you may discover his thoughts 
less troubled with conjecturing what living 
opinions will say, and judge of his deeds, than 
absorbed and buried with the dead, whom his 
indiscretion made so. 

Marg. I knew a greatness ever to be resident 
in him, to which the admiring eyes of men 
should look up even in the declining and bank- 
rupt state of his pride. Fain would I see him, 
fain talk with him ; but that a sense of respect, 
which is violated, when without deliberation we 
press into the society of the unhappy, checks 
and holds me back. How, think you, he would 
bear my presence ? 

Sand. As of an assured friend, whom in the 
forgetfulness of his fortunes he past by. See 
him you must ; but not to-night. The newness 
of the sight shall move the bitterest compunc- 
tion and the truest remorse ; but afterwards, 



620 



JOHF WOODVIL, A TRAGEDY. 



trust me, dear lady, the happiest effects of a 
returning peace, and a gracious comfort, to him, 
to you, and all of us. 

Marg. I think he would not deny me. He 
hath ere this received farewell letters from his 
brother, who hath taken a resolution to estrange 
himself, for a time, from country, friends, and 
kindred, and to seek occupation for his sad 
thoughts in travelling in foreign places, where 
sights remote and extern to himself may draw 
from him kindly and not painful ruminations. 

Sand. I was present at the receipt of the letter. 
The contents seemed to affect him, for a moment, 
with a more lively passion of grief than he has 
at any time outwardly shown. He wept with 
many tears (which I had not before noted in 
him), and appeared to be touched with the sense 
as of some unkindness; but the cause of their 
sad separation and divorce quickly recurring, he 
presently returned to his former inwardness of 
suffering. 

Marg. The reproach of his brother's presence 
at this hour would have been a weight more than 
could be sustained by his already oppressed and 
sinking spirit. — Meditating upon these intricate 
and wide-spread sorrows, hath brought a heaviness 
upon me, as of sleep. How goes the night 1 — 

Sand. An hour past sun-set. You shall first 
refresh your limbs (tired with travel) with meats 
and some cordial wine, and then betake your no 
less wearied mind to repose. 

Marg. A good rest to us all. 

Sand. Thanks, lady. 



ACT THE FIFTH. 



John Woodvil (dressing). 

John. How beautiful (handling his mourning) 

And comely do these mourning garments show ! 

Sure Grief hath set his sacred impress here, 

To claim the world's respect ! they note so 

feelingly 
By outward types the serious man within. — 
Alas ! what part or portion can I claim 
In all the decencies of virtuous sorrow, 
Which other mourners use 1 as namely, 
This black attire, abstraction from society, 
Good thoughts, and frequent sighs, and seldom 

smiles, 
A cleaving sadness native to the brow, 
All sweet condolements of like-grieved friends, 
(That steal away the sense of loss almost) 
Men's pity, and good offices 
Which enemies themselves do for us then, 
Putting their hostile disposition off, 



As we put off our high thoughts and proud looks. 
[Pauses, and observes the pictures. 
These pictures must be taken down : 
The portraitures of our most ancient family 
For nigh three hundred years ! How have I 

listen'd, 
To hear Sir Walter, with an old man's pride, 
Holding me in his arms, a prating boy, 
And pointing to the pictures where they hung, 
Repeat by course their worthy histories, 
(As Hugh de Widville, Walter, first of the name, 
And Anne the handsome, Stephen, and famous 

John : 
Telling me, I must be his famous John.) 
But that was in old times. 
Now, no more 

Must I grow proud upon our house's pride. 
I rather, I, by most unheard-of crimes, 
Have backward tainted all their noble blood, 
Rased out the memory of an ancient family, 
And quite reversed the honours of our house. 
Who now shall sit and tell us anecdotes ? 
The secret history of his own times, 
And fashions of the world when he was young : 
How England slept out three-and-twenty years, 
While Carr and Villiers ruled the baby king : 
The costly fancies of the pedant's reign, 
Balls, feastings, huntings, shows in allegory, 
And Beauties of the court of James the First. 

Margaret enters. 
John. Comes Margaret here to witness my 
disgrace ? 
0, lady, I have suffer'd loss, 
And diminution of my honour's brightness. 
You bring some images of old times, Margaret, 
That should be now forgotten. 
Marg. Old times should never be foigotten, 
John. 
I came to talk about them with my friend. 

John. I did refuse you, Margaret, in my pride. 
Marg. If John rejected Margaret in his pride, 
(As who does not, being splenetic, refuse 
Sometimes old playfellows,) the spleen being 

gone, 
The offence no longer lives. 

Woodvil, those were happy days, 

When we two first began to love. When first, 

Under pretence of visiting my father, 

(Being then a stripling nigh upon my age,) 

You came a wooing to his daughter, John. 

Do you remember, 

With what a coy reserve and seldom speech, 

(Young maidens must be chary of their speech,) 

1 kept the honours of my maiden pride 1 
I was your favourite then. 

John. Margaret, Margaret ! 



JOHN WOODVIL, A TRAGEDY. 



621 



These your submissions to my low estate, 
And cleavings to the fates of sunken Woodvil, 
Write bitter things 'gainst my unworthiness. 
Thou perfect pattern of thy slander'd sex, 
Whom miseries of mine could never alienate, 
Nor change of fortune shake ; whom injuries, 
And slights (the worst of injuries) which moved 
Thy nature to return scorn with like scorn, 
Then when you left in virtuous pride this house, 
Could not so separate, but now in this 
My day of shame, when all the world forsake me, 
You only visit me, love, and forgive me. 

Marg. Dost yet remember the green arbour, 
John, 
In the south gardens of my father's house, 
Where we have seen the summer sun go -down, 
Exchanging true love's vows without restraint % 
And that old wood, you call'd your wilderness, 
And vow'd in sport to build a chapel in it, 
There dwell 

" Like hermit poor 

In pensive place obscure," 

And tell your Ave Maries by the curls 
(Dropping like golden beads) of Margaret's hair ; 
And make confession seven times a day 
Of every thought that stray'd from love and 

Margaret ; 
And I your saint the penance should appoint — 
Believe me, sir, I will not now be laid 
Aside, like an old fashion. 

John. lady, poor and abject are my thoughts ; 
My pride is cured, my hopes are under clouds, 
I have no part in any good man's love, 
In all earth's pleasures portion have I none, 
I fade and wither in my own esteem, 
This earth holds not alive so poor a thing as I am. 
I was not always thus. [Weeps. 

Marg. Thou noble nature, 

Which lion-like didst awe the inferior creatures, 
Now trampled on by beasts of basest quality, 
My dear heart's lord, life's pride, soul-honour'd 

John ! 
Upon her knees (regard her poor request) 
Your favourite, once beloved Margaret, kneels. 

John. What would' st thou, lady, ever honour'd 
Margaret ] 

Marg. That John would think more nobly of 
himself, 
More worthily of high Heaven ; 
And not for one misfortune, child of chance, 
No crime, but unforeseen, and sent to punish 
The less offence with image of the greater, 
Thereby to work the soul's humility, 
(Which end hath happily not been frustrate 

quite,) 
not for one offence mistrust Heaven's mercy, 



Nor quit thy hope of happy days to come — 
John yet has many happy days to live ; 
To live and make atonement. 

John. Excellent lady, 

Whose suit hath drawn this softness from my 

eyes, 
Not the world's scorn, nor falling off of friends, 
Could ever do. Will you go with me, Margaret 1 

Marg. (rising.) Go whither, John 

John. Go in with me, 

And pray for the peace of our unquiet minds 1 

Marg. That I will, John. [Exeunt. 



Scene. — An inner Apartment. 



John is discovered kneeling. — Margaret standing over Mm. 

John (rises.) I cannot bear 
To see you waste that youth and excellent beauty, 
('Tis now the golden time of the day with you,) 
In tending such a broken wretch as I am. 

Marg. John will break Margaret's heart, if he 
speak so. 

sir, sir, sir, you are too melancholy, 

And I must call it caprice. I am somewhat bold 
Perhaps in this. But you are now my patient, 
(You know you gave me leave to call you so,) 
And I must chide these pestilent humours from 
you. 
John. They are gone. — 
Mark, love, how cheerfully I speak ! 

1 can smile too, and I almost begin 

To understand what kind of creature Hope is. 

Marg. Now this is better, this mirth becomes 
you, John. 

John. Yet tell me, if I over-act my mirth 
(Being but a novice, I may fall into that error). 
That were a sad indecency, you know. 

Marg. Nay, never fear. 
I will be mistress of your humours, 
And you shall frown or smile by the book. 
And herein I shall be most peremptory, 
Cry, " This shows well, but that inclines to 

levity; 
This frown has too much of the Woodvil in it, 
But that fine sunshine has redeem'd it quite." 

John. How sweetly Margaret robs me of my- 
self ! 

Marg. To give you in your stead a better self ! 
Such as you were, when these eyes first beheld 
You mounted on your sprightly steed, White 

Margery, 
Sir Rowland my father's gift, 
And all my maidens gave my heart for lost. 
I was a young thing then, being newly come 
Home from my convent education, where 
Seven years I had wasted in the bosom of France : 
Returning home true protestant, you call'd me 



622 



JOHN" WOODVIL, A TRAGEDY. 



Your little heretic nun. How tiniid-bashful 
Did John salute his love, being newly seen ! 
Sir Rowland term'd it a rare modesty, 
And praised it in a youth. 

John. Now Margaret weeps herself. 
{A noise of bells heard) . 

Marg. Hark the bells, John. 

John. Those are the church bells of St. Mary 
Ottery. 

Marg. I know it. 

John. St. Mary Ottery, my native village 
In the sweet shire of Devon. 
Those are the bells. 

Marg. Wilt go to church, John 1 

John. I have been there already. 

Marg. How canst say thou hast been there 
already? The bells are only now ringing for 
morning service, and hast thou been at church 
already 1 

John. I left my bed betimes, I could not sleep, 
And when I rose, I look'd (as my custom is) 
From my chamber window, where I can see the 

sun rise ; 
And the first object I discern'd 
Was the glistering spire of St. Mary Ottery. 

Marg. Well, John. 

John. Then I remember'd 'twas the sabbath-day. 
Immediately a wish arose in my mind, 
To go to church and pray with Christian people. 
And then I check'd myself, and said to myself, 
" Thou hast been a heathen, John, these two years 

past, 
(Not having been at church in all that time,) 
And is it fit, that now for the first time 
Thou should'st offend the eyes of Christian people 
With a murderer's presence in the house of 
prayer 1 



Thou would'st but discompose their pious 

thoughts, 
And do thyself no good : for how could'st thou 

pray, 
With unwash'd hands, and lips unused to the 

offices?" 
And then I at my own presumption smiled; 
And then I wept that I should smile at all, 
Having such cause of grief ! I wept outright ; 
Tears like a river flooded all my face, 
And I began to pray, and found I could pray ; 
And still I yearn' d to say my prayers in the 

church. 
" Doubtless (said I) one might find comfort in it." 
So stealing down the stairs, like one that fear'd 

detection, 
Or was about to act unlawful business 
At that dead time of dawn, 
I flew to the church, and found the doors wide 

open. 
(Whether by negligence I knew not, 
Or some peculiar grace to me vouchsafed, 
For all things felt like mystery). 
Marg. Yes. 

John. So entering in, not without fear, 
I past into the family pew, 
And covering up my eyes for shame, 
And deep perception of unworthiness, 
Upon the little hassock knelt me down, 
Where I so oft had kneel' d, 
A docile infant by Sir Walter's side ; 
And, thinking so, I wept a second flood 
More poignant than the first ; 
But afterwards was greatly comforted. 
It seem'd, the guilt of blood was passing from me 
Even in the act and agony of tears, 
And all my sins forgiven. 



THE WITCH. 



A DRAMATIC SKETCH OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 



- CHARACTERS. 

Old Servant in the Family of Sir Francis Fairford. Stranger. 



Servant. One summer night Sir Francis, as it 
chanced, 
Was pacing to and fro in the avenue 
That westward fronts our house, 
Among those aged oaks, said to have been planted 
Three hundred years ago, 
By a neighboring prior of the Fairford name. 
Being o'ertask'd in thought, he heeded not 
The importunate suit of one who stood by the 

gate, 
And begg'd an alms. 

Some say he shoved her rudely from the gate 
With angry chiding ; but I can never think 
(Our master's nature hath a sweetness in it) 
That he could use a woman, an old woman, 
With such discourtesy ; but he refused her — 
And better had he met a lion in his path 
Than that old woman that night ; 
For she was one who practised the black arts, 
And served the devil, being since burnt for witch- 
craft. 
She look'd at him as one that meant to blast him, 
And with a frightful noise, 
('Twas partly like a woman's voice, 
And partly like the hissing of a snake,) 
She nothing said but this 
(Sir Francis told the words) : — 

A mischief, mischief, mischief, 
And a nine-times killing curse, 
By day and by night, to the caitiff wight, 

Who shakes the poor like snakes from his door, 
And shuts up the womb of his purse. 

And still she cried — 

A mischief, 
And a nine-fold withering curse : 
For that shall come to thee that will undo thee, 
Both all that thou fearest and worse. 



So saying, she departed, 
Leaving Sir Francis like a man, beneath 
Whose feet a scaffolding was suddenly falling ; 
So he described it. 

Stranger. A terrible curse ! What follow'd 1 
Servant. Nothing immediate, but some two 
months after, 
Young Philip Fairford suddenly fell sick, 
And none could tell what ail'd him ; for he lay, 
And pined, and pined, till all his hair fell off, 
And he, that was full-flesh'd, became as thin 
As a two-month's babe that has been starved in 

the nursing. 
And sure I think 

He bore his death-wound like a little child ,* 
With such rare sweetness of dumb melancholy 
He strove to clothe his agony in smiles, 
Which he would force up in his poor pale cheeks, 
Like ill-timed guests that had no proper dwelling 

there ; 
And, when they ask'd him his complaint, he laid 
His hand upon his heart to show the place, 
Where Susan came to him a-nights, he said, 
And prick'd him with a pin. — 
And thereupon Sir Francis call'd to mind 
The beggar-witch that stood by the gateway 
And begg'd an alms. 

Stranger. But did the witch confess 1 

Servant. All this and more at her death. 
Stranger. I do not love to credit tales of magic. 
Heaven's music, which is Order, seems unstrung, 
And this brave world 
(The mystery of God) unbeautified, 
Disorder'd, marr'd, where such strange things are 
acted. 



ALBUM VERSES. 



WITH A FEW OTHERS. 



DEDICATION. 



TO THE PUBLISHER, 
Dear Moxon, 

I do not know to whom a Dedication of these Trifles is more properly due than to yourself. You 
suggested the printing of them. Tou were desirous of exhibiting a specimen of the manner in which 
Publications, entrusted to your future care, would appear. With more propriety, perhaps, the " Christmas," 
or some other of your own simple, unpretending Compositions, might have served this purpose. But I forget 
■ — you have bid a long adieu to the Muses. I had on my hands sundry Copies of Verses written for Albums — 

Those books kept by modern young Ladies for show, 
Of which their plain Grandmothers nothing did know — 

or otherwise floating about in Periodicals ; which you have chosen in this manner to embody. I feel little 
interest in their publication. They are simply — Advertisement Verses. 

It is not for me, nor you, to allude in public to the kindness of our honoured Friend, under whose auspices 
you are become a Publisher. May that fine-minded Veteran in Verse enjoy life long enough to see his patronage 
justified? I venture to predict that your habits of industry, and your cheerful spirit, will carry you through 
the world. 

I am, Dear Moxon, your Friend and sincere Weil-Wisher, 



Enfield, 1st June, 1! 



CHARLES LAMB. 



IN THE AUTOGRAPH BOOK OF 
MRS. SERGEANT W . 

Had I a power, Lady, to my will, 
You should not want Hand Writings. I would fill 
Your leaves with Autographs — resplendent names 
Of Knights and Squires of old, and courtly Dames, 
Kings, Emperors, Popes. Next under these 

should stand 
The hands of famous Lawyers — a grave band — 
Who in their Courts of Law or Equity 
Have best upheld Freedom and Property. 
These should moot eases in your book, and vie 
To show their reading and their Sergeantry. 
But I have none of these ; nor can I send 
The notes by Bullen to her Tyrant penn'd 
In her authentic hand ; nor in soft hours 
Lines writ by Rosamund in Clifford's bowers. 
The lack of curious Signatures I moan, 
And want the courage to subscribe my own. 



TO' DORA W , 

ON BEING ASKED B,Y HER FATHER TO WRITE IN HER 
ALBUM. 

An Album is a Banquet : from the store, 
In his intelligential Orchard growing, 
Your Sire might heap your board to overflowing : 
One shaking of the Tree — 'twould ask no more 
To set a Salad forth, more rich than that 
Which Evelyn * in his princely cookery fancied : 
Or that more rare, by Eve's neat hands enhanced, 
Where, a pleased guest, the Angelic Virtue sat. 
But like the all-grasping Founder of the Feast, 
Whom Nathan to the sinning king did tax, 
From his less wealthy neighbours he exacts ; 
Spares his own flocks, and takes the poor man's 

beast. 
Obedient to his bidding, lo, I am, 
A zealous, meek, contributory Lamb. 

* Acetaria, a Discourse of Sallets, by J. E. 1706. 



ALBUM VERSES. 



625 



IN 



THE ALBUM OP A CLERGYMAN'S 
LADY. 



An Album is a Garden, not for show 

Planted, but use ; where wholesome herbs should 

grow. 
A Cabinet of curious porcelain, where 
No fancy enters, but what's rich or rare. 
A Chapel, where mere ornamental things 
Are pure as crowns of saints, or angels' wings. 
A List of living friends ; a holier Room 
For names of some since mouldering in the tomb, 
Whose blooming memories life's cold laws survive; 
And, dead elsewhere, they here yet speak and live. 
Such, and so tender, should an Album be ; 
And, Lady, such I wish this book to thee. 



IN THE ALBUM OF EDITH S . 

In Christian world Mart the garland wears ! 
Rebecca sweetens on a Hebrew's ear ; 
Quakers for pure Priscilla are more clear ; 
And the light Gaul by amorous Ninon swears. 
Among the lesser lights how Lucy shines ! 
What air of fragrance Rosamond throws round ! 
How like a hymn doth sweet Cecilia sound ! 
Of Marthas, and of Abigails, few lines 
Have bragg'd in verse. Of coarsest household stuff 
Should homely Joan be fashion'd. But can 
You Barbara resist, or Marian 1 
And is not Clare for love excuse enough 1 
Yet, by my faith in numbers, I profess, 
These all, than Saxon Edith, please me less. 



IN THE ALBUM OF ROTH A Q . 

A passing glance was all I caught of thee, 
In my own Enfield haunts at random roving. 
Old friends of ours were with thee, faces loving ; 
Time short : and salutations cursory, 
Though deep, and hearty. The familiar Name 
Of you, yet unfamiliar, raised in me 
Thoughts — -what the daughter of that Man should 

be, 
Who call'd our Wordsworth friend. My thoughts 

did frame 
A growing Maiden, who, from day to day 
Advancing still in stature, and in grace, 
Would all her lonely Father's griefs efface, 
And his paternal cares with usury pay. 
I still retain the phantom, as I can ; 
And call the gentle image — Quillinan. 



IN THE ALBUM OF CATHERINE ORKNEY. 

Canadia ! boast no more the toils 
Of hunters for the furry spoils ; 
Your whitest ermines are but foils 
To brighter Catherine Orkney. 

That such a flower should ever burst 
From climes with rigorous winter curst ! — 
We bless you, that so kindly nurst 

This flower, this Catherine Orkney. 

We envy not your proud display 
Of lake — wood — vast Niagara ; 
Your greatest pride we've borne away. 
How spared you Catherine Orkney 1 

That Wolfe on Heights of Abraham fell, 
To your reproach no more we tell : 
Canadia, you repaid us well 

With rearing Catherine Orkney. 

Britain, guard with tenderest care 
The charge allotted to your share : 
You've scarce a native maid so fair, 
So good, as Catherine Orkney. 



IN THE ALBUM OF LUCY BARTON. 

Little Book, surnamed of white, 
Clean as yet, and fair to sight, 
Keep thy attribution right. 

Never disproportion'd scrawl ; 
Ugly blot, that's worse than all ; 
On thy maiden clearness fall ! 

In each letter, here design'd, 
Let the reader emblem'd find 
Neatness of the owner's mind. 

Gilded margins count a sin, 
Let thy leaves attraction win 
By the golden rules within ; 

Sayings fetch'd from sages old ; 
Laws which Holy Writ unfold, 
Worthy to be graved in gold : 

Lighter fancies not excluding : 
Blameless wit, with nothing rude in, 
Sometimes mildly interluding 

Amid strains of graver measure : 
Virtue's self hath oft her pleasure 
In sweet Muses' groves of leisure. 



S S 



J 



626 



ALBUM VERSES. 



Riddles dark, perplexing sense ; 

Darker meanings of offence ; 

What but shades — be banish'd hence. 

Whitest thoughts in whitest dress, 
Candid meanings, best express 
Mind of quiet Quakeress. 



IN" THE ALBUM OF MRS. JANE TOWERS. 

Lady unknown, who crav'st from me Unknown 
The trifle of a verse these leaves to grace, 
How shall I find fit matter 1 with what face 
Address a face that ne'er to me was shown ] 
Thy looks, tones, gesture, manners, and what 

not, 
Conjecturing, I wander in the dark. 
I know thee only Sister to Charles Clarke ! 
But at that name my cold muse waxes hot, 
And swears that thou art such a one as he, 
Warm, laughter-loving, with a touch of madness, 
Wild, glee-provoking, pouring oil of gladness 
From frank heart without guile. And, if 

thou be 
The pure reverse of this, and I mistake — 
Demure one, I will like thee for his sake. 



IN" THE ALBUM OF MISS 



Such goodness in your face doth shine, 
With modest look, without design, 
That I despair, poor pen of mine 

Can e'er express it. 
To give it words I feebly try ; 
My spirits fail me to supply 
Befitting language for't, and I 

Can only bless it ! 



But stop, rash verse ! and don't abuse 
A bashful Maiden's ear with news 
Of her own virtues. She '11 refuse 

Praise sung so loudly. 
Of that same goodness you admire, 
The best part is, she don't aspire 
To praise — nor of herself desire 

To think too proudly. 



IN" MY OWN ALBUM. 

Fresh clad from heaven in robes of white, 

A young probationer of light, 

Thou wert, my soul, an album bright, 

A spotless leaf; but thought, and care, 

And friend and foe, in foul or fair, 

Have " written strange defeatures " there ; 

And Time with heaviest hand of all, 
Like that fierce writing on the wall, 
Hath stamp'd sad dates — he can't recall ; 

And error gilding worst designs — 
Like speckled snake that strays and shines- 
Betrays his path by crooked lines ; 

And vice hath left his ugly blot ; 
And good resolves, a moment hot, 
Fairly began — but finish'd not ; 

And fruitless, late remorse doth trace — 
Like Hebrew lore a backward pace — 
Her irrecoverable race. 

Disjointed numbers ; sense unknit ; 
Huge reams of folly, shreds of wit ; 
Compose the mingled mass of it. 

My scalded eyes no longer brook 
Upon this ink-blurr'd thing to look — 
Go, shut the leaves, and clasp the book. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



627 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



ANGEL HELP.* 

This rare tablet doth include 

Poverty with Sanctitude. 

Past midnight this poor maid hath spun, 

And yet the work is not half done, 

"Which must supply from earnings scant 

A feeble bed-rid parent's want. 

Her sleep-charged eyes exemption ask, 

And Holy hands take up the task ; 

Unseen the rock and spindle ply, 

And do her earthly drudgery. 

Sleep, saintly poor one ! sleep, sleep on ; 

And, waking, find thy labours done. 

Perchance she knows it by her dreams ; 

Her eye hath caught the golden gleams, 

Angelic presence testifying, 

That round her everywhere are flying ; 

Ostents from which she may presume, 

That much of heaven is in the room. 

Skirting her own bright hair they run, 

And to the sunny add more sun : 

Now on that aged face they fix, 

Streaming from the Crucifix ; 

The flesh-clogg'd spirit disabusing, 

Death-disarming sleeps infusing, 

Prelibations, foretastes high, 

And equal thoughts to live or die. 

Gardener bright from Eden's bower, 

Tend with care that lily flower ; 

To its leaves and root infuse 

Heaven's sunshine, Heaven's dews. 

'Tis a type, and 'tis a pledge, 

Of a crowning privilege. 

Careful as that lily flower, 

This Maid must keep her precious dower 

Live a sainted Maid, or die 

Martyr to virginity. 



ON AN INFANT DYING AS SOON AS BOKN. 

I saw where in the shroud did lurk 
A curious frame of Nature's work. 
A flow'ret crushed in the bud, 
A nameless piece of Babyhood, 

* Suggested by a drawing in the possession of Charles 
Aders, Esq., in which is represented the legend of a poor 
female Saint ; who, having spun past midnight, to main- 
tain a bed-rid mother, has fallen asleep from fatigue, and 
Angels are finishing her work. In another part of the 
chamber, an angel is tending a lily, the emblem of purity. 



Was in her cradle-coffin lying ; 

Extinct, with scarce the sense of dying : 

So soon to exchange the imprisoning womb 

For darker closets of the tomb ! 

She did but ope an eye, and put 

A clear beam forth, then straight up shut 

For the long dark : ne'er more to see 

Through glasses of mortality. 

Riddle of destiny, who can show 

What thy short visit meant^ or know 

What thy errand here below 1 

Shall we say, that Nature blind 

Check'd her hand, and changed her mind, 

Just when she had exactly wrought 

A finish'd pattern without fault ? 

Could she flag, or could she tire, 

Or lack'd she the Promethean fire 

(With her nine moons' long workings sicken'd) 

That should thy little limbs have quicken'd ? 

Limbs so firm, they seem'd to assure 

Life of health and days mature : 

Woman's self in miniature ! 

Limbs so fair, they might supply 

(Themselves now but cold imagery) 

The sculptor to make Beauty by. 

Or did the stern-eyed Fate descry, 

That babe, or mother, one must die ; 

So in mercy left the stock, 

And cut the branch ; to save the shock 

Of young years widow' d ; and the pain, 

When Single State comes back again 

To the lone man who, 'reft of wife, 

Thenceforward drags a maimed life ? 

The economy of Heaven is dark ; 

And wisest clerks have miss'd the mark, 

Why Human Buds, like this, should fall, 

More brief than fly ephemeral, 

That has his day ; while shrivell'd crones 

Stiffen with age to stocks and stones ; 

And crabbed use the conscience sears 

In sinners of an hundred years. 

Mother's prattle, mother's kiss, 

Baby fond, thou ne'er wilt miss. 

Rites, which custom does impose, 

Silver bells and baby clothes ; 

Coral redder than those lips, 

Which pale death did late eclipse ; 

Music framed for infants' glee, 

Whistle never tuned for thee : 

Though thou want'st not, thou shalt have them, 

Loving hearts were they which gave them. 



628 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Let not one be missing ; nurse, 


Saint-like seeming to direct him 


See them laid upon the hearse 


To the Power that must protect him ? 


Of infant slain by doom perverse. 


Is she of the Heaven-born Three, 


Why should kings and nobles have 


Meek Hope, strong Faith, sweet Charity ; 


Pictured trophies to their grave ; 


Or some Cherub ? — 


And we, churls, to thee deny 




Thy pretty toys with thee to lie, 


They you mention 


A more harmless vanity ] 


Far transcend my weak invention. 




• 'Tis a simple Christian child, 




Missionary young and mild, 




From her stock of Scriptural knowledge, 




Bible-taught without a college, 


THE CHRISTENING. 


Which by reading she could gather 




Teaches him to say Our Father 


Areat'd — a half-angelic sight — 


To the common Parent, who 


In vests of pure Baptismal white, 


Colour not respects, nor hue. 


The Mother to the Font doth bring 


White and black in Him have part, 


The little helpless nameless thing, 


Who looks not to" the skin, but heart. 


With hushes soft and mild caressing, 




At once to get— a name and blessing. 






Close by the babe the Priest doth stand, 




The Cleansing Water at his hand, 


TO A YOUNG FRIEND, 


Which must assoil the soul within 


ON HER TWENTY-FIRST BIRTHDAY. 


From every stain of Adam's sin. 


Crown me a cheerful goblet, while I pray 


The Infant eyes the mystic scenes, 


A blessing on thy years, young Isola ; 


Nor knows what all this wonder means ; 


Young, but no more a child. How swift have 


And now he smiles, as if to say 


flown 


"lama Christian made this day ;" 


To me thy girlish times, a woman grown 


Now frighted clings to Nurse's hold, 


Beneath my heedless eyes ! in vain I rack 


Shrinking from the water cold, 


My fancy to believe the almanac, 


Whose virtues, rightly understood, 


That speaks thee Twenty-One. Thou shouldst 


Are, as Bethesda's waters, good. 


have still 


Strange words— The World, The Flesh, The 


Remain'd a child, and at thy sovereign will 


Devil- 


Gambol'd about our house, as in times past. 


Poor Babe, what can it know of Evil ] 


Ungrateful Emma, to grow up so fast, 


But we must silently adore 


Hastening to leave thy friends ! — for which 


Mysterious truths, and not explore. 


intent, 


Enough for him, in after-times, 


Fond Runagate, be this thy punishment : 


When he shall read these artless rhymes, 


After some thirty years, spent in such bliss 


If, looking back upon this day 


As this earth can afford, where still we miss 


With quiet conscience, he can say — 


Something of joy entire, may'st thou grow old 


" I have in part redeem'd the pledge 


As we whom thou hast left ! That wish was 


Of my Baptismal privilege ; 


cold. 


And more and more will strive to flee 


far more aged and wrinkled, till folks say, 


All which my Sponsors kind did then renounce 


Looking upon thee reverend in decay, 


for me." 


" This Dame, for length of days, and virtues 




rare, 
With her respected Grandsire may compare." 
Grandchild of that respected Isola, 






Thou shouldst have had about thee on this day 


THE YOUNG CATECHIST.* 


Kind looks of Parents, to congratulate 


While this tawny Ethiop prayeth, 


Their Pride grown up to woman's grave estate. 


Painter, who is she that stayeth 


But they have died, and left thee, to advance 


By, with skin of whitest mstre, 


Thy fortunes how thou may'st, and owe to chance 


Sunny locks, a shining cluster, 


The friends which nature grudged. And thou 




wilt find, 


* A picture by Henry Meyer, Esq. 


Or make such, Emma, if I am not blind 



SONNETS. 



629 



To thee and thy deservings. That last strain 
Had too much sorrow in it. Fill again 
Another cheerful goblet, while I say 
" Health, and twice health, to our lost Isola." 



SHE IS GOING. 

For their elder Sister's hair 
Martha does a wreath prepare 
Of bridal rose, ornate and gay : 
To-morrow is the wedding day. 

She is going. 



Mary, youngest of the three, 
Laughing idler, full of glee, 
Arm in arm does fondly chain her, 
Thinking, poor trifler, to detain her— 
But she's going. 

Vex not, maidens, nor regret 
Thus to part with Margaret. 
Charms like yours can never stay 
Long within doors ; and one day 

You'll be going. 



SONNETS. 



HARMONY IN UNLIKENESS. 

By Enfield lanes, and Winchmore's verdant hill, 
Two lovely damsels cheer my lonely walk : 
The fair Maria, as a vestal, still ; 
And Emma brown, exuberant in talk. 
With soft and Lady speech the first applies 
The mild correctives that to grace belong 
To her redundant friend, who her defies 
With jest, and mad discourse, and bursts of song. 
differing Pair, yet sweetly thus agreeing, 
What music from your happy discord rises, 
While your companion hearing each, and seeing, 
Nor this, nor that, but both together, prizes ; 
This lesson teaching, which our souls may 

strike, 
That harmonies may be in things unlike ! 



WRITTEN AT CAMBRIDGE. 

I was not train'd in Academic bowers, 
And to those learned streams I nothing owe 
Which copious from those twin fair founts do flow; 
Mine have been anything but studious hours. 
Yet can I fancy, wandering mid thy towers, 
Myself a nursling, Granta, of thy lap ; 
My brow seems tightening with the Doctor's cap, 
And I walk gowned ; feel unusual powers. 
Strange forms of logic clothe my admiring speech, 
Old Ramus' ghost is busy at my brain ; 
And my skull teems with notions infinite. 
Be still, ye reeds of Camus, while I teach 
Truths, which transcend the searching School- 
men's vein, 
And half had stagger'd that stout Stagirite ! 



TO A CELEBRATED FEMALE PERFORMER 
IN THE "BLIND BOY." 

Rare artist ! who with half thy tools, or none, 

Canst execute with ease thy curious art, 

And press thy powerful'st meanings on the 

heart, 
Unaided by the eye, expression's throne ! 
While each blind sense, intelligential grown 
Beyond its sphere, performs the effect of sight : 
Those orbs alone, wanting their proper might, 
All motionless and silent seem to moan 
The unseemly negligence of nature's hand, 
That left them so forlorn. What praise is thine, 
mistress of the passions ; artist fine ! 
Who dost our souls against our sense command, 
Plucking the horror from a sightless face, 
Lending to blank deformity a grace. 



WORK. 

Who first invented work, and bound the free 

And holyday-rej oicing spirit down 

To the ever-haunting importunity 

Of business in the green fields, and the town — 

To plough, loom, anvil, spade — and oh ! most sad 

To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood 1 

Who but the Being unblest, alien from good, 

Sabbathless Satan ! he who his unglad 

Task ever plies 'mid rotatory burnings, 

That round and round incalculably reel — 

For wrath divine hath made him like a wheel — 

In that red realm from which are no returnings : 

Where toiling, and turmoiling, ever and aye 

He, and his thoughts, keep pensive working-day. 



630 



SONNETS. 



LEISURE. 

They talk of time, and of time's galling yoke, 
That like a mill-stone on man's mind doth 

press, 
Which only works and business can redress : 
Of divine Leisure such foul lies are spoke, 
Wounding her fair gifts with calumnious stroke. 
But might I, fed with silent meditation, 
Assoiled live from that fiend Occupation — 
Improbus Labor, which my spirits hath broke — 
I 'd drink of time's rich cup, and never surfeit : 
Fling in more days than went to make the 

gem 
That crown 'd the white top of Methusalem : 
Yea on my weak neck take, and never forfeit, 
Like Atlas bearing up the dainty sky, 
The heaven-sweet burthen of eternity. 



DEUS NOBIS B.MC OTIA FECIT. 



TO SAMUEL ROGERS, ESQ. 

Rogers, of all the men that I have known 

But slightly, who have died, your Brother's 

loss 
Touch'd me most sensibly. There came across 
My mind an image of the cordial tone 
Of your fraternal meetings, where a guest 
I more than once have sat ; and grieve to 

think, 
That of that threefold cord one precious link 
By Death's rude hand is sever'd from the rest. 



Of our old gentry he appear'd a stem — 
A Magistrate who, while the evil-doer 
He kept in terror, could respect the Poor, 
And not for every trifle harass them, 
As some, divine and laic, too oft do. 
This man's a private loss, and public too. 



THE GIPSY'S MALISON 

" Suck, baby, suck ! mother's love grows by 

giving ; 
Drain the sweet founts that only thrive by 

wasting ; 
Black manhood comes, when riotous guilty living 
Hands thee the cup that shall be death in 

tasting. 

Kiss, baby, kiss I mother's lips shine by kisses ; 
Choke the warm breath that else would fall in 

blessings ; 
Black manhood comes, when turbulent guilty 

blisses 
Tend thee the kiss that poisons 'mid caressings. 

Hang, baby, hang ! mother's love loves such 

forces, 
Strain the fond neck that bends still to thy 

clinging ; 
Black manhood comes, when violent lawless 

courses 
Leave thee a spectacle in rude air swinging." 

So sang a wither'd Beldam energetical, 
And bann'd the ungiving door with lips pro- 
phetical. 



COMMENDATORY VERSES, Etc. 



TO J. S. KNOWLES, ESQ. 

ON HIS TEAGEDY OF VIEGINIUS. 

Twelve years ago I knew thee, Knowles, and 

then 
Esteemed you a perfect specimen 
Of those fine spirits warm-soul'd Ireland sends, 
To teach us colder English how a friend's 
Quick pulse should beat. I knew you brave, 

and plain, 
Strong-sensed, rough-witted, above fear or gain ; 
But nothing further had the gift to espy. 
Sudden you re-appear. With wonder I 



Hear my old friend (turn'd Shakspeare) read a 

scene 
Only to his inferior in the clean 
Passes of pathos : with such fence-like art — ■ 
Ere we can see the steel, 'tis in our heart. 
Almost without the aid language affords, 
Your piece seems wrought. That huffing 

medium, words, 
(Which in the modern Tamburlaines quite sway 
Our shamed souls from their bias) in your 

play 
We scarce attend to. Hastier passion draws 
Our tears on credit : and we find the cause 



COMMENDATORY VERSES, ETC. 



631 



Some two hours after, spelling o'er again 

Those strange few words at ease, that wrought 

the pain. 
Proceed, old friend ; and, as the year returns, 
Still snatch some new old story from the urns 
Of long-dead virtue. We, that knew before 
Your worth, may admire, we cannot love you 

more. 



TO THE AUTHOR OF POEMS, 

PUBLISHED UNDER THE NAME OF BARRY CORN-WALL. 

Let hate, or grosser heats, their foulness mask 

Under the vizor of a borrow'd name ; 

Let things eschew the light deserving blame : 

No cause hast thou to blush for thy sweet task. 

" Marcian Colonna " is a dainty book ; 

And thy " Sicilian Tale " may boldly pass ; 

Thy " Dream " 'bove all, in which, as in a 

glass, 
On the great world's antique glories we may 

look. 
No longer then, as " lowly substitute, 
Factor, or Pkocter, for another's gains," 
Suffer the admiring world to be deceived ; 
Lest thou thyself, by self of fame bereaved, 
Lament too late the lost prize of thy pains, 
And heavenly tunes piped through an alien 

flute. 



TO THE EDITOR OF THE "EVERY-DAY 
BOOK." 

I ltke you, and your book, ingenuous Hone ! 

In whose capacious all-embracing leaves 
The very marrow of tradition's shown ; 

And all that history — much that fiction — 
weaves. 

By every sort of taste your work is graced. 

Vast stores of modern anecdote we find, 
With good old story quaintly interlaced — 

The theme as various as the reader's mind. 

Rome's lie-fraught legends you so truly paint — 
Yet kindly, — that the half-turn'd Catholic 

Scarcely forbears to smile at his own saint, 
And cannot curse the candid heretic. 

Rags, relics, witches, ghosts, fiends, crowd your 
page; 
Our fathers' mummeries we well-pleased be- 
hold, 
And, proudly conscious of a purer age, 

Forgive some fopperies in the times of old. 



Verse-honouring Phoebus, Father of bright Days, 
Must needs bestow on you both good and 
many, 

Who, building trophies of his Children's praise, 
Run their rich Zodiac through, not missing any. 

Dan Phoebus loves your book — trust me, friend 
Hone — 

The title only errs, he bids me say : 
For while such art, wit, reading, there are shown, 

He swears, 'tis not a work of every day. 



TO T. STOTHARD, ESQ. 

ON HIS ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE POEMS OF MR. ROGERS. 

Consummate Artist, whose undying name 

With classic Rogers shall go down to fame, 

Be this thy crowning work ! In my young days 

How often have I, with a child's fond gaze, 

Pored on the pictur'd wonders* thou hadst done : 

Clarissa mournful, and prim Grandison ! 

All Fielding's, Smollett's heroes, rose to view ; 

I saw, and I believed the phantoms true. 

But, above all, that most romantic tale + 

Did o'er my raw credulity prevail, 

Where Glums and Gawries wear mysterious things, 

That serve at once for jackets and for wings. 

Age, that enfeebles other men's designs, 

But heightens thine, and thy free draught refines. 

In several ways distinct you make us feel — 

Graceful as Raphael, as Watteau genteel. 

Your lights and shades, as Titianesque, we praise; 

And warmly wish you Titian's length of days. 



TO A FRIEND ON HIS MARRIAGE. 

What makes a happy wedlock 1 What has fate 
Not given to thee in thy well-chosen mate ? 
Good sense — good humour; — these are trivial 
things, 

Dear M , that each trite encomiast sings. 

But she hath these, and more. A mind exempt 

From every low-bred passion, where contempt, 

Nor envy, nor detraction, ever found 

A harbour yet ; an understanding sound; 

Just views of right and wrong ; perception full 

Of the deform' d, and of the beautiful, 

In life and manners ; wit above her sex, 

Which, as a gem, her sprightly converse decks ; 

Exuberant fancies, prodigal of mirth, 

To gladden woodland walk, or winter hearth ; 

A noble nature, conqueror in the strife 

Of conflict with a hard discouraging life, 

* Illustrations of the British Novelists. 
+ Peter Wilkins. 



632 



COMMENDATORY VERSES, ETC. 



Strengthening the veins of virtue, past the power 
Of those whose days have been one silken hour, 
Spoil'd fortune's pamper d offspring ; a keen sense 
Alike of benefit, and of offence, 
With reconcilement quick, that instant springs 
From the charged heart with nimble angel wings; 
While grateful feelings, like a signet sign'd 
By a strong hand, seem burn'd into her mind. 
If these, dear friend, a dowry can confer 
Richer than land, thou hast them all in her ; 
And beauty, which some hold the chiefest boon, 
Is in thy bargain for a make-weight thrown. 



[In a leaf of a quarto edition of the " Lives of the 
Saints, written in Spanish by the learned and reverend 
father, Alfonso Villegas, Divine, of the Order of St. 
Dorninick, set forth in English by John Heigham, Anno 
1630," bought at a Catholic book-shop in Duke-street, 
Lincoln's Inn Fields, I found, carefully inserted, a painted 
flower, seemingly coeval with the book itself ; and did 
not, for some time, discover that it opened in the middle, 
and was the cover to a Very humble draught of a St, Anne, 
with the Virgin and Child ; doubtless the performance of 
some poor but pious Catholic, whose meditations it 
assisted.] 

lift with reverent hand that tarnish'd flower, 
That shrines beneath her modest canopy 
Memorials dear to Romish piety ; 
Dim specks, rude shapes, of Saints ! in fervent 

hour 
The work perchance of some meek devotee, 
Who, poor in worldly treasures to set forth 
The sanctities she worshipp'd to their worth, 
In this imperfect tracery might see 
Hints, that all Heaven did to her sense reveal. 
Cheap gifts best fit poor givers. We are told 
Of the lone mite, the cup of water cold, 
That in their way approved the offerer's zeal. 
True love shows costliest, where the means are 

scant ; 
And, in their reckoning, they abound, who want. 



THE SELF-ENCHANTED. 

I had a sense in dreams of a beauty rare, 
Whom Fate had spell-bound, and rooted there, 
Stooping, like some enchanted theme, 
Over the marge of that crystal stream, 
Where the blooming Greek, to Echo blind, 
With Self-love fond, had to waters pined, 
Ages had waked, and ages slept, 
And that bending posture still she kept : 
For her eyes she may not turn away, 

'Till a fairer object shall pass that way 

'Till an image more beauteous this world can 

show, 
Than her own which she sees in the mirror below. 
Pore on, fair Creature ! for ever pore, 
Nor dream to be disenchanted more : 
For vain is expectance, and wish in vain, 
'Till a new Narcissus can come again. 



TO LOUISA M , 

WHOM I USED TO CALL " MONKEY." 

Louisa, serious grown and mild, 
I knew you once a romping child, 
Obstreperous much and very wild. 
Then you would clamber up my knees, 
And strive with every art to tease, 
When every art of yours could please. 
Those things would scarce be proper now, 
But they are gone, I know not how, 
And woman's written on your brow. 
Time draws his finger o'er the scene ; 
But I cannot forget between 
The Thing to me you once have been ; 
Each sportive sally, wild escape,— 
The scoff, the banter, and the jape, — 
And antics of my gamesome Ape. 



TRANSLATIONS. 



633 



TRANSLATIONS. 



FIIOM THE LATIN OF VINCENT BOURNE. 



THE BALLAD SINGERS. 

Where seven fair Streets to one tall Column * 

draw, 
Two Nymphs have ta'en their stand, in hats of 

straw ; 
Their yellower necks huge beads of amber grace, 
And by their trade they're of the Sirens' race : 
With cloak loose-pinn'd on each, that has been 

red, 
But long with dust and dirt discoloured 
Belies its hue ; in mud behind, before, 
From heel to middle leg becrusted o'er. 
One a small infant at the breast does bear ; 
And one in her right hand her tuneful ware, 
Which she would vend. Their station scarce is 

taken, 
When youths and maids flock round. His stall 

forsaken, 
Forth comes a Son of Crispin, leathern-capt, 
Prepared to buy a ballad, if one apt 
To move his fancy offers. Crispin's sons 
Have, from uncounted time, with ale and buns, 
Cherish'd the gift of Song, which sorrow quells ; 
And, working single in their low-rooft cells, 
Oft cheat the tedium of a winter's night 
With anthems warbled in the Muses' spight. — 
Who now hath caught the alarm? the Servant 

Maid 
Hath heard a buzz at distance ; and, afraid 
To miss a note, with elbows red comes out. 
Leaving his forge to cool, Pyracmon stout 
Thrusts in his unwash'd visage. He stands by, 
Who the hard trade of Porterage does ply 
With stooping shoulders. What cares he 1 he sees 
The assembled ring, nor heeds his tottering 

knees, 
But pricks his ears up with the hopes of song. 
So, while the Bard of Rhodope his wrong 
Bewail'd to Proserpine on Thracian strings, 
The tasks of gloomy Orcus lost their stings, 
And stone-vext Sysiphus forgets his load. 
Hither and thither from the sevenfold road 
Some cart Or waggon crosses, which divides 
The close- wedged audience ; but, as when the 

tides 

* Seven Dials. 



To ploughing ships give way, the ship being past, 

They re-unite, so these unite as fast. 

The older Songstress hitherto hath spent 

Her elocution in the argument 

Of their great Song in prose ; to wit, the woes 

Which Maiden true to faithless Sailor owes — 

Ah! "Wandering He/" — which now in loftier 

verse 
Pathetic they alternately rehearse. 
All gaping wait the event. This Critic opes 
His right ear to the strain. The other hopes 
To catch it better with his left. Long trade 
It were to tell, how the deluded Maid 
A victim fell. And now right greedily 
All hands are stretching forth the songs to buy, 
That are so tragical; which She, and She, 
Deals out, and sings the while ; nor can there be 
A breast so obdurate here, that will hold back 
His contribution from the gentle rack 
Of Music's pleasing torture. Irus' self, 
The staff-propt Beggar, his thin gotten pelf 
Brings out from pouch, where squalid farthings 

rest, 
And boldly claims his ballad with the best. 
An old Dame only lingers. To her purse 
The penny sticks. At length, with harmless 

curse, 
" Give me," she cries. " I'll paste it on my wall, 
While the wall lasts, to show what ills befall 
Fond hearts, seduced from Innocency's way ; 
How Maidens fall, and Mariners betray." 



TO DAVID COOK, 

OF THE PARISH OF ST. MARGARET'S, WESTMINSTER, 
WATCHMAN. 

For much good-natured verse received from thee, 

A loving verse take in return from me. 

" Good morrow to my masters," is your cry ; 

And to our David " twice as good," say I. 

Not Peter's monitor, shrill Chanticleer, 

Crows the approach of dawn in notes more clear, 

Or tells the hours more faithfully. While night 

Fills half the world with shadows of affright, 

You with your lantern, partner of your round, 

Traverse the paths of Margaret's hallow'd bound. 



634 



TRANSLATIONS. 



The tales of ghosts which old wives' ears drink up, 
The drunkard reeling home from tavern cup, 
Nor prowling robber, your firm soul appal ; 
Arm'd with thy faithful staff, thou slight'st 

them all. 
But if the market gard'ner chance to pass, 
Bringing to town his fruit, or early grass, 
The gentle salesman you with candour greet, 
And with reit'rated " good mornings " meet. 
Announcing your approach by formal bell, 
Of nightly weather you the changes tell ; 
"Whether the Moon shines, or her head doth 

steep 
In rain-portending clouds. When mortals sleep 
In downy rest, you brave the snows and sleet 
Of winter ; and in alley, or in street, 
Relieve your midnight progress with a verse. 
What though fastidious Phoebus frown averse 
On your didactic strain — indulgent Night 
With caution hath seal'd up both ears of Spite, 
And critics sleep while you in staves do sound 
The praise of long-dead Saints, whose Days 

abound 
In wintry months ; but Crispin chief proclaim : 
Who stirs not at that Prince of Cobblers' name ? 
Profuse in loyalty some couplets shine, 
And wish long days to all the Brunswick line ! 
To youths and virgins they chaste lessons read ; 
Teach wives and husbands how their lives to 

lead ; 
Maids to be cleanly, footmen free from vice ; 
How death at last all ranks doth equalise ; 
And, in conclusion, pray good years befall, 
With store of wealth, your "worthy masters 

all." 
For this and other tokens of good will, 
On boxing-day may store of shillings fill 
Your Christmas purse ; no householder give less, 
When at each door your blameless suit you 

press : 
And what you wish to us (it is but reason) 
Receive in turn — the compliments o' th' season ! 



ON A SEPULCHRAL STATUE OF AN 
INFANT SLEEPING. 

Beautiful Infant, who dost keep 

Thy posture here, and sleep'st a marble sleep, 

May the repose unbroken be, 

Which the fine Artist's hand hath lent to 

thee, 
While thou enjoy'st along with it 
That which no art, or craft, could ever hit, 
Or counterfeit to mortal sense, 
The heaven-infused sleep of Innocence ! 



EPITAPH ON A DOC. 

Poor Irus' faithful wolf-dog here I lie, 

That wont to tend my old blind master's steps, 

His guide and guard; nor, while my service 

lasted, 
Had he occasion for that staff, with which 
He now goes picking out his path in fear 
Over the highways and crossings, but would plant 
Safe in the conduct of my friendly string, 
A firm foot forward still, till he had reach'd 
His poor seat on some stone, nigh where the tide 
Of passers-by in thickest confluence flow'd : 
To whom with loud and passionate laments 
From morn to eve his dark estate he wail'd. 
Nor wail'd to all in vain : some here and there, 
The well-disposed and good, their pennies gave. 
I meantime at his feet obsequious slept ; 
Not all-asleep in sleep, but heart and ear 
Prick'd up at his least motion, to receive 
At his kind hand my customary crumbs, 
And common portion in his feast of scraps ; 
Or when night warn'd us homeward, tired and 

spent 
With our long day and tedious beggary. 
These were my manners, this my way of life, 
Till age and slow disease me overtook, 
And sever' d from my sightless master's side. 
But lest the grace of so good deeds should die, 
Through tract of years in mute oblivion lost, 
This slender tomb of turf hath Irus rear'd, 
Cheap monument of no ungrudging hand, 
And with short verse inscribed it, to attest, 
In long and lasting union to attest, 
The virtues of the Beggar and his Dog. 



THE RIVAL BELLS. 

A tuneful challenge rings from either side 

Of Thames' fair banks. Thy twice six Bells, 

St. Bride, 
Peal swift and shrill ; to which more slow reply 
The deep-toned eight of Mary Overy. 
Such harmony from the contention flows, 
That the divided ear no preference knows ; 
Betwixt them both disparting Music's State, 
While one exceeds in number, one in weight. 



NEWTON'S PRINCIPIA. 

Great Newton's self, to whom the world's in 

debt, 
Owed to School Mistress sage his Alphabet ; 



TRANSLATIONS. 



635 



But quickly wiser than his Teacher grown, 
Discover'd properties to her unknown ; 
Of A plus B, or minus, learn'd the use, 
Known Quantities from unknown to educe ; 
And made — no doubt to that old dame's sur- 
prise — 
The Christ-Cross-Row his Ladder to the skies. 
Yet, whatsoe'er Geometricians say, 
Her Lessons were his true Princtpia ! 



THE HOUSEKEEPER. 

The frugal snail, with fore-cast of repose, 
Carries his house with him, where'er he goes ; 

out — and if there comes a shower of 



Retreats to his small domicile amain. 
Touch but a tip of him, a horn — 'tis well — 
He curls up in his sanctuary shell. 
He's his own landlord, his own tenant ; stay 
Long as he will, he dreads no Quarter Day. 
Himself he boards and lodges ; both invites, 
And feasts, himself ; sleeps with himself o' nights. 
He spares the upholsterer trouble to procure 
Chattels ; himself is his own furniture, 
And his sole riches. Wheresoe'er he roam — 
Knock when you will — he's sure to be at home. 



ON A DEAF AND DUMB ARTIST.* 

And hath thy blameless life become 

A prey to the devouring tomb ? 

A more mute silence hast thou known, 

A deafness deeper than thine own, 

While Time was 1 and no friendly Muse, 

That mark'd thy life, and knows thy dues, 

Repair with quickening verse the breach, 

And write thee into light and speech 1 

The Power, that made the Tongue, restrain'd 

Thy lips from lies, and speeches feign'd ; 

Who made the Hearing, without wrong 

Did rescue thine from Siren's song. 

He let thee see the ways of men, 

Which thou with pencil, not with pen, 

Careful Beholder, down didst note, 

And all their motley actions quote, 

Thyself unstain'd the while. From look 

Or gesture reading, more than look, 

In letter'd pride thou took'st no part, 

Contented with the Silent Art, 

Thyself as silent. Might I be 

As speechless, deaf, and good, as He ! 

* Benjamin Ferrers — Died a.d. 1732. 



THE FEMALE ORATORS. 

Nigh London's famous Bridge, a Gate more 

famed 
Stands, or once stood, from old Belinus named, 
So judged Antiquity ; and therein wrongs 
A name, allusive strictly to two Tongues* 
Her School hard by the Goddess Rhetoric opes, 
And gratis deals to Oyster-wives her Tropes. 
With Nereid green, green Nereid disputes, 
Replies, rejoins, confutes, and still confutes. 
One her coarse sense by metaphors expounds, 
And one in literalities abounds ; 
In mood and figure these keep up the din : 
Words multiply, and every word tells in. 
Her hundred throats here bawling Slander 

strains ; 
And unclothed Venus to her tongue gives reins 
In terms, which Demosthenic force outgo, 
And baldest jests of foul-mouth'd Cicero. 
Right in the midst great Ate keeps her stand, 
And from her sovereign station taints the land. 
Hence Pulpits rail ; grave Senates learn to jar ; 
Quacks scold ; and Billingsgate infects the Bar. 



PINDARIC ODE TO THE TREAD-MILL, 
i. 

Inspire my spirit, Spirit of De Foe, 

That sang the Pillory, 

In loftier strains to show 

A more sublime Machine 

Than that, where thou wert seen, 

With neck out-stretcht and shoulders ill awry, 

Courting coarse plaudits from vile crowds 

below — ■ 
A most unseemly show ! 



In such a place 

Who could expose thy face, 

Historiographer of deathless Crusoe ! 

That paint' st the strife 

And all the naked ills of savage life, 

Far above Rousseau ] 

Rather myself had stood 

In that ignoble wood, 

Bare to the mob, on holyday or high day. 

If nought else could atone 

For waggish libel, 

I swear on bible, 

I would have spared him for thy sake alone, 

Man Friday ! 

* Bilinguis in the Latin. 



636 



EPICEDIUM. 



Our ancestors' were sour days, 
Great Master of Eomance ! 
A milder doom had fallen to thy chance 
In our days : 
Thy sole assignment 
Some solitary confinement, 
(Not worth thy care a carrot,) 
Where in world-hidden cell 
Thou thy own Crusoe might have acted well, 
Only without the parrot ; 
By sure experience taught to know, 
Whether the qualms thou mak'st him feel were 
truly such or no. 



But stay ! methinks in statelier measure — 

A more companionable pleasure — 

I see thy steps the mighty Tread-Mill trace, 

(The subject of my song, 

Delay' d however long,) 

And some of thine own race, 

To keep thee company, thou bring'st with thee 

along. 
There with thee go, 
Link'd in like sentence, 
With regulated pace and footing slow, 
Each old acquaintance, 

Rogue — harlot — thief — that live to future ages ; 
Through many a labour'd tome, 
Rankly embalm'd in thy too natural pages. 
Faith, friend De Foe, thou art ^piite at home ! 
Not one of thy great offspring thou dost lack, 
From pirate Singleton to pilfering Jack. 
Here Flandrian Moll her brazen incest brags ; 
Vice-stript Roxana, penitent in rags, 
There points to Amy, treading equal chimes, 
The faithful handmaid to her faithless crimes. 



Incompetent my song to raise 

To its just height thy praise, 

Great Mill ! 

That by thy motion proper 

(No thanks to wind, or sail, or working rill), 

Grinding that stubborn corn, the Human will, 

Turn'st out men's consciences, 

That were begrimed before, as clean and sweet 

As flour from purest wheat, 

Into thy hopper. 

All reformation short of thee but nonsense is, 

Or human, or divine. 



Compared with thee, 

What are the labours of that Jumping Sect, 



Which feeble laws connive at rather than respect ' 

Thou dost not bump, 

Or jump, 

But walk men into virtue ; betwixt crime 

And slow repentance giving breathing time, 

And leisure to be good ; 

Instructing with discretion demi-reps 

How to direct their steps. 



Thou best Philosopher made out of wood ! 

Not that which framed the tub, 

Where sate the Cynic cub, 

With nothing in his bosom sympathetic ; 

But from those groves derived, I deem, 

Where Plato nursed his dream 

Of immortality; 

Seeing that clearly 

Thy system all is merely 

Peripatetic. 

Thou to thy pupils dost such lessons give 

Of how to live 

With temperance, sobriety, morality, 

(A new art,) 

That from thy school, by force -of virtuous 

Each Tyro now proceeds 

A " Walking Stewart ! " 



GOING OR GONE, 
i. 
Fine merry franions, 
Wanton companions, 
My days are ev'n banyans 

With thinking upon ye ! 
How Death, that last stinger, 
Finis-writer, end-bringer, 
Has laid his chill finger, 

Or is laying on ye. 



There 's rich Kitty Wheatley, 
With footing it featly 
That took me completely, 

She sleeps in the Kirk House 
And poor Polly Perkin, 
Whose Dad was still firking 
The jolly ale firkin, 

She's gone to the Work-house 



Fine Gard'ner, Ben Carter 
(In ten counties no smarter) 
Has ta'en his departure 

For Proserpine's orchards : 



FREE THOUGHTS ON" SEVERAL EMINENT COMPOSERS. 



637 



And Lily, postilion, 
With cheeks of vermilion, 
Is one of a million 

That fill up the church-yards 



And, lusty as Dido, 
Fat Clemitson's widow 
Flits now a small shadow 

By Stygian hid ford ; 
And good Master Clapton 
Has thirty years napt on, 
The ground he last hapt on, 

Intomb'd by fair Widford 



And gallant Tom Dockwra, 
Of Nature's finest crockery, 
Now but thin air and mockery, 

Lurks by Avernus, 
"Whose honest grasp of hand 
Still, while his life did stand, 
At friend's or foe's command, 

Almost did burn us. 



Roger de Coverley 

Not more good man than he; 

Yet has he equally 

Push'd for Cocytus, 
With drivelling Worral, 
And wicked old Dorrell, 
'Gainst whom I've a quarrel, 

Whose end might affright us !- 



Kindly hearts have I known ; 
Kindly hearts, they are flown ; 
Here and there if but one 

Linger yet uneffaced, 
Imbecile tottering elves, 
Soon to be wreck'd on shelves, 
These scarce are half themselves, 

With age and care crazed. 



But this day Fanny Hutton 
Her last dress has put on ; 
Her fine lessons forgotten, 

She died, as the dunce died 
And prim Betsy Chambers, 
Decay'd in her members, 
No longer remembers 

Things, as she once did ; 



And prudent Miss Wither 
Not in jest now doth wither, 
And soon must go — whither 

Nor I well, nor you know ; 
And flaunting Miss Waller, 
That soon must befall her, 
Whence none can recall her, 

Though proud once as Juno ! 



FREE THOUGHTS ON SEVERAL EMINENT 
COMPOSERS; 

Some cry up Haydn, some Mozart, 

Just as the whim bites ; for my part, 

I do not care a farthing candle 

For either of them, or for Handel. — 

Cannot a man live free and easy, 

Without admiring Pergolesi 1 

Or through the world with comfort go, 

That never heard of Doctor Blow 1 

So help me heaven, I hardly have ; 

And yet I eat, and drink, and shave, 

Like other people, if you watch it, 

And know no more of stave or crotchet, 

Than did the primitive Peruvians ; 

Or those old ante-queer-diluvians 

That lived in the unwash'd world with Jubal, 

Before that dirty blacksmith Tubal 

By stroke on anvil; or by summ'at, 

Found out, to his great surprise, the gamut. 

I care no more for Cimarosa, 

Than he did for Salvator Rosa, 

Being no painter; and bad luck 

Be mine, if I can bear that Gluck ! 

Old Tycho Brahe, and modern Herschel, 

Had something in them ; but who's Purcel ] 

The devil, with his foot so cloven, 

For aught I care, may take Beethoven ; 

And, if the bargain does not suit, 

I'll throw him Weber in to boot. 

There's not the splitting of a splinter 

To choose 'twixt him last named, and Winter. 

Of Doctor Pepusch old queen Dido 

Knew just as much, God knows, as I do. 

I would not go four miles to visit 

Sebastian Bach ; (or Batch, which is it 1) 

No more I would for Bononcini. 

As for Novello, or Rossini, 

I shall not say a word to grieve 'em, 

Because they're living ; so I leave 'em. 



THE WIFE'S TRIAL; 



THE INTRUDING WIDOW. 



% ©ramattc Poenn 



FOUNDED ON ME, CRABBE 8 TALE OP " THE CONFIDANT. 



CHARACTERS. 



Mr. Seeby, A Wiltshire Gentleman. 
Katherine, Wife to Selby. 



Ltjcy, Sister to Selby. 
Mrs. Frampton, A Widow. 



Servants. 
Scene — at Mr. Selby's House, or in the grounds adjacent. 



Scene — A Library. 
Mr. Selby. Katherine. 

Selby. Do not too far mistake me, gentlest wife ; 
I meant to chicle your virtues, not yourself, 
And those too with allowance. I have not 
Been blest by thy fair side with five white years 
Of smooth and even wedlock, now to touch 
With any strain of harshness on a string 
Hath yielded me such music. 'Twas the quality 
Of a too grateful nature in my Katherine, 
That to the lame performance of some vows, 
And common courtesies of man to wife, 
Attributing too much, hath sometimes seem'd 
To esteem as favours, what in that blest union 
Are but reciprocal and trivial dues, 
As fairly yours as mine : 'twas this I thought 
Gently to reprehend. 

Kath. In friendship's barter 

The riches we exchange should hold some level, 
And corresponding worth. Jewels for toys 
Demand some thanks thrown in. You took me, 

sir, 
To that blest haven of my peace, your bosom, 
An orphan founder'd in the world's black storm. 
Poor, you have made me rich; from lonely maiden, 
Your cherish'd and your full-accompanied wife. 



Selby. But to divert the subject : Kate too fond, 
I would not wrest your meanings ; else that word 
Accompanied, and full-accompanied too, 
Might raise a doubt in some men, that their wives 
Haply did think their company too long ; 
And over-company, we know by proof, 
Is worse than no attendance. 

Kath. I must guess, 

You speak this of the Widow — 

Selby. 'Twas a bolt 

At random shot ; but if it hit, believe me, 
I am most sorry to have wounded you 
Through a friend's side. I know not how we 

have swerved 
From our first talk. I was to caution you 
Against this fault of a too grateful nature : 
Which, for some girlish obligations past, 
In that relenting season of the heart, 
When slightest favours pass for benefits 
Of endless binding, would eutail upon you 
An iron slavery of obsequious duty 
To the proud will of an imperious woman. 

Kath. The favours are not slight to her I owe. 

Selby. Slight or not slight, the tribute she 
exacts 
Cancels all dues — {A voice within. 

even now I hear her call you 



THE WIFE'S TRIAL ; OR, THE INTRUDING WIDOW. 



639 



In such a tone, as lordliest mistresses 
Expect a slave's attendance. Prithee, Kate, 
Let her expect a brace of minutes or so. 
Say you are busy. Use her by degrees 
To some less hard exactions. 

Kath. I conjure you, 

Detain me not. I will return — 

Selby. Sweet wife, 

Use thy own pleasure — [.E^Katheeine. 

but it troubles me. 
A visit of three days, as was pretended, 
Spun to ten tedious weeks, and no hint given 
When she will go ! I would this buxom Widow 
Were a thought handsomer ! I'd fairly try 
My Katherine's constancy ; make desperate love 
In seeming earnest ; and raise up such broils, 
That she, not I, should be the first to warn 
The insidious guest depart. 

Re-enter Katherine. 

So soon return'd ! 
What was our Widow's will 1 

Kath. A trifle, sir. 

Selby. Some toilet service — to adjust her head, 
Or help to stick a pin in the right place — 
Kath. Indeed 'twas none of these. 
Selby. Or new vamp up 

The tarnish'd cloak she came in. I have seen 

her 
Demand such service from thee, as her maid, 
Twice told to do it, would blush angry-red, 
And pack her few clothes up. Poor fool ! fond 

slave ! 
And yet my dearest Kate ! — This day at least 
(It is our wedding-day) we spend in freedom, 
And will forget our Widow. — Philip, our coach — 
Why weeps my wife ? You know, I promised 

you 
An airing o'er the pleasant Hampshire downs 
To the blest cottage on the green hill side, 
Where first I told my love. I wonder much, 
If the crimson parlour hath exchanged its hue 
For colours not so welcome. Faded though it be, 
It will not show less lovely than the tinge 
Of this faint red, contending with the pale, 
Where once the full-flush'd health gave to this 

cheek 
An apt resemblance to the fruit's warm side, 
That bears my Katherine's name. — 

Our carriage, Philip. 

Enter a Servant. 
Now, Robin, what make you here 1 

Servant. May it please you, 

The coachman has driven out with Mrs. Frampton. 

Selby. He had no orders — 

Servant. None, sir, that I know of, 

But from the lady, who expects some letter 



At the next Post Town. 

Selby. Go, Robin. [Exit Servant. 

How is this ? 

Kath. I came to tell you so, but fear'd your 
anger — 

Selby. It was ill done though of this Mistress 
Frampton, 
This forward Widow. But a ride's poor loss 
Imports not much. In to your chamber, love, 
Where you with music may beguile the hour, 
While I am tossing over dusty tomes, 
Till our most reasonable friend returns. 

Kath. I am all obedience. [Exit Katherine. 

Selby. Too obedient, Kate, 

And to too many masters. I can hardly 
On such a day as this refrain to speak 
My sense of this injurious friend, this pest, 
This household evil, this close-clinging fiend, 
In rough terms to my wife. 'Death, my own 

servants 
Controll'd above me ! orders countermanded ! 
What next ? [Servant enters and announces the Sister. 

Enter Lucy. 
Sister ! I know you are come to welcome 
This day's return. 'Twas well done. 

Lucy. You seem ruffled. 

In years gone by this day was used to be 
The smoothest of the year. Your honey turn'd 
So soon to gall ? 

Selby. Gall'd am I, and with cause, 

And rid to death, yet cannot get a riddance, 
Nay, scarce a ride, by this proud Widow's leave. 

Lucy. Something you wrote me of a Mistress 
Frampton. 

Selby. She came at first a meek admitted guest, 
Pretending a short stay ; her whole deportment 
Seem'd as of one obliged. A slender trunk, 
The wardrobe of her scant and ancient clothing, 
Bespoke no more. But in few days her dress, 
Her looks, were proudly changed. And now she 

flaunts it 
In jewels stolen or borrow'd from my wife ; 
Who owes her some strange service, of what 

nature 
I must be kept in ignorance. Katherine's meek 
And gentle spirit cowers beneath her eye, 
As spell-bound by some witch. 

Lucy. Some mystery hangs on it. 

How bears she in her carriage towards yourself] 

Selby. As one who fears, and yet not greatly 
cares 
For my displeasure. Sometimes I have thought. 
A secret glance would tell me she could love, 
If I but gave encouragement. Before me 
She keeps some moderation ; but is never 
Closeted with my wife, but in the end 



640 



THE WIFE'S TRIAL; OR, THE INTRUDING WIDOW. 



I find my Katherine in briny tears. 

From, the small chamber, where she first was 

lodged, 
The gradual fiend by specious wriggling arts 
Has now ensconced herself in the best part 
Of this large mansion ; calls the left wing her 

own; 
Commands my servants, equipage. — I hear 
Her hated tread. What makes she back so soon] 

Enter Mrs. Frampton. 

Mrs. F. 0, I am jolter'd, bruised, and shook to 
death, 
With your vile Wiltshire roads. The villain 

Philip 
Chose, on my conscience, the perversest tracks, 
And stoniest hard lanes in all the county, 
Till I was fain get out, and so walk back, 
My errand unperform'd at Andover. 

Lucy. And I shall love the knave for ever after. 

[Aside. 

Mrs. F. A friend with you ! 
Selby. My eldest sister, Lucy, 

Come to congratulate this returning morn. — 
Sister, my wife's friend, Mistress Frampton, 

Mrs. F. Pray, 

Be seated, for your brother's sake, you are 

welcome. 
I had thought this day to have spent in homely 

fashion 
With the good couple, to whose hospitality 
I stand so far indebted. But your coming 
Makes it a feast. 

Lucy. She does the honours naturally — 

[Aside. 
Selby. As if she were the mistress of the house — 

[Aside. 
Mrs. F. I love to be at home with loving 
friends. 
To stand on ceremony with obligations, 
Is to restrain the obliger. That old coach, 

though, 
Of yours jumbles one strangely. 

Selby. I shall order 

An equipage soon, more easy to you, madam — 
Lucy. To drive her and her pride to Lucifer, 
I hope he means. [Aside. 

Mrs. F. I must go trim myself; this humbled 
garb 
Would shame a wedding-feast. I have your leave 
For a short absence 1 — and your Katherine — 
Selby. You'll find her in her closet — 
Mrs. F. Fare you well, then. 

[Exit. 
Selby. How like you her assurance 1 
Lucy. Even so well, 

That if this Widow were my guest, not yours, 



She should have coach enoiigh, and scope to ride. 
My merry groom should in a trice convey her 
To Sarum Plain, and set her down at Stonehenge, 
To pick her path through those antiques at 

leisure ; 
She should take sample of our Wiltshire flints. 
0, be not lightly jealous ! nor surmise, 
That to a wanton bold-faced thing like this 
Your modest shrinking Katherine could impart 
Secrets of any worth, especially 
Secrets that touch'd your peace. If there be 

aught, 
My life upon't, 'tis but some girlish story 
Of a First Love ; which even the boldest wife 
Might modestly deny to a husband's ear, 
Much more your timid and too sensitive Katherine. 

Selby. I think it is no more ; and will dismiss 
My further fears, if ever I have had such. 

Lucy. Shall we go walk 1 I'd see your gardens, 
brother ; 
And how the new trees thrive, I recommended. 
Your Katherine is engaged now — 

Selby. I'll attend you. 

[Exeunt. 

Scene— Servants' Hall. 
Housekeeper, Philip, and others, laughing. 
LTouselceeper. Our Lady's guest, since her short 
ride, seems ruffled, 
And somewhat in disorder. Philip, Philip, 
I do suspect some roguery. Your mad tricks 
Will some day cost you a good place, I warrant. 
Philip. Good Mistress Jane, our serious house- 
keeper, 
And sage Duenna to the maids and scullions, 
We must have leave to laugh ; our brains are 

younger, 
And undisturb'd with care of keys and pantries. 
We are wild things. 

Butler. Good Philip, tell us all. 

A 11. Ay, as you live, tell, tell — 
Philip. Mad fellows, you shall have it. 
The Widow's bell rang lustily and loud — 

Butler. I think that no one can mistake her 

ringing. 
Waiting -maid. Our Lady's ring is soft sweet 
music to it, 
More of entreaty hath it than command. 

Philip. I lose my stoiy, if you interrupt me 
thus. 
The bell, I say, rang fiercely ; and a voice 
More shrill than bell, call'd out for " Coachman 

Philip ! " 
I straight obey'd, as 'tis my name and office. 
" Drive me," quoth she, "to the next market town, 
Where I have hope of letters." I made haste ; 
Put to the horses, saw her safely coach' d, 



THE WIFE'S TRIAL ; OR, THE INTRUDING WIDOW. 



641 



And drove her — 

Waiting-maid. By the straight high road to 
Andover, 
I guess — 

Philip. Pray, warrant things within your 
knowledge, 
Good Mistress Abigail ; look to your dressings, 
And leave the skill in horses to the coachman. 
Butler. He'll have his humour; best not 

interrupt him. 
Philip. 'Tis market-day, thought I ; and the 
poor beasts, 
Meeting such droves of cattle and of people, 
May take a fright ; so down the lane I trundled, 
Where Goodman Dobson's crazy mare was 

founder'd, 
And where the flints were biggest, and ruts 

widest, 
By ups and downs, and such bone-cracking 

motions 
We flounder'd on a furlong, till my madam, 
In policy, to save the few joints left her, 
Betook her to her feet, and there we parted. 
All. Ha ! ha ! ha ! 
Butler. Hang her, 'tis pity such as she should 

ride. 
Waiting-maid. I think she is a witch ; I have 
tired myself out 
With sticking pins in her pillow ; still she 'scapes 
them — 
Butler. And I with helping her to mum for 
claret, 
But never yet could cheat her dainty palate. 
Housekeeper. Well, well, she is the guest of our 
good Mistress, 
And so should be respected. Though, I think, 
Our Master cares not for her company, 
He would ill brook we should express so much 
By rude discourtesies, and short attendance, 
Being but servants. {A Bell rings furiously.) 

'Tis her bell speaks now ; 
Good, good, bestir yourselves : who knows who's 
wanted 1 
Butler. But 'twas a merry trick of Philip 

coachman. [Exeunt. 

Scene. — Sirs. Selby 1 s Chamber. 
Mes. Fkampton, Kathekine, working. 
Mrs. F. I am thinking, child, how contrary our 
fates 
Have traced our lots through life. — Another 

needle, 
This works untowardly. — An heiress born 
To splendid prospects, at our common school 
I was as one above you all, not of you ; 
Had my distinct prerogatives ; my freedoms, 



Denied to you. Pray, listen — 

Kath. I must hear, 

What you are pleased to speak — how my heart 
sinks here ! [Aside. 

Mrs. F. My chamber to myself, my separate 
maid, 
My coach, and so forth. — Not that needle, simple 

one, 
With the great staring eye fit for a Cyclops ! 
Mine own are not so blinded with their griefs, 
But I could make a shift to thread a smaller. 
A cable or a camel might go through this, 
And never strain for the passage. 

Kath. I will fit you.— 

Intolerable tyranny ! [Aside. 

Mrs. F. Quick, 'quick; 

You were not once so slack. — As I wa3 saying, 
Not a young thing among ye, but observed me 
Above the mistress. Who but I was sought to 
In all your dangers, all your little difficulties, 
Your girlish scrapes 1 I was the scape -goat still, 
To fetch you off; kept all your secrets, some, 
Perhaps, since then — ■ 

Kath. No more of that, for mercy, 

If you'd not have me, sinking at your feet, 
Cleave the cold earth for comfort. [Kneels. 

Mrs. F. This to me ? 

This posture to your friend had better suited 
The orphan Katherine in her humble school-days 
To the then rich heiress, than the wife of Selby, 
Of wealthy Mr. Selby, 

To the poor widow Frampton, sunk as she is. 
Come, come, 

'Twas something, or 'twas nothing, that I said ; 
I* did not mean to fright you, sweetest bed-fellow ! 
You once were so, but Selby now engrosses you. 
I'll make him give you up a night or so ; 
In faith I will : that we may lie, and talk 
Old tricks of school-days over. 

Kath. Hear me, madam — 

Mrs. F. Not by that name. Your friend — 

Kath. My truest friend, 

And saviour of my honour ! 

Mrs. F. This sounds better ; 

You still shall find me sucb. 

Kath. That you have graced 

Our poor house with your presence hitherto, 
Has been my greatest comfort, the sole solace 
Of my forlorn and hardly guess'd estate. 
You have been pleased 
To accept some trivial hospitalities, 
In part of payment of a long arrear 
I owe to you, no less than for my life. 

Mrs. F. You speak my services too large. 

Kath. Nay, less : 

For what an abject thing were life to me 
Without your silence on my dreadful secret ! 



T T 



642 



THE WIFE'S TRIAL : OK, THE INTRUDING WIDOW. 



And I would wish the league we have renew'd 
Might be perpetual — 

Mrs. F. Have a care, fine madam ! 

[Aside. 

Kaih. That one house still might hold us. 
But my husband 
Has shown himself of late — 

Mrs. F. How, Mistress Selby] 

Kaih. Not, not impatient. You misconstrue 
him. 
He honours, and he loves, nay, he must love 
The friend of his wife's youth. But there are 

moods, 
In which — 

Mrs. F. I understand you; — in which husbands, 
And wives that love, may wish to be alone, 
To nurse the tender fits of new-born dalliance, 
After a five years' wedlock. 

Kaih. Was that well, 

Or charitably put % do these pale cheeks 
Proclaim a wanton blood ] This wasting form 
Seem a fit theatre for Levity 
To play his love-tricks on ; and act such follies, 
As even in Affection's first bland Moon 
Have less of grace than pardon in best wedlocks'? 
I was about to say, that there are times, 
When the most frank and sociable man 
May surfeit on most loved society, 
Preferring loneness rather — 

Mrs. F. To my company — 

Kaih. Ay, yours, or mine, or any one's. Nay, 
take 
Not this unto yourself. Even in the newness 
Of our first married loves 'twas sometimes so. 
For solitude, I have heard my Selby say, 
Is to the mind as rest to the corporal functions ; 
And he would call it oft, the day's soft sleep. 

Mrs. F. What is your drift ] and whereto tends 
this speech, 
Rhetorically labour'd ? 

Kaih. That you would 

Abstain but from our house a month, a week; 

make request but for a single day. 

Mrs. F. A month, a week, a day ! A single 
horn' 
Is every week, and month, and the long year, 
And all the years to come ! My footing here, 
Slipt once, recovers never. From the state 
Of gilded roofs, attendance, luxuries, 
Parks, gardens, sauntering walks, or wholesome 

rides, 
To the bare cottage on the withering moor, 
Where I myself am servant to myself, 
Or only waited on by blackest thoughts — 
I sink, if this be so. No ; here I sit. 

Kath. Then I am lost for ever ! 

[Sinks at her feet — curtain drops. 



1 



Scene. — An Apartment contiguous to the last. 
Selby, as if listening. 
Selby. The sounds have died away. What am 

I changed to ] 
What do I here, list'ning like to an abject, 
Or heartless wittol, that must hear no good, 
If he hear aught 1 " This shall to the ear of 

your husband." 
It was the Widow's word. I guess'd some 

mystery, 
And the solution with a vengeance comes. 
What can my wife have left untold to me, 
That must be told by proxy ? I begin 
To call in doubt the course of her life past 
Under my very eyes. She hath not been good, 
Not virtuous, not discreet ; she hath not outrun 
My wishes still with prompt and meek observance. 
Perhaps she is not fair, sweet-voiced ; her eyes 
Not like the dove's ; all this as well may be, 
As that she should entreasure up a secret 
In the peculiar closet of her breast, 
And grudge it to my ear. It is my right 
To claim the halves in any truth she owns, 
As much as in the babe I have by her ; 
Upon whose face henceforth I fear to look, 
Lest I should fancy in its innocent brow 
Some strange shame written. 

Enter Lucy. 
Sister, an anxious word with you. 
From out the chamber, where my wife but now 
Held talk with her encroaching friend, I heard 
(Not of set purpose heark'ning, but by chance) 
A voice of chiding, answer'd by a tone. 
Of replication, such as the meek dove 
Makes, when the kite has clutch'd her. The high 

Widow 
Was loud and stormy. I distinctly heard 
One threat pronounced — " Your husband shall 

know all." 
I am no listener, sister ; and I hold 
A secret, got by such unmanly shift, 
The pitiful'st of thefts ; but what mine ear, 
I not intending it, receives perforce, 
I count my lawful prize. Some subtle meaning 
Lurks in this fiend's behaviour ; which, by force, 
Or fraud I must make mine. 

Lucy. The gentlest means 

Are still the wisest. What, if you should press 
Your wife to a disclosure ? 

Selby. I have tried 

All gentler means ; thrown out low hints, which, 

though 
Merely suggestions still, have never fail'd 
To blanch her cheek with fears. Roughlier to 

insist, 



THE WIFE'S TRIAL ; OR, THE INTRUDING WIDOW. 



643 



Would be to kill, where I but meant to heal. 

Lucy. Your own description gave that Widow 
out 
As one not much precise, nor over coy, 
And nice to listen to a suit of love. 
What if you feign'd a courtship, putting on, 
(To work the secret from her easy faith,) 
For honest ends, a most dishonest seeming ? 

Selby. I see your drift, and partly meet your 
counsel. 
But must it not in me appear prodigious, 
To say the least, unnatural, and suspicious, 
To move hot love, where I have shown cool scorn, 
And undissembled looks of blank aversion ? 

Lucy. Vain woman is the dupe of her own 
charms, 
And easily credits the resistless power, 
That in besieging beauty lies, to cast down 
The slight-built fortress of a casual hate. 

Selby. I am resolved — 

Lucy. Success attend your wooing ! 

Selby. And I'll about it roundly, my wise sister. 

[Exeunt. 

Scene.— 2V Library. 
Mr. Selby. Mrs. Frampton. 

Selby. A fortunate encounter, Mistress Framp- 
ton. 
My purpose was, if you could spare so much 
From your sweet leisure, a few words in private. 

Mrs. F. What mean his alter'd tones 1 These 
looks to me, 
Whose glances yet he has repell'd with coolness ? 
Is the wind changed 1 I'll veer about with it, 
And meet him in all fashions. [Aside. 

All my leisure, 
Feebly "bestow'd upon my kind friends here, 
Would not express a tithe of the obligements 
I every hour incur. 

Selby. No more of that. 

I know not why, my wife hath lost of late 
Much of her cheei'ful spirits. 

Mrs. F. It was my topic 

To-day ; and every day, and all day long, 
I still am chiding with her. " Child," I said, 
And said it pretty roundly — it may be 
I was too peremptory — we elder school-fellows, 
Presuming on the advantage of a year 
Or two, which, in that tender time, seem'd much, 
In after years, much like to elder sisters, 
Are prone to keep the authoritative style, 
When time has made the difference most ridicu- 
lous — 

Selby. The observation 's shrewd. 

Mrs. F. " Child," I was saying, 

" If some wives had obtain'd a lot like yours," 
And then perhaps I sigh'd, " they would not sit 



In corners moping, like to sullen moppets, 
That want their will, but dry their eyes, and look 
Their cheerful husbands in the face," perhaps 
I said, their Selbys, " with proportion'd looks 
Of honest joy." 

Selby. You do suspect no jealousy? 

Mrs. F. What is his import % Whereto tends 



his speech 



[Aside. 



Of whom, or what, should she be jealous, sir] 

Selby. I do not know, but women have their 
fancies ; 
And underneath a cold indifference, 
Or show of some distaste, husbands have mask'd 
A growing fondness for a female friend, 
Which the wife's eye was sharp enough to see, 
Before the friend had wit to find it out. 
You do not quit us soon ? 

Mrs. F. 'Tis as I find ; 

Your Katherine profits by my lessons, sir. — 
Means this man honest ? Is there no deceit? [Aside. 

Selby. She cannot choose. — Well, well, I have 
been thinking, 
And if the matter were to do again — 

Mrs. F. What matter, sir ? 

Selby. This idle bond of wedlock ; 

These sour-sweet briars, fetters of harsh silk ; 
I might have made, I do not say a better, 
But a more fit choice in a wife. 

Mrs. F. The parch'd ground, 

In hottest Julys, drinks not in the showers 
More greedily than I his words ! [Aside. 

Selby. My humour 

Is to be frank and jovial ; and that man 
Affects me best, who most reflects me in 
My most free temper. 

Mrs. F. Were you free to choose, 

As jestingly I'll put the supposition, 
Without a thought reflecting on your Katherine, 
What sort of Woman would you make your 
choice ? 

Selby. I like your humour and will meet your 
jest. 
She should be one about my Katherine's age ; 
But not so old, by some ten years, in gravity, 
One that would meet my mirth, sometimes out 

run it ; 
No muling, pining moppet, as you said, 
Nor moping maid that I must still be teaching 
The freedoms of a wife all her life after : 
But one that, having worn the chain before, 
(And worn it lightly, as report gave out,) 
Enfranchised from it by her poor fool's death, 
Took it not so to heart that I need dread 
To die myself, for fear a second time 
To wet a widow's eye. 

Mrs. F. Some widows, sir, 

Hearing you talk so wildly, would be apt 

y 



644 



THE WIFE'S TRIAL ; OR, THE INTRUDING WIDOW. 



To put strange misconstruction on your words, 

As aiming at a Turkish, liberty, 

Where the free husband hath his several mates, 

His Penseroso, his Allegro wife, 

To suit his sober or his frolic fit. 

Selby. How judge you of that latitude 1 

Mrs. F. As one, 

European customs bred, must judge. Had I 
Been born a native of the liberal East, 

might have thought as they do. Yet I knew 
A married man that took a second wife, 
And (the man's circumstances duly weigh' d, 
With all their bearings) the considerate world 
Nor much approved, nor much condemn'd the 
deed. 

Selby. You move my wonder strangely. Pray, 
proceed. 

Mrs. F. An eye of wanton liking he had placed 
Upon a Widow, who liked him again, 
But stood on terms of honourable love, 
And scrupled wronging his most virtuous wife — 
When to their ears a lucky rumour ran, 
That this demure and saintly-seeming wife 
Had a first husband living ; with the which 
Being question'd, she but faintly could deny. 
" A priest indeed there was ; some words had 

pass'd, 
But scarce amounting to a marriage rite. 
Her friend was absent ; she supposed him dead ; 
And, seven years parted, both were free to 
choose." 

Selby. What did the indignant husband 1 Did 
he not 
With violent handlings stigmatise the cheek 
Of the deceiving wife, who had entail' d 
Shame on their innocent babe ? 

Mrs. F. He neither tore 

His wife's locks nor his own; but wisely weighing 
His own offence with hers in equal poise, 
And woman's weakness 'gainst the strength of 

man, 
Came to a calm and witty compromise. 
He coolly took his gay-faced widow home, 
Made her his second wife ; and still the first 
Lost few or none of her prerogatives. 
The servants call'd her mistress still ; she kept 
The keys, and had the total ordering 
Of the house affairs ; and, some slight toys 

excepted, 
Was all a moderate wife would wish to be. 

Selby. A tale full of dramatic incident ! — 
And if a man should put it in a play, 
How should he name the parties'? 

Mrs. F. The man's name 

Through time I have forgot — the widow's too ; — 
But his first wife's first name, her maiden one, 
Was — not unlike to that your Katherine bore, 



Before she took the honor'd style of Selby. 
Selby. A dangerous meaning in your riddle 
lurks. 
One knot is yet unsolved ; that told, this strange 
And most mysterious drama ends. The name 
Of that first husband — 

Enter Lucy. 

Mrs. F. Sir, your pardon — 

The allegory fits your private ear. 
Some half hour hence, in the garden's secret walk, 
We shall have leisure. [Exit. 

Selby. Sister, whence come you ? 

Lucy. From your poor Katherine's chamber, 
where she droops 
In sad presageful thoughts, and sighs, and weeps, 
And seems to pray by turns. At times she looks 
As she would pour her secret in my bosom — 
Then starts, as I have seen her, at the mention 
Of some immodest act. At her request. 
I left her on her knees. 

Selby. The fittest posture ; 

For great has been her fault to Heaven and me. 
She married me with a first husband living, 
Or not known not to be so, which, in the judg- 
ment 
Of any but indifferent honesty, 
Must be esteem'd the same. The shallow Widow, 
Caught by my art, under a riddling veil 
Too thin to hide her meaning, hath confess'd all. 
Your coming in broke off the conference, 
When she was ripe to tell the fatal name 
That seals my wedded doom. 

Lucy. Was she so forward 

To pour her hateful meanings in your ear 
At the first hint ? 

Selby. Her newly flatter'd hopes 

Array'd themselves at first in forms of doubt ; 
And with a female caution she stood off 
Awhile, to read the meaning of my suit, 
Which with such honest seeming I enforced, 
That her cold scruples soon gave way; and now 
She rests prepared, as mistress, or as wife, 
To seize the place of her betrayed friend — 
My much offending, but more suffering, Katherine. 

Lucy. Into what labyrinth of fearful shapes 
My simple project has conducted you — 
Were but my wit as skilful to invent 
A clue to lead you forth ! — I call to mind 
A letter, which your wife received from the Cape, 
Soon after you were married, with some circum- 
stances 
Of mystery too. 

Selby. I well remember it. 

That letter did confirm the truth (she said) 
Of a friend's death, which she had long fear'd true, 
But knew not for a fact. A youth of promise 



THE WIFE'S TEIAL ; OR, THE INTRUDING WIDOW. 



645 



She gave him out — a hot adventurous spirit — 
That had set sail in quest of golden dreams, 
And cities in the heart of Central Afric ; 
But named no names, nor did I care to press 
My question further, in the passionate grief 
She show'd at the receipt. Might this be he 1 

Lucy. Tears were not all. When that first 
shower was past, 
With clasp'd hands she raised her eyes to Heav'n, 
As if in thankfulness for some escape, 
Or strange deliverance, in the news implied, 
Which sweeten'd that sad news. 

Selby. Something of that 

I noted also — 

Lucy. In her closet once, 

Seeking some other trifle, I espied 
A ring, in mournful characters deciphering 
The death of " Robert Halford, aged two 
And twenty." Brother, I am not given 
To the confident use of wagers, which I hold 
Unseemly in a woman's argument ; 
But I am strangely tempted now to risk 
A thousand pounds out of my patrimony, 
(And let my future husband look to it, 
If it be lost,) that this immodest Widow 
Shall name the name that tallies with that ring. 

Selby. That wager lost, I should be rich indeed — 
Rich in my rescued Kate — rich in my honour, 
Which now was bankrupt. Sister, I accept 
Your merry wager, with an aching heart 
For very fear of winning. 'Tis the hour 
That I should meet my Widow in the walk, 
The south side of the garden. On some pretence 
Lure forth my Wife that way, that she may wit- 
ness 
Our seeming courtship. Keep us still in sight, 
Yourselves unseen ; and by some sign I '11 give, 
(A finger held up, or a kerchief waved,) [us, 

You'll know your wager won — then break upon 
As if by chance. 

Lucy. I apprehend your meaning — 

Selby. And may you prove a true Cassandra 
here, 
Though my poor acres smart for't, wagering sister ! 

[Exeunt. 

Scene. — Mrs. SeTby's chamber. 
Mrs. Frampton. Katherine. 
Mrs. F. Did I express myself in terms so strong? 
Kath. As nothing could have more affrighted 

me. 
Mrs. F. Think it a hurt friend's jest, in retri- 
bution 
Of a suspected cooling hospitality. 
And, for my staying here, or going hence, 
(Now I remember something of our argument,) 
Selby and I can settle that between us. 
You look amazed. What if your husband, child, 



Himself has courted me to stay % 

Kath. You move 

My wonder and my pleasure equally. 

Mrs. F. Yes, courted me to stay, waved all ob- 
jections, 
Made it a favour to yourselves ; not me, 
His troublesome guest, as you surmised. Child, 

child, 
When I recall his flattering welcome, I 
Begin to think the burden of my presence 
Was— 

Kath. What, for Heaven — 

Mrs. F. A little, little spice 

Of jealousy — that's all — an honest pretext. 
No wife need blush for. Say that you should see, 
(As oftentimes we widows take such freedoms, 
Yet still on this side virtue,) in a jest 
Your husband pat me on the cheek, or steal 
A kiss, while you were by, — not else, for virtue's 
sake. 

Kath. I could endure all this, thinking my 
husband 
Meant it in sport — 

Mrs. F. But if in downright earnest 

(Putting myself out of the question here) 
Your Selby, as I partly do suspect, 
Own'd a divided heart — 

Kath. My own would break — 

Mrs. F. Why, what a blind and witless fool it is, 
That will not see its gains, its infinite gains — 

Kath. Gain in a loss. 

Or mirth in utter desolation ! 

Mrs.F. He doating on a face — suppose it mine, 
Or any other's tolerably fair — 
What need you care about a senseless secret? 

Kath. Perplex'd and fearful woman ! I in part 
Fathom your dangerous meaning. You have 

broke 
The worse than iron band, fretting the soul, 
By which you held me captive. Whether my 

husband 
Ls what you gave him out, or your fool'd fancy 
But dreams he is so, either way I am free. 

Mrs. F. It talks it bravely, blazons out its 
shame ; 
A very heroine while on its knees ; 
Rowe's Penitent, an absolute Calista 1 

Kath. Not to thy wretched self these tears are 
falling; 
But to my husband, and offended Heaven, 
Some drops are due — and then I sleep in peace, 
Relieved from frightful dreams, my dreams 
though sad. [Exit. 

Mrs. F. I have gone too far. Who knows but 
in this mood 
She may forestall my story, win on Selby 
By a frank confession ? — and the time draws on 



646 



THE WIFE'S TRIAL ; OR, THE INTRUDING WIDOW. 



For our appointed meeting. The game's des- 
perate, 
For which I play. A moment's difference 
May make it hers or mine. I fly to meet him. 

[Exit. 

Scene. — A garden. 
Me. Selby. Mrs. Fbampton. 

Selby. I am not so ill a guesser, Mrs. Frampton, 
Not to conjecture, that some passages 
In your unfinish'd story, rightly interpreted, 
Glanced at my bosom's peace ; 

You knew my wife 1 

Mrs. F. Even from her earliest school days — 
What of that? 
Or how is she concern'd in my fine riddles, 
Framed for the hour's amusement ! 

Selby. By my hopes 

Of my new interest conceived in you, 
And by the honest passion of my heart, 
Which not obliquely I to you did hint ; 
Come from the clouds of misty allegory, 
And in plain language let me hear the worst. 
Stand I disgraced, or no 1 

Mrs. F. Then, by my hopes 

Of my new interest conceived in you, 
And by the kindling passion in my breast, 
Which through my riddles you had almost read, 
Adjured so strongly, I will tell you all. 
In her school years, then bordering on fifteen, 
Or haply not much past, she loved a youth — 

Selby. My most ingenuous Widow — 

Mrs. F. Met him oft 

By stealth, where I still of the party was — 

Selby. Prime confidant to all the school, I war- 
rant, 
And general go-between — [Aside. 

Mrs. F. One morn he came 

In breathless haste. " The ship was under sail, 
Or in few hours would be, that must convey 
Him and his destinies to barbarous shores, 
Where, should he perish by inglorious hands, 
It would be consolation in his death 
To have call'd his Katherine his." 

Selby. Thus far the story 

Tallies with what I hoped. [Aside. 

Mrs. F. Wavering between 

The doubt of doing wrong, and losing him ; 
And my dissuasions not o'er hotly urged, 
Whom he had flatter'd with the bride-maid's 
part ; — 

Selby. I owe my subtle Widow, then, for this. 

[Aside. 

Mrs. F. Briefly, we went to church. The cere- 
mony 
Scarcely was huddled over, and the ring 
Yet cold upon her finger, when they parted — 



He to his ship ; and we to school got back, 
Scarce miss'd, before the dinner-bell could ring. 

Selby. And from that hour — 

Mrs. F. Nor sight, nor news of him, 

For aught that I could hear, she e'er obtain'd. 

Selby. Like to a man that hovers in suspense 
Over a letter just received, on which 
The black seal hath impress'd its ominous token, 
Whether to open it or no, so I 
Suspended stand, whether to press my fate 
Further, or check ill curiosity, [name 

That tempts me to more loss.— The name, the 
Of this fine youth ] 

Mrs. F. What boots it, if 'twere told ? 

Selby. Now, by our loves, 

And by my hopes of happier wedlocks, some day 
To be accomplish'd, give me his name ! 

Mrs. F. 'Tis no such serious matter. It was — 
Huntingdon. 

Selby. How have three little syllables pluck'd 
from me 
A world of countless hopes I — [Aside. 

Evasive Widow. 

Mrs. F. How, sir !— I like not this. lAside. 

Selby. No, no, I meant 

Nothing but good to thee. That other woman, 
How shall I call her but evasive, false, 
And treacherous 1 — by the trust I place in thee, 
Tell me, and tell me truly, was the name 
As you pronounced it 1 

Mrs. F. Huntingdon — the name, 

Which his paternal grandfather assumed, 
Together with the estates of a remote 
Kinsman : but our high-spirited youth — 

Selby. Yes- 

Mrs F. Disdaining 

For sordid pelf to truck the family honours, 
At risk of the lost estates, resumed the old style, 
And answer'd only to the name of — 

Selby. What— 

Mrs. F. Of Halford— 

Selby. A Huntingdon to Halford changed so 
soon ! 
Why, then I see, a witch hath her good spells, 
As well as bad, and can by a backward charm 
Unruffle the foul storm she has just been raising. 
[Aside. He makes the signal. 
My frank, fair-spoken Widow ! let this kiss, 
Which yet aspires no higher, speak my thanks, 
Till I can think on greater. 

Enter Lucy and Katheeine. 
Mrs. F. Interrupted ! 

Selby. My sister here ! and see, where with her 
comes 
My serpent gliding in an angel's form, 
To taint the new-born Eden of our joys. 



THE WIFE'S TRIAL ; OR, THE INTRUDING WIDOW. 



647 



Why should we fear them 1 We'll not stir a foot, 
Nor coy it for their pleasures. [He courts the Widow. 

Lucy (to Kathenne). This your free, 

And sweet ingenuous confession, binds me 
For ever to you ; and it shall go hard, 
But it shall fetch you back your husband's heart, 
That now. seems blindly straying ; or, at worst, 
In me you have still a sister. — Some wives, 

brother, 
Would think it strange to catch their husbands 

thus 
Alone with a trim widow ; but your Katherine 
Is arm'd, I think, with patience. 

Kath. I am fortified 

With knowledge of self-faults to endure worse 

wrongs, 
If they be wrongs, than he can lay upon me ; 
Even to look on, and see him sue in earnest, 
As now I think he does it but in seeming, 
To that ill woman. 

Selby. Good words, gentle Kate, 

And not a thought irreverent of our Widow. 
Why 'twere unmannerly at any time, 
But most uncourteous on our wedding day, 
When we should show most hospitable. — Some 
•\yine J [ Wine is brought. 

I am for sports. And now I do remember, 
The old Egyptians at their banquets placed 
A charnel sight of dead men's skulls before them, 
With images of cold mortality, 
To temper their fierce joys when they grew 

rampant. 
I like the custom well : and ere we crown 
With freer mirth the day, I shall propose, 
In calmest recollection of our spirits, 
We drink the solemn ' Memory of the Dead ' — 

Mrs. F. Or the supposed dead — [Aside to him. 

Selby. Pledge me, good, wife — [She fills. 

Nay, higher yet, till the brimm'd cup swell o'er. 

Kath. I catch the awful import of your words ; 
And, though I could accuse you of unkindness, 
Yet as your lawful and obedient wife, 
While that name last (as I perceive it fading, 
Nor I much longer may have leave to use it) 
I calmly take the office you impose ; 
And on my knees, imploring their forgiveness, 
Whom I in heaven or earth may have offended, 
Exempt from starting tears, and woman's weak- 
ness, 
I pledge you, sir — the Memory of the Dead ! 

[She drinks kneeling. 

Selby. 'Tis gently and discreetly said, and like 
My former loving Kate. 

Mrs. F. Does he relent 1 [Aside. 

Selby. That ceremony past, we give the day 
To unabated sport. And, in requital 
Of certain stories and quaint allegories, 



Which my rare Widow hath been telling to me 
To raise my morning mirth, if she will lend 
Her patient hearing, I will here recite 
A Parable ; and, the more to suit her taste, 
The scene is laid in the East. 

Mrs. F. I long to hear it. 

Some tale, to fit his wife. [Aside 

Kath. Now, comes my Trial. 

Lucy. The hour of your deliverance is at hand, 
If I presage right. Bear up, gentlest sister. 

Selby. « The Sultan Haroun"— Stay— now I 
have it — 
" The Caliph Haroun in his orchards had 
A fruit-tree, bearing such delicious fruits, 
That he reserved them for his proper gust ; 
And through the Palace it was Death proclaim'd 
To any one that should purloin the same." 

Mrs. F. A heavy penance for so light a fault — 

Selby. Pray you, be silent, else you put me out. 
" A crafty page, that for advantage watch'd, 
Detected in the act a brother page, 
Of his own years, that was his bosom friend ; 
And thenceforth he became that other's lord, 
And like a tyrant he demean'd himself, 
Laid forced exactions on his fellow's purse ; 
And when that poor means fail'd, held o'er his 

head 
Threats of impending death in hideous forms ; 
Till the small culprit on his nightly couch 
Dream'd of strange pains, and felt his body writhe 
In tortuous pangs around the impaling stake." 

Mrs. F. I like not this beginning — 

Selby. Pray you, attend. 

" The Secret, like a night-hag, rid his sleeps, 
And took the youthful pleasures from his days, 
And chased the youthful smoothness from his 

brow, 
That from a rose-cheek'd boy he waned and waned 
To a pale skeleton of what he was ; 
And would have died, but for one lucky chance." 

Kath. Oh ! 

Mrs. F. Your wife — she faints — some cordial — 
smell to this. 

Selby. Stand off. My sister best will do that 
office. 

Mrs. F. Are all his tempting speeches come to 
this ? [Aside. 

Selby. What ail'd my wife ] 

Kath. A warning faintness, sir, 

Seized on my spirits, when you came to where 
You said " a lucky chance." I am better now : 
Please you go on. 

Selby. The sequel shall be brief. 

Kath. But, brief, or long, I feel my fate hangs 
on it. [Aside. 

Selby. " One morn the Caliph, in a covert hid, 
Close by an arbour where the two boys talk'd, 



648 



THE WIFE'S TRIAL ; OR, THE INTRUDING WIDOW. 



(As oft, we read, that Eastern sovereigns 
Would play the eaves-dropper, to learn the truth, 
Imperfectly received from mouths of slaves,) 
O'erheard their dialogue ; and heard enough 
To judge aright the cause, and know his cue. 
The following day a Cadi was despatch'd 
To summon both before the judgment-seat ; 
The lickerish culprit, almost dead with fear, 
And the informing friend, who readily, 
Fired with fair promises of large reward, 
And Caliph's love, the hateful truth disclosed." 

Mrs. F. What did the Caliph to the offending 
boy, 
That had so grossly err'd ] 

Selby. His sceptred hand 

He forth in token of forgiveness stretch'd, 
And clapp'd his cheeks, and courted him with 

gifts, 
And he became once more his favourite page. 

Mrs. F. But for that other — 

Selby. He dismiss' d him straight, 

From dreams of grandeur, and of Caliph's love, 
To the bare cottage on the withering moor. 



Where friends, turn'd fiends, and hollow con- 
fidants, 
And widows, hide, who in a husband's ear 
Pour baneful truths, but tell not all the truth ; 
And told him not that Robin Halford died 
Some moons before his marriage-bells were rung. 
Too near dishonour hast thou trod, dear wife, 
And on a dangerous cast our fates were set ; 
But Heav'n, that will'd our wedlock to be blest, 
Hath interposed to save it gracious too. 
Your penance is — to dress your cheek in smiles, 
And to be once again my merry Kate. — 
Sister, your hand. 

Your wager won makes me a happy man, 
Though poorer, Heav'n knows, by a thousand 

pounds. 
The sky clears up after a dubious day. 
Widow, your hand. I read a penitence 
In this dejected brow; and in this shame 
Your fault is buried. You shall in with us, 
And, if it please you, taste our nuptial fare : 
For, till this moment, I can joyful say, 
Was never truly Selby's Wedding Day. 



THE END. 



bond-on ; 
bradbury and eyanr, printers, whitkfriaks. 



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